Twenty years ago, a thought came to me during a massage therapy session. It floated into my massage studio and would not leave.
I wrote it down.
Once published, the thought kept moving. It turned up here and there: in a couple of books, in an occasional massage school graduation speech, on a massage therapist’s website.
Recently, on its 20th anniversary, I decided to write it down again. This time, I wrote it longhand.
My writing-it-in-cursive experiment had mixed results. Twenty years of keyboards and block printing have booted my cursive to the curb. My little “m’s” have too many arcs, or too few. The page is full of cross-outs.
I miss writing in cursive.
They don’t teach it much anymore. Cursive-writing is a lost art, going the way of Latin.
Some dismiss the loss. Others lament it: They say that without cursive, the next generation of historians will not be able to decipher primary sources, nor hundreds of years of correspondence.
That generation gap is already here. With minimal instruction in cursive, my child struggles to read her uncle’s letter to her. She is intrigued by it, though, and tries to copy cursive. She draws straight-up print letters first, then links them together with skinny little arms of ink. She practices her signature.
I nod appreciatively. She’ll get by. I imagine her adult self, signing a car loan or writing a letter. She might even issue a government decree one day, in cursive. Maybe we’ll loop back to parchment by then.
To me, massage is cursive.
That act of wrapping a pen in one’s fingers, then moving it across paper in curves and lines—it is similar to classical Swedish massage. Just remove the pen and ink. Use oil instead.
In place of the antique desk and blotter, use a massage table.
Change out the paper and bring in a human.
A human, with a story, who has asked to be touched.
There’s the difference.
On this massage table, my hands move in loops and spirals. But unlike handwriting, my hands are reading someone’s story, not writing it. My hands regard the story. They interact with it, following it around the curves and corners of the body. This is not pure cursive. It is a different kind of agency, a different kind of story.
In the two decades since winter 1999, the massage therapy profession has lived through its own story. Sometimes we’ve written it. Other times, others have written it for us. There’s that age-old conflict, again: Who gets to tell the story?
It’s a story of mixed results.
Twenty years produced a genuine marketplace for massage therapy, where people can now offer skilled touch and others can ask for it. The internet helped us all find each other. It gave us an inexpensive platform for our message to the masses.
Twenty years gave us some sensible regulation and a few new credentials. We published some good research, some of it open-source. We shrugged off a few outdated laws.
In that time, the public began to view our work as less like prostitution and more like wellness care, or even health care. In increasing numbers, people started seeking out massage during cancer care, after heart surgery, and in rehab. They sought us out for stress relief.
Consumers began to demand massage therapy throughout the life cycle: Pregnant women wanted it. Parents learned massage for their babies. Children asked for it for their dying parents.
We became popular.
Our story arced upward.
We appeared in Terminal B, and on inpatient Unit C. We showed up at the music festival, at the fundraiser, at the Olympics, and in the state legislature. We were everywhere.
We had arrived.
It was a matter of time before people noticed. When they did, they saw opportunity.
In a board room somewhere, someone thought to package our work as one of the seven deadly sins. For some reason, that appealed to people, and storefronts multiplied. The model took off and demand grew.
In response, massage education boomed. Schools opened, some formed long chains of campuses. They enrolled thousands of students. Educators argued for degree programs, or for graduating in 6 months, or for tiered education. Major publishers scurried to fill the textbook market. Tables, lotion, and other suppliers came out of the woodwork. In droves, MTs bought liability insurance and cheap CE courses. The industry begat more industry. We became as common as bread, and as commodified as car insurance.
A fellow educator remarked to me, ruefully, “Well, I guess we’re mainstream now. We got what we wanted, right?”
Right?
Then, something happened.
In the US, enrollment in massage programs leveled off, then dropped. At least a third of schools closed. Some were closed by force, for questionable financial and admissions practices. Others shut their doors because there were too few students.
The supply side of massage therapy began to shrink. People left the profession. Fewer people joined it. Employers strained to find therapists to keep up. The promising trajectory faded from view.
Now, even as demand for massage continues to grow, even as we are cast as part of the solution to the opioid problem, even as we become fixtures in places we used to only dream of visiting, suddenly there aren’t enough of us.
This gap is painful. It is ill-timed.
People offer up many explanations for our current situation. No time for an exhaustive list; here are just two:
One, the income waiting for MT graduates does not typically cover the student loan debt required to become a massage therapist.
Two, we’ve stretched income inequality to its breaking point, at least in urban areas. Middle- and upper-class consumers can no longer demand massage therapy when and where they want it, if MTs cannot afford to live anywhere near the demand.
Yes, we wanted a seat at the table, but we also need to eat. If MTs cannot provide quality care while safely housing, feeding, and caring for themselves, then current systems of massage therapy delivery are not sustainable.
We will be better advocates of massage therapy when we provide for its providers. These provisions could take many forms: stronger education, student debt relief, better compensation, more favorable supports (and fewer penalties) for MT entrepreneurs and microbusinesses, and meaningful third-party reimbursement for massage as health care.
Rapid growth is thrilling, but challenging to navigate.
Rapid growth does not come with a map or an instruction manual. Many of us are still catching up to the last year, or the last five. With growing interest on the demand side and shrinking interest on the supply side, our landscape is in flux.
In the past 20 years, massage therapy has helped a lot of people. Yet massage therapy has not always helped the profession of massage therapy.
At times, we’ve had thoughtful leadership and strong collaboration to steady us. Our alphabet soup of professional organizations has given us great hearts, voices, and a long list of accomplishments.
At other times, we’ve seen infighting, turf wars, and missed opportunities for the profession.
Massage therapy training does not typically include professional advocacy, program development, or leadership skills. These are ingredients in self-determination. In their absence, we are left to rely heavily on external approval and other people’s skills. We are vulnerable to other people’s agendas.
Put simply, others get to write our story.
Here’s mine.
Against this landscape, someone brought my 20-year-old thought to my attention. When she nudged me with it, she caught me up short. Sure, I had seen it around. It’s on our website. But I hadn’t read it closely in a long time.
Upon doing so, I cringed a little. It was all I could do to keep from editing. Who uses that word anymore? How quaint! I must update this thought, I thought.
I resisted the impulse.
I left it untouched.
Instead, I copied it word-for-word into my journal.
Now, days later, I am reading it back to myself. As I read, I reflect: Do I still believe this?
My words are a test. They ask me to reevaluate our work in light of the 20 years of steps and missteps in the profession of massage therapy. They ask me to sit in this season of confusion and ask, Why can’t I tell whether we have moved forward?
Is the work fizzling, as it appears, from lack of oxygen? Or is this our moment—the one we anticipated for years—and it just doesn’t look like our moment?
In this moment, do my words from 1999 still ring true, or do they remain a quaint, lost artifact from an idealistic time?
Am I just longing for our Woodstock, for those days before we were discovered, then branded? Back when our work was pure, misunderstood, and dismissed?
Do I still believe these words?
I pause.
The words dare me to say no. To say yes.
The passage blurs on the page.
Eventually, my answer comes. It is quiet, but clear.
My pen might be clumsy, but my massage hands are sure. They continue to move across my client’s tissues. They continue to ask: What is it like to be in this body? What stories does it tell?
They continue to trace a whole life in an hour, in a moment.
Many hours later, I have a whole collection of stories. I imagine my hands connecting each data point with the next, like skinny arms linking my child’s upright letters. I believe these connections are bridges.
I believe that healing crosses these bridges. Healing crosses in both directions.
Now, enough with the cursive. Now, it takes a few moves of the mouse to layer a thought over a picture. It is much easier to read than my blotchy script.
My mouse hesitates. It is more than a little odd to quote yourself. Our internet is already stuffed with well-meaning quotations. Some are more useful than others.
This one? It is just…true.
It has held up over time.
I believe it with my whole heart.
***
By touching a body, we touch every event it has experienced. For a few brief moments we hold all of a client’s stories in our hands. We witness someone’s experience of their own flesh, through some of the most powerful means possible: the contact of our hands, the acceptance of the body without judgment, and the occasional listening ear. With these gestures we reach across the isolation of the human experience and hold another person’s legend. In massage therapy, we show up and ask, in so many ways, what it is like to be another human being. In doing so, we build a bridge that may heal us both.
–Tracy Walton, “The Health History of a Human Being,” Massage Therapy Journal, Winter 1999.
I so appreciate what you wrote. Just began my 38th year as a Massage Therapist. I let my hands dance across their bodies too. May I give you credit and share your words. On my website. Barry Rubin
38! Congratulations!
Thank you Tracy
And yes, of course you may use the quotation on your website! Sorry I missed that part.
Beautiful writing, Tracy! I appreciate the depths of your heart, and the keenness of your mind!
Regarding cursive…..massage is reading a body’s Braille.
Thank you, Ed! I appreciate your work, for sure.
Tracy – this was the passage that made me know I was home in the work that I felt called to do all those years ago. I still cherish and carry this with me when I stop, pause, breathe, and show up to carry individuals through their inpatient experiences, often as they are coming to terms, or not, within a dying body as a someone who speaks with touch and serves also as a clinician. Thank you. Those words helped me kithe my path, in my chosen field.
Beth, I am not sure I knew that. What an arc your work has taken! Thanks for teaching me a new word, too. 🙂
A feature of your writing that stands out for me is the space, the breath, between your words. I hear your words. I feel them. I understand them. I honor them.
The space is as important as whatever fills it, right? Thank you.
Massage Poet. Loved it. I am filled with gratitude for the work we do, the work we teach and share. Twenty nine years later I still have the fire and love for skilled, compassionate touch and a much larger number for beautiful cursive taught to me by those wacky nuns.
I Thank you Eva and your sisters Olga and Alice for helping grow to the therapist I am today. I love what I do , 10 + years now. I work for myself now and my business is flourishing and my heart is full from my clients appreciation of what I do for them.
How lucky to have Eva as a teacher!
Thank you, Eva! I want to see your cursive one day.
Tracy-Thank you again for warm, deep and moving thoughts…
A couple favorites from my collection over 33 years of practice:
*When we touch another- the first thing we feel is ourselves
* When we move the tissue of another, we set their biography in motion-
so yes we are writing and reading through our hands and observation.
We are facing a demographic shift- fewer young people in all kinds of programs, including higher ed.
And perhaps a shift too in what we call and expect from “work”
I’m keeping the faith that the path we’ve laid will not be lost-in fact feeling proud to have created some opportunities for others coming up.
And thanks to my studies with you – have done so with much confidence and many skills and resources.
Thank you!
Thank you for those quotations, Joyce. I love them and I like thinking of you creating opportunities for others. Thanks for studying w/me and working what you’re working!
I love the term “ massage poet “. I completely agree . I also agree with the empty spaces being equally , if not more valuable, than the spaces that are filled with beautifully written thoughts.
I SO enjoyed reading this. I too could hear you reading to me, as I often do with literature that moves me.
Thank you for once again moving me.
Sarah, thanks. I can imagine reading aloud in the room with you, too! Miss you.
Tracy – your beautiful quote fills me up with gratitude. I loved it when I read it the first time and am even more appreciative to read it now after all these years. The profession is so much richer because of your reflections. I have hope that the pendulum will swing towards growth again…!
P.
Pam, thank you. I hope so, too.
Beautiful – thank you for sharing this part of your story.
Your words reflect deep philosophical influences. For example, “Against this landscape, someone brought my 20-year-old thought to my attention. When she nudged me with it, she caught me up short.” That phrase reminds me of “Pulled Up Short: Challenging Self-Understanding as a Focus of Teaching and Learning” in Journal of Philosophy of Education, Vol. 37, No. 2, 2003. Deborah Kerdeman’s writing meaningfully connected an example of Hans Georg Gadamer’s work for me. You reminded me of that which, is why I share it with you, in appreciation.
This sounds like a great article! Thank you for the connection.
This should be required reading for everyone entering MT school.
🙂
Tracy- Wow… I am a student in a massage therapy program in my final year. The way you spoke about what your work is to you made me cry. It was so beautiful, I want this to be what I do for the rest of my working life. As a student, the massages I have given to the public have made me feel like I was I was learning the secrets of my clients from their bodies (with their permission), and I felt honoured. You have a beautiful way with words.
Thank you, Kathryn. I hope you do make this the rest of your working life.
Your words mirror those in my heart and hope for massage therapy.
That means a lot, Sandy. Let’s all make it happen.
Amen Tracy well written all those years ago yet still these words ring true today . I too have watched this profession in the past 30 (yikes) years change and grow ! I’m slowing down work wise but the skill set and heartfelt approach still remains ! Thanks for reminding us that every body has a story to tell! Bravo!
Thank you, Eileen! Even if you’re working on fewer people these days, you’re right, the approach is still important!
All of the above always in all ways. I am grateful for your work and words.
(Backatcha.)
Beautiful Tracy, thank you for posting this, as I have not seen it before. In my 20 years of experience, your words ring absolutely true for me. I feel you!
Thank you, Karen!
Tracey, Thank you for this soul felt writing. I to have been a massage therapist for 20+ years. I appreciate and fully understand the fluctuations in our lives and our healing practices.
Still love being a massage therapist !
Again, thanks for your contribution to this wonderful field.
Janice Buck Holden
Kind words, Janice. Thanks.
Thank you. Your words are beautiful, and true.
I became a massage therapist three years ago, at the age of 54.
The trust that people put in me touches my soul.
I love hearing from people who choose this work in middle-age or later in life. 🙂
I see your heart on the page. I remember when I first heard that quote so many years ago, how moved I was, how it reached into my soul. The hope and inspiration it evoked. And now the frustration, the dark or careless motivations of some larger entities, the cuts in educational content, and the declining interest. The lack of vision and leadership, the infighting, the degradation of massage education, and the greed of some large companies has brought us to this moment where we don’t know what’s going to happen.
It’s the same way I feel about this country and the direction it’s heading. The lack of care for the other, the divisions, the lack of leadership, the rage, and disappointment is tearing the country apart.
I long for the days when each massage school was owned by a person who really cared about each student, each client, and the profession as a whole. I hope those days will return in some form. I have moments of optimism when I visit certain schools around the country that still have integrity and excitement.
Oh, I hope so, as well. Thank you.