by David Palmer | Dec 27, 2025 | Bodywork, Chair Massage, Politics
Why the regulations designed to protect the profession actually limit its reach By David Palmer The American massage profession has spent decades fighting for legitimacy. At the heart of this struggle has been a critical mission: separating professional massage from...
by David Palmer | Jun 11, 2013 | Chair Massage, Politics, Videos
At the 2013 World Massage Conference (WMC) David debuted his first webinar entitled The Future of Professional Touch. After the presentation and discussion, they premiered a video interview that had been shot in April 2012. You can view it here. In it David describes...
by David Palmer | Aug 2, 2012 | Bodywork, Business, Education, Politics, Touch
One of the critical topics in the massage community is how to define and label what we do. How we define massage influences how we market our services, how we regulate them and how we educate new people coming into our profession. Like the classic tale of the blind...
by David Palmer | Jul 10, 2012 | Bodywork, Education, Politics
Have you every wondered why the National Certification Board of Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB) has such an awkward name? What’s with that business of “Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork?” Couldn’t they have stopped after the word...
by David Palmer | May 15, 2012 | Bodywork, Politics, Touch
Reading the impressive 58-page paper entitled Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge (MTBOK) was both exhilarating and disappointing. Developed by a coalition of six national massage organizations, Version 1 of this effort was published in 2010 and is a landmark document...
by David Palmer | Jan 9, 2012 | Bodywork, Politics
For as long as people have been paying for therapeutic massage services, practitioners have feared being mistaken for prostitutes. That fear was the primary driving force that, in 1983, led the American Massage Therapy Association to re-brand “massage” into “massage...
