The Alliance for Massage Therapy Education has just been launched.  This organization has been established “to serve as an independent voice and advocate for the entire education sector”.  This alliance will be structured as a non-profit organization governed by a board of directors elected from within the membership.

The organization will include 3 components to govern the education process:

• School Network - For Institutions
• Teachers Network - For Teachers within the institutions
• Continuing Education Network - For Providers of Post Graduate Training. HealthPositive! is a good example.

The Alliance will offer a range of services for its members,  including alliance advocacy when navigating the issues of state and federal regulatory requirements, accreditation, and teacher education requirements.

Before this alliance was established, all matters associated with massage therapy education were governed by an independent Council Of Schools created 25 years ago by a group of massage school owners.

In 1999, the COS made the decision to be governed by the AMTA. In January 2009 during the annual AMTA COS meeting, school members adopted a motion that would begin the separation process from the AMTA, re-establishing an independent education program that will represent the interest of its members in all areas of the education process.

A leadership team has been formed consisting of 5 veteran massage therapy educators who will be responsible for the initial start up phase of the Alliance For Massage Therapy Education.

Each leadership team member has multiple years of experience in the massage education field and each member has been involved with the COS.

The leadership team includes:

• Iris Burman, LMT
• Stan Dawson, DC
• Rick Rosen, MA, LMBT
• Demara Stamler, CMT
• Pete Whitridge, LMT

In the upcoming months the leadership team will be preparing the new home of this alliance in Washington, DC.

The first meeting in 2010 will include a membership recruitment campaign informing the massage therapy community about the new alliance that is no longer affiliated with the AMTA and the ABMP, alliance by-laws will be ratified and the very first board of directors will be elected.

Author
Punkie Spelts is a Massage Therapist living in Southern California. She is also a Web Publisher and writes extensively for multiple web sites like HealthPositive!, cureyourbody.com and many other research sites including her own massage therapy site at www.punkiespelts.com.

It can be difficult to find a store front that can supply  the specific things we need.

We also have, right at our finger tips, the ability to stay educated and up to date on multiple issues concerning massage. The best resources I have found on the Internet have been suggested to me by other therapist’s.

My top seven are,

Association Bodywork & Massage Professionals:  This site is best described by the site itself when it says,
“Serving the massage therapy community through practice support, ethical standards, legislative advocacy, and public education”.  They offer all of these things and more.

The second resource is similar but again offers choice.  I like having multiple places to choose any resource from, this gives me the ability to choose exactly what is best for me.

The American Massage Therapy Association offers  the same as the ABMP and they both give you the option of receiving updates on the current issues in massage.

These sites both offer insurance coverage for Massage Therapist’s.

This brings me to our third resource, the Centers for Disease Control.

This is a resource that will prove to be invaluable to you.  We all need to stay up to date on any communicable diseases that can affect us as Therapist’s .  We are seeing a lot of information coming from the CDC just today informing us about the Swine Flu and the precautions we need to take this upcoming Fall.  We can use this resource not only for our benefit but also for our clients.

The more we know the better our care can be for our clients, we can also share that education with each client.

The fourth and fifth resources are less educational and more for your information.  I have found that the more you can save on your equipment and supplies the better you feel about each purchase.

Massage King is an excellent supplier that offers everything from equipment to supplies and all things in between for competitive prices. It  is a one stop shopping resource.  I have ordered from them myself and found there service to be impeccable.

We have touched on education and supplies,  this resource you may already have  bookmarked in your favorites but it is worth mentioning.

half.com is a resource for books, music, movies and even video games, an affiliate of Ebay that offers great prices on the books and music we may need. I have a large collection of music but find that every client has a very specific choice when it comes to their massage music, which requires me to supply a large selection to choose from.

We can use more web resources like this.  In a quest to be  greener and leave a smaller carbon foot print, we can work more toward sustainable living by recycling and half.com offers a way to purchase used items at great prices.

In the hopes of keeping Massage Therapy viewed as legitimate and professional I would like to encourage more sites like this,

Massage and Bodywork Professionals is a site that makes it easy for Massage Therapist to find one another and communicate about the issues and victories seen in Massage Therapy today.

Last, but certainly not least is HealthPositive!.  This is a resource that could become invaluable to you as well.  Continuing Education is always something that we as Massage Therapist are thinking about.  This is a reputable site that is celebrating 11 years as an NCBTMB Approved CE Provider.

HealthPositive! offers great affordable prices for continuing education and you can rest assured that the information you receive is trustworthy.

With the ever changing landscape of Massage, it is nice to have a resource that has stood the test of time. This is a small list of all that is available to you, if you have any suggestions of sites you find and want to share, you can leave a comment and others will have more resources to choose from.

Author
Punkie Spelts is a Massage Therapist living in Southern California. She is also a Web Publisher and writes extensively for multiple web sites like HealthPositive!, cureyourbody.com and many other research sites including her own at www.punkiespelts.com.