The Rub: a podcast about massage therapy

Substack: Why Massage Therapy Needs a Divorce, Not Another Debate

Send us a textIt’s Time to Stop Going to Aunt Tricia’sThis article is a companion to this one written by Corey. These articles represent each author's independent perspective, and were written without our usual collaborative input. We are super excited about them. Every technical debate in massage therapy is displacement activity.Every. Single. One.We argue about measurement systems (clock hours vs. credit hours), terminology (but we call it taxonomy… all fancy-like). Is it bodywork or is it massage? And don’t get me started about how our knickers twist when it comes to credentialing language.We have online arguments that last longer than some people’s actual training programs.All of this “activity” allows us to keep evading the fundamental questions: What does this field want to be? And what will we do when we realize that, perhaps, it’s a field that actually contains more than one distinct pathway?Read the original article here. Support the showSubscribe to our Substack: "More Than Hands" Send us an email: podcast@healwell.orgLeave us a voice message: 703-468-1799 Check out our interview-style podcast: InterdisciplinaryYou 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

Substack: Massage Isn’t Complicated, It's Complex

Send us a textWhy we don’t need to get along to get along.Not all problems are created equal, and the methods that will solve one kind are very different from what you need to solve the other. Oftentimes problems are a combination of simple, complicated, or complex; or vacillate between the distinctions with time. Thinking about the features of each can help us decide how to approach them.This article is a companion to this one written by Cal. These articles represent each author’s independent perspective, and were written without our usual collaborative input. We are super excited about them. Most of the information and images in this article come from the Complex Systems Framework Collection website. It’s delightful and simple, and I highly recommend you explore it.You can read the original article here.Support the showSubscribe to our Substack: "More Than Hands" Send us an email: podcast@healwell.orgLeave us a voice message: 703-468-1799 Check out our interview-style podcast: InterdisciplinaryYou 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

Substack: The Myth of the Gift

Send us a textRecently several of Corey's projects have come across the same stumbling block: a lot of people believe many skills can’t be taught. This has come up in my poking around the topics of therapeutic relationships, compassion, supervision, writing, and emotional labor. In each of these areas, there is a pervasive fallacy that the reason a person is good at a skill is the result of a mystical innate genius. Some je ne sais quoi. Some indefinable essence. This is not only untrue, it’s a limiting perspective.Read this article hereSupport the showSubscribe to our Substack: "More Than Hands" Send us an email: podcast@healwell.orgLeave us a voice message: 703-468-1799 Check out our interview-style podcast: InterdisciplinaryYou 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

Substack: Massage Therapy Has a Labor Problem

Send us a textRead this article hereThe Work We Do But Won’t NameScholars 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 showSubscribe to our Substack: "More Than Hands" Send us an email: podcast@healwell.orgLeave us a voice message: 703-468-1799 Check out our interview-style podcast: InterdisciplinaryYou 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

Substack: Why Don't We Just...?

Send us a textRead this article hereThe massage therapy profession has problems. We have so many problems, those problems have bred and now have enough problematic offspring to hold a problematic family reunion.You’re probably reading our Substack because you see these problems and you want to know how to fix them. You’ve probably thought of some plans yourself. How many times have we all had conversations that start with “Well, why don’t we just [insert solution]? That would solve it!”The next time you start to have this conversation, stop right there and really look at that question.Why don’t we just [insert solution]?The answer is that what you’re asking for is really hard. If it was easy, it would have been accomplished already.Support the showSubscribe to our Substack: "More Than Hands" Send us an email: podcast@healwell.orgLeave us a voice message: 703-468-1799 Check out our interview-style podcast: InterdisciplinaryYou 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