Redefining Massage: Why “Soft-Tissue Manipulation” No Longer Describes What We Do
Introduction
For at least the past decade, I have been uncomfortable with defining massage as the manipulation of soft tissue. My concerns, however, have mostly been scientific rather than legal or definitional. I have spent far more time thinking and writing about how massage works, how pain works, and how contemporary neuroscience challenges many of the structural and mechanical explanations that have long circulated in our profession than I have thinking about the wording of massage statutes.
More recently, I have begun to wonder whether those two issues are more closely connected than I had appreciated. If our profession continues to define massage primarily as something we do to soft tissue, perhaps we should not be surprised when our explanations of massage remain centered on tissues that are tight, shortened, adhered, restricted, knotted, misaligned, or otherwise in need of correction. The definition does not create those ideas by itself, but it establishes a conceptual starting point from which they follow quite naturally.
This question is especially important to me as an educator. I have taught massage therapists for more than twenty years, including anatomy, kinesiology, pathology, massage techniques, and, more recently, the neuroscience of pain and massage therapy. I also spent more than a decade as a massage school director. Again and again, I have watched LMTs struggle to reconcile the structural explanations they learned early in their education with what they later encounter in contemporary science and research. We teach them to think about massage as something done to tissues and then, increasingly, ask them to understand an interaction involving sensation, perception, pain, expectation, context, movement, and relationship.
That has led me back to a more basic question than the ones I usually write about: What if part of the problem is the way we define massage in the first place?
Many statutes and professional documents still place soft tissue at the conceptual center of massage. Others have broadened the language by adding structured touch, movement, health, well-being, function, or pain relief. Those are important differences, and any serious proposal for change has to acknowledge them rather than caricature the existing landscape.
I explored some of the scientific and philosophical groundwork for this argument previously in What Kind of Thing Is a Massage?, particularly the idea that massage may be better understood as a sensory and relational experience than as an intervention performed upon tissues. I now think the profession is ready to take the next step and reconsider the definition itself.
What follows is my proposal for a new definition of massage:
Massage is the intentional and structured use of touch and movement to shape a person’s somatic experience.
What Does “Manipulation” Actually Tell Us?
Before rejecting the traditional definition, it is worth being fair to it. Manipulation does not necessarily mean permanently remodeling, correcting, or repairing tissue. It can simply mean skilled handling. Under that interpretation, “soft-tissue manipulation” makes a relatively modest claim: massage therapists systematically handle the soft tissues of the body.
That description is not wrong. The question is whether it identifies the most useful level at which to define massage. When I press into someone's back, I deform skin and underlying tissues. Forces propagate through the body, receptors respond, neural activity changes, and the recipient experiences pressure, movement, warmth, comfort, discomfort, pleasure, pain, or perhaps very little at all. These descriptions can all be true at once; they simply describe the event at different levels.
A definition has to decide which level is most useful for understanding the activity. Soft-tissue manipulation identifies a material that is contacted and an action performed upon it, but it says little about what makes that interaction massage. Physicians palpate abdomens, physical therapists mobilize tissues, nurses handle soft tissue during care, and many other professionals apply pressure or movement to the body. Mechanical interaction with tissue occurs in massage, but it is not unique to massage.
This is partly a question of means and ends, although the distinction should not be overstated. A useful definition can contain both. Some massage laws already combine descriptions of what practitioners physically do with statements about why they do it. Those definitions are more informative than a bare reference to “soft-tissue manipulation,” but most still organize the practice around the tissue being acted upon. I am proposing that we reconsider that conceptual center.
How Deeply Is Soft Tissue Embedded in the Definition of Massage?
A review of current massage laws across all 50 states reveals how thoroughly tissue-centered language is embedded in the profession’s legal definitions. The great majority of states explicitly use the term soft tissue or soft tissues in their definition of massage or massage therapy. Several others use different words to describe essentially the same anatomical focus. Arizona refers to the mobilization of organs and tissues beneath the dermis; Hawaii defines massage as treatment of the “superficial soft parts of the body”; Iowa refers to manipulation of muscle and connective tissue; and New York defines the practice in terms of applying a scientific system of activity to the muscular structure of the human body. Although the terminology differs, these definitions all organize massage around anatomical tissues or structures.
New Hampshire and Oregon are notable exceptions. New Hampshire defines massage as a system of “structured touch” that includes holding, pressure, positioning, and causing movement, with purposes related to health and well-being. Oregon takes a more explicitly action-based approach, defining massage through practices such as pressure, friction, stroking, tapping, kneading, vibration, and stretching, rather than by identifying soft tissue as the object being manipulated. These examples demonstrate that tissue-centered language is not necessary for a workable legal definition of massage.
The exact language varies considerably. Florida defines massage therapy as “the manipulation of the soft tissues of the human body.” California calls massage “the scientific manipulation of the soft tissues.” Nebraska refers to the physical, mechanical, or electrical “manipulation of soft tissue.” Other states have adopted somewhat broader language. Georgia describes a system of “structured touch, pressure, movement, and holding” applied to soft tissue, while Montana describes “structured touch, pressure, positioning, or holding to soft tissues.” North Carolina uses still another formulation: “systems of activity applied to the soft tissues of the human body.”
These are meaningful differences, particularly from a regulatory standpoint. But they share an underlying assumption: the thing massage is fundamentally about is tissue. Touch, pressure, movement, holding, and other techniques are actions performed on that tissue, and benefits to the person are generally described as purposes or consequences of doing so.
This is not merely a collection of old state statutes that the profession itself has moved beyond. The same orientation appears in some of our most important national professional and regulatory efforts. The Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards’ Model Massage Therapy Practice Act defines the practice around the manual application of a system of structured touch to the soft tissues (Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards [FSMTB], 2014). That language matters because the model act is specifically intended to provide guidance for state massage regulation.
The Massage Therapy Foundation has already helped move the conversation further. A major best-practices project supported by the Foundation considered whether massage could be adequately understood as soft-tissue manipulation and emphasized features such as pattern, purpose, communication, therapeutic relationship, setting, and the experience of receiving massage. The resulting 2016 paper proposed “patterned and purposeful soft-tissue manipulation” (Kennedy et al., 2016). That was a meaningful advance: it recognized that massage is more than an undifferentiated mechanical act. Yet the object remained soft tissue.
More recently, an article published by ABMP’s Massage & Bodywork argued that the profession still lacks a unified definition and examined several of these competing approaches. AMTA’s regulatory guidance, meanwhile, emphasizes that a statutory scope of practice needs to identify physical acts that are observable—a legitimate regulatory concern that becomes important when considering how any new conceptual definition could be translated into law. NCBTMB approaches the problem somewhat differently: its standards and continuing-education rules emphasize therapeutic hands-on practice and defer substantially to state law in determining the legal scope of massage.
Taken together, this history suggests that the definitional problem is not simply that a few states have retained antiquated wording. The profession has repeatedly recognized limitations in defining massage as soft-tissue manipulation, broadened the techniques, purposes, and contextual features surrounding that concept, and yet continued to leave tissue at the center. Importantly, FSMTB itself describes its model practice act as a fluid document, subject to review and modification as circumstances change. The regulatory language of massage has never been immutable.
Perhaps the next step is not to find a better way to describe what we do to soft tissue. Perhaps it is to reconsider whether soft tissue should be the object around which massage is defined in the first place.
The Boundary Problem
One way to test that possibility is to see what happens at the boundaries. Consider three examples: feather-light touch, no-contact energy work, and scratching. None, in the ordinary professional meaning of the term, requires manipulation of soft tissue. Yet our intuitions about whether they belong within massage are not necessarily the same.
Feather-light touch is the easiest case. Very light stroking or tracing of the skin can uncontroversially be part of a massage session even when the contact is too light to meaningfully manipulate the underlying soft tissues. If manipulation of soft tissue is what defines massage, this presents a problem: an activity that we readily recognize as massage can fail to satisfy the definition.
Energy work provides another useful boundary case. Consider, for example, Reiki performed without physical contact. We may or may not want practices described as energy work to fall within the professional territory of massage and bodywork. That is a question worth examining rather than assuming an answer to in advance. But no-contact Reiki clearly does not involve manipulation of soft tissue, so the traditional definition excludes it.
My proposed definition also excludes no-contact Reiki, but for a different reason. Massage, as I am defining it, requires intentional and structured touch and movement. Moving the practitioner’s hands above the recipient’s body, without physical contact or movement imparted to the recipient, does not satisfy that requirement. The exclusion therefore follows directly from what the practitioner is actually doing rather than from whether tissue has been manipulated.
Energy practices that incorporate physical touch present a more interesting case. If the physical contact itself is intentionally structured to shape the recipient’s somatic experience, then it may satisfy the proposed definition of massage. That would be true regardless of the explanatory theory the practitioner attaches to the interaction. Whether claims about energy fields or other proposed mechanisms are scientifically defensible is a separate question from whether the physical practice itself meets the definition of massage.
Then consider scratching. Scratching does not ordinarily involve what we mean professionally by manipulation of soft tissue either, and we do not ordinarily call scratching massage. But the distinction between feather-light stroking and light scratching is interesting. In both cases the practitioner can intentionally move across the surface of the recipient’s skin with extremely light pressure. One uses primarily the fingertips; the other uses the fingernails. Why should changing which part of the practitioner’s finger contacts the skin necessarily move the activity from massage to non-massage?
Again, I am not arguing that scratching must be classified as massage, any more than I am arguing that Reiki must be. These examples are useful because they force us to ask what principle actually determines inclusion and exclusion. The traditional definition gives us an unsatisfying answer. If no meaningful soft-tissue manipulation occurs, feather touch, Reiki, and scratching all appear to fall outside the definition, even though feather touch is readily accepted as part of massage and the status of the other two is at least worth examining.
Now apply the same test to the definition I am proposing:
Massage is the intentional and structured use of touch and movement to shape a person’s somatic experience.
The results are more coherent. Feather-light touch is included because it is intentional, structured touch used to shape the recipient’s bodily experience. No claim about tissue manipulation is needed to explain why it belongs.
No-contact Reiki is excluded because there is no touch or movement applied to the recipient. That does not imply that Reiki is ineffective, illegitimate, or without value; it simply means that it does not meet this definition of massage. Reiki performed with physical contact becomes a more interesting boundary case, and its inclusion would depend on whether that contact itself is being intentionally structured as part of the practice.
Scratching, on the other hand, can be included. If scratching is intentionally and systematically organized to shape the recipient’s bodily experience—its location, pressure, speed, rhythm, duration, sequence, and intensity deliberately varied—then it satisfies the proposed definition. A casual scratch of someone’s back would not necessarily be massage, just as briefly rubbing someone’s shoulder does not necessarily constitute a massage session. But a structured scratching practice could.
That conclusion may initially sound strange because scratching is not something our profession has traditionally categorized as massage. But consider the alternative. If feather-light touch with the pads of the fingers can be massage, it is difficult to identify a principled reason why similarly light, structured touch with the fingernails must be excluded. Perhaps there is such a reason. If so, we should be able to articulate it rather than relying on convention.
This is one place where I think the proposed definition performs better than “soft-tissue manipulation.” It comfortably includes feather-light touch without pretending that tissue has been meaningfully manipulated. It provides a clear reason for excluding no-contact energy work, such as Reiki performed without physical contact: massage requires physical touch or movement. And it allows scratching when scratching actually takes the form of intentional, structured touch directed toward the recipient’s somatic experience. In each case, the boundary follows from the principle expressed in the definition rather than from trying to stretch the meaning of “soft-tissue manipulation” to accommodate practices we already happen to call massage.
None of this means that a single sentence can establish the legal scope of massage therapy. Physical therapists, chiropractors, physicians, athletic trainers, and other professionals can perform forms of structured touch and movement that shape somatic experience without thereby practicing massage therapy. Statutes will still require exclusions, exemptions, protected titles, training requirements, prohibited acts, and rules governing overlap with other professions. But before drawing those regulatory boundaries, we should have a definition that gives us a coherent principle around which to draw them.
What the Science Can—and Cannot—Tell Us
The case for redefining massage should not depend on proving that mechanical effects are unimportant. That would make the definition vulnerable to the next mechanistic discovery. Contemporary research instead supports a more modest conclusion: massage is a complex biological interaction for which no single mechanism provides an adequate definition.
A 2025 living review synthesized 62 reviews of manual-therapy mechanisms across biomechanical, neurological, neurovascular, neuroendocrine, neuromuscular, neuroimmune, and other domains. The biomechanical evidence came from reviews rated critically low in methodological quality, while several other domains had stronger support; the authors also emphasized uncertainty about the clinical importance of many observed mechanisms (Keter et al., 2025). A 2026 systematic review of 25 studies and 617 participants found no consistent acute change in muscle, tendon, or muscle-tendon-unit stiffness after massage techniques, although most included studies examined self-massage and stiffness is only one mechanical property (Löbell et al., 2026).
These findings should not be turned into the claim that massage does not affect tissues. Mechanical deformation is inseparable from touch, and mechanical events can become sensory and physiological events through transduction and subsequent biological responses. The more durable point is that the definition of massage should not depend on a particular theory of mechanism. If tomorrow's research establishes an important connective-tissue, vascular, immune, or neural mechanism, that finding should enrich the science of massage without requiring us to redefine massage itself.
Massage as an Organized Sensory Interaction
Consider an ordinary stroke along the back. It can be described mechanically as force applied to tissue, but it is also an organized stream of sensory information. A similar pressure can feel satisfying to one person and unpleasant to another. The same person may respond differently depending on pain, fatigue, expectation, familiarity, perceived control, or what occurred earlier that day. Changing speed, rhythm, location, or duration can change the experience without requiring a claim that a particular tissue has been corrected.
Touch has discriminative and affective dimensions, and research on affective touch has illuminated some of the pathways through which gentle stroking acquires emotional significance. Those findings are relevant but should not become a replacement mythology. Typical massage also involves deeper pressure, movement, proprioception, nociception, interoception, attention, expectation, and context. Massage is not reducible to a receptor class any more than it is reducible to fascia.
What distinguishes massage, I suggest, is the organization of the interaction. A therapist deliberately selects and adapts variables such as contact location, pressure, movement, speed, rhythm, duration, sequence, positioning, and stillness. “Structured” does not require a predetermined routine. It means that the contact is deliberately organized rather than incidental.
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Why Somatic Experience?
Of all the language in the proposed definition, somatic experience may deserve the most scrutiny. If the goal is to describe massage in terms of how touch and movement affect the person rather than what they supposedly do to tissues, perhaps more established neuroscientific language would be preferable. One possibility would be:
Massage is the intentional and structured use of touch and movement to shape a person’s interoceptive and proprioceptive states.
There is a strong argument for this version. Interoception concerns the sensing and integration of signals related to the internal condition of the body and contributes to bodily feeling, affect, autonomic regulation, and pain. Proprioception concerns the sense of body position and movement. Massage can clearly provide information relevant to both. Pressure, movement, stretching, positioning, rocking, and passive movement can change what a person is sensing about their body and how that body feels.
Together, interoception and proprioception capture much more of massage than interoception alone. But they still do not capture all of it.
The most obvious omission is touch itself. When a therapist slowly glides a hand across someone’s back, the recipient is receiving tactile information about contact at the skin. When the therapist moves an arm, proprioceptive information about position and movement becomes especially important. Pressure, temperature, nociception, and signals related to the body’s internal condition may contribute in different proportions at different moments. All of these streams of information are integrated with attention, expectation, emotion, memory, and context to produce the person’s experience of what is happening.
We could keep adding terms. We might describe massage as shaping interoceptive, proprioceptive, tactile, nociceptive, and perhaps affective states. That would be more anatomically and physiologically explicit, but I am not sure it would give us a better definition. At some point, listing the sensory systems involved begins to confuse the mechanisms contributing to an experience with the level of experience we are actually trying to describe.
That is why I prefer somatic experience. By this I mean the person’s experience of their body and bodily state: touch, pressure, position, movement, effort, temperature, tension, ease, comfort, discomfort, pleasure, pain, and the more diffuse sense of how one’s body feels at a particular moment. Interoception and proprioception contribute to somatic experience, as do tactile and nociceptive processes, but none has to stand in for the whole.
There is also an important difference in the level of description. Interoception and proprioception name sensory processes or domains that contribute to bodily experience. Somatic experience names the integrated experience of the person receiving the massage. The distinction matters because I am not proposing that massage be defined by a particular sensory mechanism. I am proposing that massage be understood as an organized interaction with a person’s embodied experience.
This also makes the definition more durable. Our scientific understanding of interoception, proprioception, affective touch, pain, and multisensory integration will continue to change. A definition tied to a particular collection of sensory systems could require revision as that science develops. Somatic experience leaves room for those mechanisms to be investigated without making any one of them definitional.
For those reasons, I currently prefer:
Massage is the intentional and structured use of touch and movement to shape a person’s somatic experience.
The alternative would be:
Massage is the intentional and structured use of touch and movement to shape a person’s interoceptive and proprioceptive states.
The latter may be useful language for explaining some of the neuroscience of massage. The former better describes the level at which I think massage itself should be defined.
What About Function and Physiological Outcomes?
Massage is often used in pursuit of outcomes that are not purely experiential. Lymphatic techniques may be used for edema, sports massage for recovery or performance, scar work for mobility, and infant massage has been studied using outcomes such as weight gain. These examples do not require every possible hoped-for effect to be placed inside the definition.
The purpose for which someone uses an activity is not always the feature that makes the activity what it is. People run for fitness, competition, anxiety reduction, transportation, or pleasure, yet those purposes do not define running. Similarly, researchers can study whether massage affects pain, anxiety, sleep, range of motion, edema, recovery, physiology, or function without turning each outcome into a criterion for deciding whether the intervention was massage.
Current outcome research also counsels humility. A recent meta-analysis in cancer populations reported improvements in pain, anxiety, and quality of life, but rated the certainty of all outcomes very low (Myint et al., 2025). Massage research often measures experiential outcomes because those outcomes matter to patients; that does not establish that experience is the only domain in which massage can have effects.
Is This Just Placebo?
An experience-centered definition will invite the claim that massage has been reduced to placebo or “nonspecific effects.” That objection relies on a distinction that is less useful than it first appears. Expectations, attention, learning, meaning, perceived safety, and interpersonal context can influence both experience and physiology. They are part of the conditions under which an intervention occurs.
This does not make technique irrelevant. Pressure, movement, duration, location, and timing are properties of the physical intervention. Context changes how those inputs are processed; it does not erase them. The scientific task is to determine how features of the intervention, recipient, and context interact, rather than deciding in advance that only one class of effects is real.
From Conceptual Definition to Practice Act
If this proposal is to matter, it cannot stop at philosophy. I want it to become a starting point for states reconsidering the legal definition of massage.
A statute, however, has jobs that a conceptual definition does not. It must identify observable acts, establish who may practice under a protected title, distinguish massage from neighboring licensed professions, define prohibited conduct, and specify exemptions. AMTA describes scope of practice as the legal definition of the procedures, actions, and processes unique to massage therapy. FSMTB's model act likewise surrounds its core definition with inclusions, exclusions, qualifications, and disciplinary provisions.
There is useful precedent for combining observable acts with a less directly observable purpose. Florida’s cosmetology statute, for example, identifies observable means such as mechanical or chemical treatment while also distinguishing cosmetology according to its aesthetic rather than medical purpose. A massage statute could be constructed similarly. The observable acts would be structured forms of touch and movement—pressure, stroking, holding, rocking, stretching, passive movement, and related methods—while shaping somatic experience would identify the purpose around which those acts are organized. A regulator would no more need to observe somatic experience directly than a cosmetology inspector needs to observe “aesthetic purpose” as a physical event.
This still would not make the conceptual definition a complete scope of practice. Yoga, assisted stretching, Feldenkrais, physical therapy, chiropractic, and other practices can overlap with massage in their use of touch, movement, or their effects on bodily experience. The existing definition of massage as soft-tissue manipulation has the same problem: professionals outside massage routinely manipulate soft tissue. The legal boundary therefore cannot come from a single defining sentence. It must emerge from the definition together with the statute’s enumerated acts, exclusions, exemptions, protected titles, training requirements, and other scope provisions. The proposed definition is intended to provide the conceptual center around which those observable legal boundaries can be constructed.
The appropriate path is therefore not to abandon the conceptual definition when legislation begins, but to translate it. A modern statute could define massage around intentional, structured touch and movement while separately enumerating recognizable massage methods and permitted adjuncts. It could exclude diagnosis, invasive procedures, high-velocity joint manipulation, sexual activity, and acts reserved to other licensed professions. It could also create explicit exemptions for practices a state decides should remain outside massage regulation.
This matters because the current statutory landscape already demonstrates that there is no single inevitable legal formulation. Pennsylvania regulates structured touch and lists lymphatic and myofascial techniques while excluding physical-therapy and chiropractic adjustment. Georgia uses structured touch and explicitly excludes several modalities and acts. FSMTB created its Model Practice Act precisely to assist states with statutory language and says the document should evolve. A profession-wide reconsideration of the definition can therefore lead to concrete legislative language rather than ending as an academic exercise.
Definitions Teach
Why should this matter to the therapist working tomorrow morning? Because professional language helps establish which explanations and questions seem natural, even though definitions are only one influence among many.
I do not know of evidence showing that the wording of a massage statute causes students to develop structural beliefs, and I would not claim it. The way we understand a problem inevitably influences the questions we ask, the explanations we offer, and the choices we make about what to do. It is therefore reasonable to ask what conceptual model massage education places before students from the beginning.
If students are told that massage is the manipulation of soft tissue, it is unsurprising that they look for tissue requiring manipulation. If massage is instead introduced as a structured use of touch and movement directed toward embodied experience, anatomy remains important, but it no longer has to carry the entire explanatory burden. Neuroscience, pain science, communication, consent, perception, context, and therapeutic relationship become part of the foundation rather than supplements to the “real” work on tissues.
This also gives massage a useful degree of theory neutrality. Swedish massage, lomilomi, Thai massage, shiatsu, tuina, structural integration, and other traditions emerged from very different explanatory systems. A contemporary definition should be capable of describing observable practice without requiring the profession to endorse every historical theory used to explain it.
A Starting Point for Change
Changing a definition will not modernize massage therapy by itself. It will not settle every scope dispute, eliminate unsupported claims, or tell a therapist which technique to use. What it can do is change the starting assumption.
A tissue-centered definition naturally directs attention toward tissue. An experience-centered definition begins with the person while leaving room to investigate mechanical, neural, vascular, immune, psychological, interpersonal, and contextual processes. It allows technique to remain technically demanding without requiring speculative claims about what has been “released,” “lengthened,” or “put back.” It also gives regulators a conceptual basis from which more precise statutory scopes can be written.
The proposal should therefore be judged by a practical question: does it give the profession a more coherent, scientifically durable, and useful starting point than soft-tissue manipulation?
I believe it does. Massage involves tissues, but the defining interaction is between people and bodies that sense, respond, move, and experience. That is where I think the profession—and eventually its laws—should begin.
References
References
American Massage Therapy Association. (n.d.). Elements of a massage therapy practice act. https://www.amtamassage.org/advocacy/initiatives/state/elements-massage-therapy-practice-act/
American Massage Therapy Association. (n.d.). Why we need massage therapy regulation & licensing. https://www.amtamassage.org/state-regulations/why-we-need-massage-therapy-regulation-licensing/
Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards. (2014). Model massage therapy practice act. https://fsmtb.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/model_massage_therapy_practice_act.pdf
Kennedy, A. B., Cambron, J. A., Sharpe, P. A., Travillian, R. S., & Saunders, R. P. (2016). Clarifying definitions for the massage therapy profession: The results of the Best Practices Symposium. International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork, 9(3), 15–26. https://doi.org/10.3822/ijtmb.v9i3.312
Keter, D. L., Bialosky, J. E., Brochetti, K., Courtney, C. A., Funabashi, M., Karas, S., Learman, K., & Cook, C. E. (2025). The mechanisms of manual therapy: A living review of systematic, narrative, and scoping reviews. PLOS ONE, 20(3), e0319586. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0319586
Löbell, R., Glänzel, M. H., Prates, I. M., Petter, G. do N., Marqueti, R. de C., Oliveira, R. R. de, & Geremia, J. M. (2026). Short-term effectiveness of massage techniques on myotendinous structures’ stiffness: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Research in Sports Medicine, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1080/15438627.2026.2697196
Myint, O. W., Yoong, S. Q., Toh, E., Lei, F., & Jiang, Y. (2025). Effectiveness of massage therapy for cancer pain, quality of life and anxiety levels: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 34(1), 49–87. https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.17547
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health. (2019, May). Massage therapy: What you need to know. National Institutes of Health. https://www.nccih.nih.gov/health/massage-therapy-what-you-need-to-know
Massage Therapy Act, 1991, S.O. 1991, c. 27, § 3 (Ontario). https://www.ontario.ca/laws/statute/91m27
49 Pa. Code § 20.41 (2026). https://www.pacodeandbulletin.gov/Display/pacode?file=/secure/pacode/data/049/chapter20/s20.41.html
Author
Dr. Mark Olson, Ph.D., LMT, is a neuroscientist, educator, and massage therapist with more than 25 years of experience in the profession. He holds an M.A. in Education and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from the University of Illinois, with training in cognitive and behavioral neuropsychology and neuroanatomy. He is the Education Director at the Sarasota School of Massage Therapy and previously served for more than a decade as director of the Pacific Center for Awareness and Bodywork in Hawaii. His work focuses on pain science, the neuroscience of massage and bodywork, trauma-informed care, and bringing contemporary science into massage therapy education. He is also a NARM® practitioner and develops continuing-education courses for massage therapists and other health professionals through Dr-Olson.com.
