The state of the massage industry

What a bizaare time to be a massage therapist. In some ways it's the, "the more things change the more they stay the same".  After all the McMassage chains are major employers for therapists and pay abysmally as they always have, hotels and spas are plentiful and massage still hasn't made much headway into mainstream medicine with no sense that it will change.  Making matters worse is an increasing amount of research and science that continues to undermine all the OG philosophy and education that's been taught to many of us the past 35 years.  The industry can't unify behind more uniform and better educational standards nor is there many desirable career tracks and guidance to help therapists optimize their skills. 

The past couple of years I've gone on some massage subreddit sites and when there's topics that talk specifically about anatomy, physiology, neurology or any of the other sciences while there's some genuinely interesting and engaging comments there's also many commenters including many massage therapists with a chip about maintaining hard science standards that refuse to have good faith discussions.  The problem being that there isn't enough data and research to support much of anything when it comes to the efficacy of massage/manual therapy. We can't say massage structurally changes myofascia.  We can't say it helps realign tissue.  We can't say the work reduces pain.  There's so little we can hang our hats on. About the only thing we can say is that it makes people feel better in a general way.  

Personally, all the hard science standards being leveled at our industry while we're mired in old weak education standards excites me.  I'm excited for the future of massage and manual therapy. Why? Because of a few things.  One, we might be doing the most actual hands on therapy of any discipline.  No one touches the body as much as we do and that gives us experience and knowledge of the body's soft tissue that no one else has. At the risk of sounding trite and egotistical, massage therapists have a unique wisdom.  There's not enough science to back up up what that is yet but it gives us a value to the public and we find clients who need our services. Second, we're a rogue industry in healthcare.  Most massage therapists I've known are independently minded anti-authoritarian types.  We're not going to go brawling on meth but people interested in this work like the freedom the work can provide.  We're not 9-5 desk sitters. Because of this spirit we tend to be creative when it comes to healthcare.  We give clients ideas and differents ways of thinking about their health and that's an important thing.  Lastly I like that we're discarding what we used to believe about what our work does.  I like that we're limited to what we can state confidently about the efficacy of massage because it means we're catching up to mainstream medicine.  Keep in mind that if you look at specializations like orthopedics, neurology, endocrinology, etc. as much as those doctors know, many of the protocols and treatments for health issues aren't always appropriate or effective.  They ignore the wholistic model of what's underlying conditions, they dismiss or overlook variables that have a major impact on the health condition of clients.  We're in good company.  Don't let anyone make you feel bad just because we don't have hard science on our work.  Just continue learning and getting experience and eventually you'll prove yourself an effective therapist on a whole deeper level with or without the science to support it.