Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/72098
ENERGY AND THE INTEGRATIVE VISION very helpful to be reminded of these. I've reworded them somewhat: 1. Wellness—this includes the basic and powerful effects of caring touch as manifested in Swedish massage, spa massage, etc. 2. Orthopedic—this includes skill in understanding injuries, postural issues, and the ways massage/ bodywork may or may not help with various diseases. Orthopedic massage ideally includes a respect and knowledge of wellness massage. 3. Holistic/Integrative—this includes an understanding of psychology, as well as anatomy and physiology; a unified therapeutic approach that addresses the whole person. This ideally includes excellence with respect to wellness and orthopedic massage, and skills in touch that contact and positively affect energy, as well as structure. NEXT STEPS What next steps can our field take to match the momentum in the science of massage with a balanced progress in the art of massage? • Define more clearly the realm of energetic work and integrative work. • Define more clearly what constitutes the art of massage. People commonly say massage/bodywork is an art and a science, but almost never explain in any detail how or why it is an art. • Utilize research to ground energetic and integrative work, insofar as it is possible or appropriate, in science. tune in to your practice at ABMPtv 69 • Recognize that the most effective therapy will likely combine a knowledge and attention to the energetic, as well as the structural aspect of the client. • Encourage massage education to take the "whole" more into account, and resist the tendency to be subsumed under a reductionist version of medicine practiced by the medical industry and insurance companies. • Provide clearer guidelines for the teaching and practice of energy work, the art of massage, and integrative bodywork that unites structure and energy. • Add questions regarding energy, energetic and integrative bodywork, and the art of massage to school and national exams. • See a greater commitment among therapists, educators, and organizations to a revisioning of massage that explicitly honors art, as well as science, and commits equally to making progress in the art as much as in the science. It is time for the field to recognize, rejoice in, and welcome our next steps. It is high time to proceed in a balanced way, honoring the legacy of massage therapy as the explicit union of care and knowledge, and art and science, in touch. massage and bodywork practice since 1977. In 1989, he cofounded the Lauterstein- Conway Massage School in Austin, Texas. He is certified in structural bodywork, Zero Balancing, and is the founder of Deep Massage: The Lauterstein Method. He has taught Deep Massage and Zero Balancing in England and throughout the United States since 1982. He is the author of Putting the Soul Back in the Body, Deep Massage Book (forthcoming in 2012), and more than a hundred articles on the philosophy and practice of massage and bodywork. In 2009, Lauterstein's school was named US School of the Year at the World Massage Festival. In July 2011, Lauterstein was inducted into the Massage Therapy Hall of Fame. For more information, visit www.tlcschool. com or email davidl@tlcschool.com. David Lauterstein, LMT, has been in NOTES 1. A little on my background: I approach this subject as a person with curiosity about energy since childhood. I recall writing a paper titled "What is Thinking?" when I was 12. Around that time, I began an involvement with folk, rock, and classical music that lasted most of the first 30 years of my life. There were also forays into poetry, philosophy (particularly esthetics), yoga, spirituality, bodywork, psychotherapy, and social change. In the mid- 1970s, this coalesced into a career in massage therapy and then teaching massage/bodywork for the last 30 years in the United States and the United Kingdom. 2. In this article, the terms massage and bodywork are used interchangeably. 3. I do think much of the use of the term energy is subject to what the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead called "the fallacy of misplaced concreteness." I don't think chakras exist in the sense of wheels or spheres of energy spinning in a certain direction. However, I find them very useful as a language for talking about the role different parts of our bodies play in our lives. And I have had experiences of energy flow or kundalini that I have no doubt were real experiences. I treasure some of these experiences and learn from them to this day. I have found no way more clear than speaking of them as experiences of energy flow in the body. 4. Peter Halligan and Mansel Aylward, eds., The Power of Belief. (London: Oxford University Press, 2006). 5. Jeffrey Maitland, Patricia Benjamin, Raymond Castellino, et al., "Three Paradigms—Five Approaches," Massage Therapy Journal (Summer 1991): 21–3.