The Rub: a podcast about massage therapy

Send us Fan Mail

As I walk I see many things. I regularly come across encampments of people who have something a bit better than what “was” but which is still shy of what I imagine is possible. They smile and wave and tell me I can stop because they’ve done it. It’s good here. They’ve achieved it. “Don’t make it so hard,” they tell me. I see them and believe that they have, perhaps, reached the place where they want to and can rest. And I like being with them

I haven’t reached that place, so we share a snack and I keep going. Oh sure, I am sometimes stymied by freak snow storms, laid low for a few days by rotten food, or waylaid by a bridge that’s out but I also find beautiful flowers and cold, trickling streams. I am surprised by rainbows and gorgeous sunrises that refuel me.

And I keep going.

I keep going because I know what has historically happened when people who imagine that things can be different and better set out to find or create the “better.”

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 

Send us Fan Mail

I don’t usually write about hope, because it is not a strategy and strategy is my jam. Like Pandora, I keep a lid on my hope.

Article Footnotes:

1
The nice thing about myths is that you can read them any way you like. There is a lot of disagreement about Pandora, why Hope was at the bottom of the box, and why she closed the lid to keep it there. My read is that Hope is the thing you hang onto while all the evils that escaped the box fly around your head.

2
Ten principles for thinking about the future: a primer for environmental professionals (PDF)

3
Cooking videos on youtube show me how to talk to beginners. People who have been doing the job for four days or forty years give me an ever growing picture of the pockets of the profession I wouldn’t otherwise see. Books about AI deployment give me an insight into people who don’t do the work, but do control how the rest of us work.

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 

Send us Fan Mail

Don't let them bring you down.

If you have spent even a year or two in this profession, I bet you have felt a familiar, exhausting sense of déjà vu. We keep having the same arguments about entry-level education, whether we belong in hospitals or high-end spas. We argue about franchise pay and work conditions, the definition of “professionalism,” and we wonder vaguely (but never actually measure or study!) what might be behind the staggering rate of early-career burnout.

Our struggles as massage therapists do not stem from a lack of trying. They stem from an inability and an unwillingness to look at the size of the problem and all of its unseemly tentacles.

We are living and working inside a wicked problem and wicked problems will never be solved by effort alone.

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 

Send us Fan Mail

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

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 

Send us Fan Mail

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

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 

Send us Fan Mail

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.

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 

Send us Fan Mail

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:

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 

Send us Fan Mail

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.

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 

Send us Fan Mail

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.)

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 

Send us Fan Mail

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.

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