Valence Massage

Reality check: Q: "Why is massage therapy research not likely to be viewed seriously?" A: "Lots of reasons. ... "Most of the studies are bad. Most of the studies appear in third-tier journals. "The best-known researcher working in this area is not a good scientist. Therefore, if a working scientist has some knowledge of this area, it's likely to be that their impression is bad. "Massage therapy as a research subject doesn't clearly and logically belong to any major established field but is instead spread across medicine, nursing, PT, psychology, etc. This makes it hard to get a faculty position in any specific department. "The profession consistently presents itself in ways that are unprofessional, such that people not familiar with it are apt to view it as a bit of a joke. "(I actually had a very senior scientist send me one of the most cliched jokes we have all heard after my first paper was published. He thought he was being genuinely funny. He wasn't, and it goes to show how many people, including well-established researchers, view massage as a practice and profession.) "Massage therapy is often lumped in with 'alternative medicine' practices with which it does not belong; what this means is real scientists pay little or no attention to it if they assume it is alt-med (in other words, nonsense) while pseudoscientists assume someone who researches massage therapy must be 'one of them' (which I am definitely not). "The association of massage therapy with alternative medicine is probably the most damaging of the issues I'm outlining here. "Imagine you are a serious psychology department looking to make a hire. You get dozens or hundreds of applications from excellent scholars working in well-established areas. "Are you going to hire someone who works on a subject you know little about, and if you 'know' anything about it what you know is it is an alt-med practice that doesn't deserve to be taken seriously? "It's a shame because massage therapy is a fascinating subject for psychological research with connections to many well-established topics such as attachment, mammalian grooming, psychotherapy, and others." ~ Dr. Christopher Moyer

This is often the opposite of what patients expect and not at all what clinicians tell them. Please remember that the body heals itself, and advocate for it as long as it's practical to do so:

Thought I’d give this ago for physio after xkcd did the orignal!

My Saturdays are currently booked until late May, so if you are planning on getting in, I recommend planning in advance. Just a few more weeks left until I finish my first year of PT school! Last week, I was called upon to teach massage therapy for my DPT classmates, and it made me both extremely happy and a little sad. I miss seeing patients every day!