What Changes Have You Seen?

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Elaine Stillerman, LMT on September 9, 2009 at 2:27pm

When I started out in 1978, there were 14 schools in the entire country. At my school, the massage classes were segregated (men/women) and NO ONE massaged pregnant women. Thankfully that changed!

Permalink Reply by Gloria Coppola on September 9, 2009 at 3:57pm

Like Elaine, you couldn't find schools in every town. I traveled almost 2 hrs to get to class each way. The attitude about massage in the community was ....lets say 'very uneducated' . Fortunately, that has changed immensely in 20+ years and there is so much more information. Anatomy classes are more inclusive too ! yeah. Unfortunately, the mass production of schools everywhere, I feel, has lost some of the original essence and quality of this healing profession.

There were very few states licensed. No National Board for massage, VERY few massage books on the market. 3 massage table companies. Very few choices in continuing education, no massage videos, no online/home study courses.

I also changed bylaws in many cities since massage was always under adult entertainment and you were not allowed to work on the opposite sex. Laws written in the early 1900's and sometimes earlier.

One of the massage magazines used to come in a brown paper wrapper ;)

I'm sure I could think of alot more things too. lol. I'll give someone else a chance

Permalink Reply by Mike Hinkle on September 10, 2009 at 9:56am

I bet pregnant women are happy with that! !4 schools? No wonder there was more consistency back then. Thousands of schools surely have diluted the knowledge and techniques. That just makes sense.

Elaine Stillerman, LMT said:

When I started out in 1978, there were 14 schools in the entire country. At my school, the massage classes were segregated (men/women) and NO ONE massaged pregnant women. Thankfully that changed!

Permalink Reply by Mike Hinkle on September 10, 2009 at 10:23am

Wow! Sounds like we've only really been organizing since the 70's maybe. So we are maybe 40 years old, as a profession?

Gloria Coppola said:

Like Elaine, you couldn't find schools in every town. I traveled almost 2 hrs to get to class each way. The attitude about massage in the community was ....lets say 'very uneducated' . Fortunately, that has changed immensely in 20+ years and there is so much more information. Anatomy classes are more inclusive too ! yeah. Unfortunately, the mass production of schools everywhere, I feel, has lost some of the original essence and quality of this healing profession.

There were very few states licensed. No National Board for massage, VERY few massage books on the market. 3 massage table companies. Very few choices in continuing education, no massage videos, no online/home study courses.

I also changed bylaws in many cities since massage was always under adult entertainment and you were not allowed to work on the opposite sex. Laws written in the early 1900's and sometimes earlier.

One of the massage magazines used to come in a brown paper wrapper ;)

I'm sure I could think of alot more things too. lol. I'll give someone else a chance

Permalink Reply by Mike Hinkle on September 20, 2010 at 11:04am

Keep at it Amy and "Keep the Faith!"

Amy Erez www.SugiHealth.com said:

In 1982, Berkeley was definitely the place to be! There was virtually no regulation and 100 hours of training was considered sufficient to get started. By '87, when I started doing Reiki, in the suburbs where I live people were afraid to talk about unusual work they did. As an energy practitioner, my work was only successful because I educated people. That continues to be true today due to misconceptions about the differences between massage and energy work.