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Why we struggle to talk about the harassment of massage therapists

Content warning: The following essay contains a generalized discussion of sexual harassment and assault. Please take any precautions you may need before engaging.

Click here to answer the survey: A National Study on U.S. Massage Therapists’ Experiences of Sexual Harassment and Assault by Clients

You can read the full survey results about Ontario here.

Previous survey results from a Canada-wide survey can be read here. 

*Correction: Morgan Richards, PhD student, administered the Canada-wide survey and the current US survey. She reviewed and verified the survey and resources for the RMTAO, Ontario-specific survey. 

Resources:

• RAINN National Sexual Assault Website:
  • Free, confidential, 24/7 support in English and Spanish
  • 800-656-HOPE (4673)
  • chat at rainn.org/hotline
  • text “HOPE” to 64673
  • Connect on Signal or WhatsApp
• 1in6.org support for men who have experienced sexual abuse or assault
• National Domestic Violence Hotline: 800-799-7233
• DoD Safe Helpline for military members

Show notes:

Pamela Fitch

Sandy Fritz

Why there are so many men at the top of the profession when it is demographically dominated by women.

The federal government is full of officials who casually confirm gender inequality. Despite a court order, a particular set of files is still unreleased except for the personal information of the survivors. Intimate partner violence is a paltry second to a political campaign. Women’s health is ignored or deliberately hamstrung. Social media stars push ideas of reversing suffrage and assert that a woman’s place in the kitchen. Young girls who dismiss boys have their lives placed in jeopardy.

 The profession is considered feminine

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There are MANY links to references in this article, so please visit the original article to see them. 

We (Corey and Cal) know that generative AI is a hot button question. We think it is a more nuanced conversation than “love it” or “hate it.” This article is about transparency. It is about how we (Corey and Cal) think about the tool that is generative AI, how we use it in our work, and what we’re wary of. Critical thinking demands constant re-evaluation and the conversation that surrounds AI changes every day, so this is a bookmark of how we feel as of August 2026.

Card Catalog: Hana the Librarian

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What I have seen most commonly, is that we bring massage therapy students to give “a massage” to medical students or others learning to be healthcare professionals (nurses, physical therapists). Maybe our students talk about what they’re doing during that massage, but we don’t prepare our students to engage with the students from these other disciplines as peers.

When we learn together, we hear each other’s questions and it opens otherwise unavailable opportunities to understand each other’s inspiration and concerns. We see how different our approaches are, but we also learn that there is a surprising level of overlap and, thereby, opportunity for collaboration. When we learn like this, we build trust and relationships that last into practice and which foster long-term collaborative care dynamics.

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Ways join in:

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• Find a copy of Rebecca Sturgeon's book: "Oncology Massage: An Integrative Approach to Cancer Care"

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The next two articles will only be available for our Substack members, and will not be posted to this podcast. To subscribe to the Substack and receive the articles and audio to your email, click here.

I spend many of my days lost in thought. It isn’t unusual for me to lose track of a conversation because a stray idea occurred to me. 

Sometimes I get overwhelmed when I read a paper or a book or listen to conversations. It feels like a waterfall of ideas comes crashing down in my head, and my senses fritz as my brain frantically tries to create a cascade of new neural connections in a single moment before the revelations slip away.

The thoughts that consume me are about my intellectual project, and I think it is time to let you in on it.

Here is the question that hijacks my days:

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Read the article here

There are many massage therapists who have worked incredibly hard to open doors in clinical settings. We have spent decades building trust, demonstrating value, and carving out space for our work in environments that didn’t initially (and often still don’t) understand or welcome us as practitioners of a uniquely valuable discipline. That pioneering work has created real impact for patients and laid groundwork that others have built on.

And somewhere along the way, I think we started accepting terms that don’t fully honor what we can contribute or who we are.

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• Leave us a review on  Apple Podcasts
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• Find a copy of Rebecca Sturgeon's book: "Oncology Massage: An Integrative Approach to Cancer Care"

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Healwell is a 501(c)(3) non-profit based out of the Washington DC area.  Check us out at www.healwell.org 

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Read the original article here

There’s no way for the associations to know our wishes if we don’t say them out loud. If we want the power to come from the bottom of the pyramid, we have to accept responsibility and ownership of that power. That doesn’t mean saying “I demand you fix my problem” it means saying “I need this specific thing from you in order to fix this problem.”

Links:

Articles where we describe problems can be found here: The Price of Free, Massage Therapy Has a Labor Problem, The Secret Health Crisis of Massage Therapists, Why Massage Therapy Needs a Divorce, Not Another Debate

...a special combination of skills that few people have. (Luckily, we have one.)

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Ways join in:

• Leave us a review on  Apple Podcasts
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• Find a copy of Rebecca Sturgeon's book: "Oncology Massage: An Integrative Approach to Cancer Care"

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Healwell is a 501(c)(3) non-profit based out of the Washington DC area.  Check us out at www.healwell.org 

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What exactly do we mean when we call ourselves “healthcare providers”?

“Healthcare provider” does not mean the same thing everywhere. Depending on the state, it might mean defined scope and enforceable accountability. It could relate to insurance participation. Maybe it means elevated liability standards.

Worst case, it might mean mostly vibes.

These variations aren’t trivial. Once the label of “healthcare provider” or “healthcare service” enters statute, it stops being branding and starts carrying weight. Or at least, it should. Across the United States, that weight is distributed unevenly.

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Ways join in:

• Leave us a review on  Apple Podcasts
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• Find a copy of Rebecca Sturgeon's book: "Oncology Massage: An Integrative Approach to Cancer Care"

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Healwell is a 501(c)(3) non-profit based out of the Washington DC area.  Check us out at www.healwell.org 

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It’s Time to Stop Going to Aunt Tricia’s

This article is a companion to this one written by Corey. These articles represent each author's independent perspective, and were written without our usual collaborative input. We are super excited about them. 

Every technical debate in massage therapy is displacement activity.

Every. Single. One.

We argue about measurement systems (clock hours vs. credit hours), terminology (but we call it taxonomy… all fancy-like). Is it bodywork or is it massage? And don’t get me started about how our knickers twist when it comes to credentialing language.

We have online arguments that last longer than some people’s actual training programs.

All of this “activity” allows us to keep evading the fundamental questions: What does this field want to be? And what will we do when we realize that, perhaps, it’s a field that actually contains more than one distinct pathway?

Read the original article here. 

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Ways join in:

• Leave us a review on  Apple Podcasts
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• Find a copy of Rebecca Sturgeon's book: "Oncology Massage: An Integrative Approach to Cancer Care"

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Why we don’t need to get along to get along.

Not all problems are created equal, and the methods that will solve one kind are very different from what you need to solve the other. Oftentimes problems are a combination of simple, complicated, or complex; or vacillate between the distinctions with time. Thinking about the features of each can help us decide how to approach them.

This article is a companion to this one written by Cal. These articles represent each author’s independent perspective, and were written without our usual collaborative input. We are super excited about them. 

Most of the information and images in this article come from the Complex Systems Framework Collection website. It’s delightful and simple, and I highly recommend you explore it.

You can read the original article here.

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Subscribe to our Substack: "More Than Hands"

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Ways join in:

• Leave us a review on  Apple Podcasts
• Check out Healwell’s live and online classes
• Continue the conversation with a free 3-day trial of the Healwell Community
• Find a copy of Rebecca Sturgeon's book: "Oncology Massage: An Integrative Approach to Cancer Care"

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Healwell is a 501(c)(3) non-profit based out of the Washington DC area.  Check us out at www.healwell.org 

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Recently several of Corey's projects have come across the same stumbling block: a lot of people believe many skills can’t be taught. This has come up in my poking around the topics of therapeutic relationships, compassion, supervision, writing, and emotional labor. 

In each of these areas, there is a pervasive fallacy that the reason a person is good at a skill is the result of a mystical innate genius. Some je ne sais quoi. Some indefinable essence. This is not only untrue, it’s a limiting perspective.

Read this article here

Support the show

Subscribe to our Substack: "More Than Hands"

Send us an email: [email protected]
Leave us a voice message:  703-468-1799

Check out our interview-style podcast: Interdisciplinary

You can support Healwell and the cool things we make by donating here!
Ways join in:

• Leave us a review on  Apple Podcasts
• Check out Healwell’s live and online classes
• Continue the conversation with a free 3-day trial of the Healwell Community
• Find a copy of Rebecca Sturgeon's book: "Oncology Massage: An Integrative Approach to Cancer Care"

Thank you to ABMP and AMTA for sponsoring us!

Healwell is a 501(c)(3) non-profit based out of the Washington DC area.  Check us out at www.healwell.org