03/05/2026
The Regulation Fe**sh
More and more I see massage therapists calling for greater regulation -- and usually this means greater standardization, and a less holistic and less cross-cultural approach -- of the practice of massage. Often this is couched in terms of us earning "more respect".
Friends and colleagues, jumping through (often expensive) hoops to obtain a permission slip from the government is not what gets you respect as a bodyworker.
What gets you respect as a bodyworker is that people enter your treatment room with pain, and leave without it. What gets you respect is the way that you treat clients/patients and colleagues. What gets you respect is knowledge and the ability to apply it. What gets you respect is "having the hands". What gets you respect is showing people self-care things that transform their relationship with their body.
Credentialism is a pathology of the professional class, and it's a dangerous one.
The current attempt by Maryland's acupuncture board to destroy the practice of Asian Bodywork Therapy, acupressure, and Asian modalities of massage therapy, has had me reading up on the "acu-pocalypse" -- the way in which overregulation of acupuncture (stemming in part from professional-class elitism) has led to a situation where it's impossible to afford acupuncture school on an acupuncturist's salary. Acupuncture schools (including Maryland's MUIH, formerly Tai Sophia) are closing and some believe the profession is in danger of extinction.
Let me be clear: this makes me sad. I entered Asian Bodywork Therapy training with the intention of going on to acupuncture school, but I found that ABT is so rich that it's not worth the expense -- acupuncture school would not greatly improve my ability to help people. Still, many of my teachers have been acupuncturists, I've benefited enormously from acupuncture. I consider acupuncture a sister art and would like to see it grow.
But the root of the problem is that rather than setting the training bar for entry near the level of three to six months of post-secondary training that the "barefoot doctors" who revived Chinese Medicine in the Maoist period received, western acupuncturists decided that two years of graduate study -- a master's degree from a private school (I don't think any public universities have an acupuncture program?), likely to run into a six figure cost today -- were required before one could stick needles in people. You had to have a fancy credential, and never mind how much of the work to obtain it was busywork with little impact on the quality of practice.
(The acupuncturist I saw for many years learned as a kid in China. When she moved to the US to pursue a different profession but decided to shift into acupuncture, she had to do the whole program...even though the style of acupuncture the school taught was not what she already knew or what she ever used in her career. She had to get the paper.)
But regulation never ratchets down, only up. Rather than consider that the current level of regulation might have been a mistake, the profession is pushing towards making a doctorate degree the standard. (One can start to see why this segment of acupuncturists aren't happy with low-class bodyworkers, and even completely unlicensed practitioners, giving away the secrets of Chinese medicine!)
This ought to be a warning for massage and bodywork therapy. Beware the fe**sh for more and more regulation in complementary and alternative healthcare. Keep it alternative!
