Substack: Massage Therapy Has a Labor Problem

Send us a text

Read this article here

The Work We Do But Won’t Name

Scholars who study labor have a term for work that involves “particularized knowledge and sustained personal attention.” They call it intimate labor. According to scholar Viviana Zelizer’s framework, this work includes things like shared secrets, bodily information, awareness of personal vulnerability, interpersonal rituals, and private languages.

Read that list again. Now think about what happens in a massage therapy session.

We know our clients’ bodies in ways that even their partners may not. We hold their secrets about pain, about stress, about the divorce they haven’t told anyone about yet. We know things about our clients we don’t even realize we know, the way a janitor knows what a household discards, learning private details from what people throw away.

Support the show

Subscribe to our Substack: "More Than Hands"

Send us an email: podcast@healwell.org
Leave us a voice message: 703-468-1799

Check out our interview-style podcast: Interdisciplinary

You can support Healwell and the cool things we make by donating here!
Ways join in:

• Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts
• Check out Healwell’s live and online classes
• Continue the conversation with a free 3-day trial of the Healwell Community
• Find a copy of Rebecca Sturgeon's book: "Oncology Massage: An Integrative Approach to Cancer Care"

Thank you to ABMP and AMTA for sponsoring us!

Healwell is a 501(c)(3) non-profit based out of the Washington DC area. Check us out at www.healwell.org