Over the past few weeks, I have written about the therapeutic benefits of massage therapy, specifically for infants and adolescents. Now I want to focus on the therapeutic benefits of massage therapy for all people, children and adults.
This entry will be about jaw pain and ways massage therapy can help combat it. (more…)
I was writing a couple of weeks ago about transference, professional and personal boundaries being crossed in the client-therapist relationship (click here to read the entry)
Again, it is very easy for transference to take place, partly because of the nature of massage therapy (therapists are the experts, client undress for them, and receive therapeutic touch from them). But another reason transference can take place so easily is because we all (therapist and client) are coming from collective experiences that are uniquely are own; thus personal boundaries are defined individually and what’s comfortable for one person may be uncomfortable for another.
This places extreme importance on therapists to outline clearly the professional, legal, and personal boundaries of their massage practice. (more…)
Any professional massage therapist will tell you that boundaries are important things for a therapist to establish and maintain. My last two entries have focused on why these boundaries (professional, legal, and personal) are important. Today, I want to focus on some specific examples of personal boundaries being crossed; next week I will offer some specific ideas about policies that therapists can adopt to make sure events such as the ones from today’s blog do not happen.
Boundaries were the topic of my last entry, specifically professional boundaries that therapists must be clear and open about in order to maintain an honest and professional (and legal) practice.
Today I want to continue discussing boundaries, but this time focus on the legal and personal boundaries of massage therapy.
In my last entry I wrote about the important ethic that most professional massage therapists follow, consent. In today’s entry I want to talk about another ethic that is just as important, boundaries.
Boundaries:
In my last blog I wrote that there are general principles of ethics that professional and responsible massage therapists follow. I want to continue on this topic with a specific look at some of the more important ethical principles that massage therapists hold.
Of course, ethics are personal, and they are applied differently from person to person. However, most of the values described in this, and forthcoming blogs, could be, I think, generally agreed upon as a sort of massage therapist Hippocratic oath, or at least a small part of it.
Voluntary and Informed Consent:
Would you like a massage? That sounds like an innocent question, and, quite possibly, a dream come true. Who wouldn’t want a massage at certain points of the day, or even all the time?
Massage therapy has grown into a very large industry, one that produces billions of dollars each year. And most of it starts with some variation of those words (I would like a massage, I need a massage, please give me a massage, etc.). While we’ve discussed the many therapeutic and economic benefits of massage therapy in this blog, one (of many) thing that we’ve missed – and that gets glossed over often – is the ethics of massage therapy. (more…)