The SMA (The Association for Soft Tissue Therapists) recently emailed their members to inform them that from now on, the level 3 qualification will not be accepted for full memberships.  It's fair to say the response has been mixed - "how dare they?", "who cares?", "does this even help improve the industry?" - all questions we've seen be asked in response. 

Naturally we invited the SMA to come and speak with us on the podcast, but with the invitation politely declined The Massage Collective instead provide their views on the issue. Perhaps instead of punishing the therapists,  we aught to be taking a much closer look at how fit for purpose the educators and their syllabuses are...

This Podcast is part of the PhysioMatters Network

Bronnie Lennox Thompson initially trained as an occupational therapist, graduating 1984, and later completed her Psychology MSc in 1999.  In 2015 Bronnie was awarded her PhD.

Bronnie has worked in pain management for most of her clinical career, with her primary focus on pain management at work. She has practiced in a huge variety of interdisciplinary pain management programmes, and her main interest areas include pain and anxiety, motivation for self-management, resilience and daily coping choices.

So we couldn't really not have her on right?!  Having just recorded a wonderful CPD course with her, Anna Maria and Matt found ourselves heading deep into conversation, late into the night, and just had to turn it into a podcast.  We cover a huge range of topics, from UK Massage Therapy Education to Clinical Communication Skills and even Matt's mood lighting that he had on during recording...it's all there!

For more on Bronnie please do visit her incredible blog - https://healthskills.wordpress.com/ and in particular her courses, she's just awesome!

The NICE Guidelines for Chronic Primary Pain were released on April 7th and it's fair to say that, as usual, there's much to discuss.  So that's what Matt & Becky have done, diving into the detail and its relevance to Massage Therapists covering the good, the bad, and the ice cream.  Ice cream?!  Yep, there's an analogy there...

Exercise for pain relief.  It's a thing, even if it's hard to convince your clients that's the case.  So what is leading to this analgesia when we exercise, how much do we need to do in order to benefit from its pain relieving effects and how do we explain it to clients in order to increase compliance?  For Session 14 we thought we'd call on a chap who is literally writing the book on this, Daniel Lawrence.  We discuss Daniel's book whilst diving into specific chapters, segue into "Long Covid" and pop back out the other side with a reference to Scrubs.  A normal Massage Collective podcast then.  Daniel is a Physiotherapist with a huge background in MSK including 10 years as a university lecturer, being an accomplished author and both sitting on the board and being lead educator for RockTape UK.  You can find out more about Daniel's latest course, Exercise for Pain Relief here - https://rocktapeukonline.teachable.com/p/exercise-for-pain-relief-part-1

The Massage Matters Team once again took the stage LIVE at TherapyLive Pelvic Health and smashed it out of the park talking all about manual therapies during and post pregnancy. So much ground covered with so much left to cover too! 

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Despite us often struggling to pronounce them, it's incredibly important that massage therapists are able to recognise the red flags associated rheumatological conditions, and then understand how best to support a client who has received a diagnosis. Today Jack March (https://rheumatology.physio/) joins us to explore the Do's and Don't's of manual therapy in these conditions, educate us on some of the misunderstandings frequently encountered by massage therapists, and, most importantly, correct our pronunciation!

Jack is exploring this deeper in a special 3-hour webinar for The School (https://www.thestschool.co.uk/) on April 28th 2021 - tickets are available here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/141885165349

Jamie Johnston, RMT in Victoria, Canada, creator of The Massage Therapist Development Centre (https://themtdc.com/), advocate for evidence informed practice in massage and ice hockey obsessive, joins The Massage Collective for this wide ranging episode.  

In it we discuss Jamie's background that brought him to studying Massage having never received one himself, the importance of narratives, the crucial role of graded exposure in the rehabilitation of painful conditions, and why international collaboration is so important in helping massage therapy achieve the recognition it deserves.  

You can find out more about Jamie, the courses he teaches and his membership group by visiting https://themtdc.com/ and signing up to the mailing list  Jamie has also launched his own podcast in collaboration with Eric Purves which we urge you to listen to here: https://themtdc.com/podcast-client-community-and-clinician/

We love a good rabbit hole to dive down and discuss!  After running a course recently (with our tutoring hats) the feedback really got us to thinking about definitions around Scopes of Practice and Skillsets of Massage Therapists.  So join us as we start this inevitably haphazard series of discussions with our first, on Recognising Red Flags.

With massage therapists being told not to work in Lockdown 3.0, The Massage Collective get a bit deep discussing what it means to be regarded as a "non-essential" service, touching on our role in helping people thrive, industry qualifications, the regulation question and professional associations....

In the last 20 years our understanding of pain science has moved on leaps and bounds, how can we ensure that we maximise this knowledge and put it into practice to best serve our clients in pain?   

Eric Purves, MSc, RMT, has dedicated his career to translating research and evidence into his clinical practice as a registered massage therapist and as an educator.  Today he joins The Massage Collective to discuss his background in psychology, being less wrong, touching people nicely and vomiting pain science...  

Eric is running his online course; Clinical Applications of Pain Science for Massage Therapists for UK based therapists on 9th March 2021 - https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/133851901641

This podcast is part of the Physio Matters Network