It’s great to see David Palmer actively writing again and I’m thoroughly enjoying his TouchPro blog. It was about 18 years ago that I first met David Palmer, the “Father of Chair Massage” at a marketing workshop in Toronto. (Note: Although I’m very much associated with developing chair massage in Canada, I didn’t come up with the concept. I’m just the “Son of Chair Massage.”)

That meeting had a profound impact on the way I looked at my role as a massage therapist and in a broader way on my life’s path. There were a couple of ideas in particular that he communicated that changed my thinking about massage and caused me to make a 180 degree turn in my professional life:

1. An important distinction: The difference between massage being acceptable vs. massage being accessible.

In the early 90′s I was fully engaged in the trend to “medicalize” massage in an effort to gain some acceptance by the mainstream. At that time I had taught well over a 1,000 therapists in 2,200 hour massage training programs and was writing a research-based textbook for a large American publisher. I was on a mission to see massage become more accepted by other health professionals, but making that distinction stopped me in my tracks.

As service professionals, we’re not here to serve health professionals or even insurance providers for that matter. We’re here to serve humanity. And the simple fact was (and still is) that massage as it is widely practiced today will never achieve widespread utilization by the public. David Palmer suggests that only 3% of the American public receives regular massage. Therapists can’t believe the number and get upset by it, but he’s right. Having taken considerable time over the years to analyze the numbers from major association surveys, I think he’s probably even a little generous with his estimations.

Bottom line: People need the touch that massage provides. We need to focus less on being accepted by the medical community and insurance providers and focused on making our services more accessible to the mainstream public – creating a grassroots revolution of sorts.

2. Touch as a positive social value

One of the reasons that massage has never achieved a high level of popularity is because of the negative associations with touch. Besides the obvious associations with sex in our culture, it is also associated in a more negative way with abuse, coercion, power and danger, thus creating a touch-phobic culture. As a result, we have a situations where teachers are fearful of comforting young students in any kind of physical way and touching is increasing being banned in schools even between students.

It’s proven beyond a doubt that we need touch as much as we need food and sleep. So we need to transform perceptions around touch and make touch a positive social value.

These two goals, making touch a positive social value and making massage more accessible, have been a driving force in my career much to the dismay of my colleagues.

• I have popularized chair massage in Canada and have been responsible for tens of thousands of people who would not normally have massage trying it for the first time
• I support organizations like Peaceful Touch and Massage in Schools that help establish positive attitudes towards touch at an early age
• I support the valuable research done by the Touch Research Institute even though they do not always use massage therapists in their protocols
• I get actively involved in events like Free Hug Day and Campaign for Free Hugs

At the risk of sounding preachy, I have to say that as massage therapists we are uniquely positioned to be ambassadors for positive touch. We have the ability to go far beyond helping a strained hamstring and have the power to change people’s lives in very profound ways through touch.

I encourage you to think about how you can contribute to the cause. What can we do as massage professionals to change attitudes towards touch and make massage more accessible to every man, woman and child? Are you ready to start a touch revolution?

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the issue. Tell me what you think by posting your comments below.