Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/969285
Roose is a massage therapist, a digital marketing expert, and a lifelong learner. She's also the CEO and founder of the San Diego Pain Summit, now in planning for its fifth year. The summit showcases clinicians and researchers from around the globe who underscore that pain is very much a body-mind concept and that solely manipulating soft tissue or prescribing opioids aren't effective solutions. Contemporary pain science research shows that acknowledging individual pain and helping them confront it can help contribute to positive outcomes. The 2018 summit in February drew more than 100 attendees, including chiropractors, massage therapists, medical doctors, osteopaths, and physical therapists from as far away as Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. The underpinnings of this research can be overwhelming, but fascinating for manual therapists. "There are actually a lot of MTs who like this information," Roose says. "That's why I also created online courses so they can start learning some of it at home." TENACITY Roose's career path has had a number of speed bumps that would have been brick walls for most people. A native of Huntsville, Alabama, she graduated from the Tennessee Institute of Therapeutic Massage in Hendersonville in 1999. "I worked part time in two massage places because I wasn't interested in having my own business." But when both closed, Roose opened a private practice and realized she was pretty good at it. She managed her practice for three years until she moved to San Diego. She taught for eight months at Remington College Massage Therapy in San Diego, then it closed. She was brought in as a CE provider to teach at San Diego's International Professional School of Bodywork, and it closed too. During these stops and starts, she worked to jump through the hoops required of California massage therapists to practice and open their own businesses back then. Finally, she was able to open her own practice and operated it successfully for eight years. In the meantime, Roose says, "I started studying the nervous system and learning more about it." Her curiosity took her to resources such as The Sensitive Nervous System by David Butler, an Australian physical therapist. She also learned dermoneuromodulation from founder Diane Jacobs, a Canadian physiotherapist. "I started to read more work about the brain and the mind, research that helped explain pain," Roose says. "This made me realize there were a lot of things that were mysterious and that we as MTs didn't know about—but I found science had looked at them. This got me on the journey." EXCELLENCE When she's not polishing summit plans, Roose runs a digital marketing service for small business owners. "There's bad information out there all around," she says. "I did massage for 16 years, and I feel an affinity for massage business owners." 2019 San Diego Pain Summit February 23–24, 2019 www.sandiegopainsummit.com The Fifth Annual San Diego Pain Summit features keynote speaker Antonio Damasio, PhD, a noted neuroscientist who leads the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California. Belgium's Sciences Humaines magazine named him one of the top 50 key thinkers in the human sciences in the last two decades. Early-bird registration ends June 1, 2018. Preconference workshops are February 19–22, 2019. The term pain research tends to either inspire or scare. When Rajam Roose talks about contemporary pain research, the term rolls off her tongue and her excitement for the subject gives life and depth to it. A B M P m e m b e r s e a r n F R E E C E a t w w w. a b m p . c o m / c e b y r e a d i n g M a s s a g e & B o d y w o r k m a g a z i n e 81