The Thinking Practitioner Podcast:

Episode 156: Lessons from 50 Years (with Benny Vaughn)

Whitney Lowe  

Welcome to the Thinking Practitioner podcast, 

Til Luchau  

a podcast where we dig into the fascinating issues, conditions and quandaries in the massage and manual therapy world today. 

Whitney Lowe  

I'm Whitney Lowe 

Til Luchau  

And I'm Til Luchau. Welcome to the Thinking Practitioner

Whitney Lowe  

And welcome to the Thinking Practitioner podcast, where Books of Discovery has been a part of the massage therapy and bodywork world for over 25 years. Nearly 3000 schools around the globe teach with their textbooks, e textbooks and digital resources. Books of Discovery likes to say that "learning adventures start here", and they find that same spirit here on the Thinking Practitioner podcast, and are proud to support our work, knowing that we share the mission of bringing the massage and bodywork community thought provoking and enlivening content that enhances our profession. Instructors of manual therapy education programs can request complimentary copies of books of discoveries, textbooks to review for use in their programs. And listeners can explore their collection of learning resources for anatomy, pathology, kinesiology, physiology, ethics and business mastery at booksofdiscovery.com where you as a Thinking Practitioner listener, can save 15% by entering "thinking" at checkout. Welcome everyone to Thinking Practitioner, and I'm absolutely delighted to be joined today by my good friend and colleague, Benny Vaughn, who's been on the podcast before, and we're so happy to have him back here with us again. Welcome Benny again to Thinking Practitioner.

Speaker 1  

Thank you, Whitney Lowe, and I am thrilled to be here with you, because I remember vividly when I met you in the 80s, you attended a sports massage workshop, weekend workshop that I was teaching at the then Atlanta School of Massage, and you were enrolled In it, Yap and and that's when the association the mentoring and the whole aspect of our relationship began, yeah, so I am thrilled to be here. Great.

Whitney Lowe  

Well, great to have you here again. We're going to dive into some of that stuff going back historically a little bit, because that is our theme today actually, is history, because it is, is this fall, right? Is our? Is there a celebration time period? Timeframe? Is it or when is our? 

Benny Vaughn  

Yes, I can give you the exact date. And I celebrated that on September 20, 2025, And I celebrated 50 years in Tokyo, Japan, all right fit and actually, actually lecturing to a group of Japanese students at the Tokyo Ariake University of Medical and Health sciences. That's how I celebrate it 50 years. That's awesome. Yeah. So for those of you that weren't aware, this is 50 Years Benny has been in the massage profession, and so today, our theme is kind of like looking back over half a century of massage for you personally, as well as some of the things you have, you know, done so many things across the field, in different positions and things. I want to just highlight and look at some of those things and see, you know, get a sort of a retrospective of that time period as well. But for those that aren't aware of some of the origin story, and I always love hearing this origin story from you, but tell us a little bit about how you got started in massage. And maybe also for those people who might be relatively new to massage, a little bit of the context of massage in 1975. 

Speaker 1  

So I got involved in massage therapy, Whitney, because of my participation in track and field. So I came out of high school in the state of Georgia. I graduated in 1969 and I had become and earned the status of five star recruit, blue chip recruit and track in high school in the state of Georgia, and I signed a full scholarship athletic scholarship to enter the University of Florida in the first wave of athletes of color being recruited into the Southeastern Conference, into Southeastern Conference sports. So to give you a perspective, in 1969 The University of Alabama recruited one black athlete to play football. Auburn University had one in. Black athlete on the basketball team, and this is just to give you a perspective. University of Florida had a total of five, two on the gator football team and three on track and field, and I was one of those three that were recruited to begin the integration process into Southeastern Conference sports. It was during that time of running that I read an article in track and field news about how European runners utilized massage therapy as part of their recovery and also a performance enhancement. And if you recover well, you're able to perform well and perform better. I was just very curious about this idea of using your hands that could make a difference in your recovery from running, yeah. So I enrolled in massage school in in Florida.

Whitney Lowe  

And I always, I have to kind of bring this up, because I know just this, this idea, this was kind of, for you, a bit of a culture shock, right to and we know what massage was like in the 1970s probably down in Florida, it was probably a bit different than what you were were used to in a cultural perspective.

Speaker 1  

So I came from a very conservative African-American background in the Deep South, living under Jim Crow laws. You know, America's version of apartheid, and most of the people enrolled in massage school in the 70s would be categorized as hippies or New Agers. Yeah, this was very new to me, the concept of vegetarianism I'd never heard of before. I learned what tofu was. I had no idea what tofu was, carrot dogs instead of hot dogs. This was, this was a lot of tie dye T shirts, right? A lot of people with long hair. And this was just, yeah, this was very new to me.

Whitney Lowe  

How are you? How are you received by your classmates? Because you obviously were coming from kind of a different perspective. Was, were they curious? Like, what got you here?

Speaker 1  

I think the curiosity level was quite high on two notes. One, there weren't many black folk in massage therapy that I could see or that I knew of. The first AMTA convention I ever went to, the American Massage Therapy Association. There are only a handful of black folks there, and they were from, you know, like New York and Chicago. It was just a handful. It may have been maybe five. And so I think the curiosity of my classmates was a, here's a black man wanting to learn massage. And B, why? And like, how does that work? And the curiosity revolved around what I believe, that touch was a vehicle for enhancing human performance, not just on a track or football field or on a bicycle, but just performing on a planet with gravity, just moving. So I was very fascinated with that. So most of my classmates, they were just curious on both levels, like, wow. Like, what's it like in the black community, this idea of massage and Wow? What's it like being a high level elite athlete? Like, what's that like? And I was, I was very, very open to, oh my goodness, like, the things that I heard about nutritionally I had never heard of before. Yeah, I just said, I didn't even know what this meant. What do you mean fasting and and what do you mean juicing and just all these things. But I was very, very interested in these concepts that revolved around massage therapy. Massage therapy was a hub for new ways of thinking. About nutrition. It was a hub for new ways of thinking about health and well being. It was. It was a hub for attracting new research about the benefits of sunlight and walking barefoot and drinking clean water, all these things that I had lived but didn't know that this was, you know, new age, because the first part of my life, I grew up on a sharecroppers farm in Smithville, Georgia that did not have indoor plumbing or electricity, yeah. And so I learned later that we have been eating organically all along, that we have been recycling all along, yeah. And so what I learned is that poor people have been doing this all along. Yeah, we never Whitney. We never use pesticides on our crops or our gardens because we could not afford it, yeah. And so now we find out, like, oh, wow, that was actually a pretty good thing. Yes, you didn't use pesticides. So yes, that was pretty cool.

Whitney Lowe  

So tell me a little bit about like you had this dream or vision of massage being integrated into the sports world, then you go to massage school. How? Yeah, and we all know now at this point, you have become such a tremendous icon in the world of massage and sport. How did that sort of evolve? Did you you know what got you back into that whole massage and sports thing?

Speaker 1  

What got me into that at the very beginning was because of my participation in sports. And so my participation, my participation in sports. Revolved around, what do you do to prepare to get the most out of your training and the most out of your ultimate performance because of the training and what I began to realize is that it revolved around recovery, recovery from hard training sessions, recovery from from hard strength training, and also recovery from the mental stress of being a high level athlete. And what I read in massage books at the time, and there are only a few, is that there was a relaxation response that was part of massage, that was part of touch. So I just put two and two together and thought, Wow, if I could have an athlete that had higher levels of relaxation and recovery, slept better and their muscles felt better, they would actually perform better. So with that in mind, I return to school to earn a degree in Health Science Education, with Specialist Certification in health promotion and wellness, and to get my athletic trainers board certification to work in sports medicine, because I thought This would be an avenue where I could introduce these thoughts I have about massage being integrated into sports performance care, yeah, as an athletic trainer, yeah. And that, you know, for those that may not be aware, it has become a tremendous model that a lot of people have emulated since that time, but you just were such an incredible pioneer in getting that started. And I would imagine earning your ATC or athletic training certification was a big factor of getting a foot in the door with with many of these organizations and institutions. It really was Whitney. It was a big part of getting in the door, because my message, once I got in the door, hadn't changed. Yeah, it was the same message that I've been giving, but now I look like one of them, yeah, you know, speaking metaphorically, and so now they were actually listening to what I had to say, right? And so we implemented that model at the University of Florida Athletic Association first, and then other SEC schools contacted us in. And asked, How did you set that up, and how did that work and and in the end, all these years later, I believe that that move that I made at the University of Florida has created many, many job opportunities for licensed massage therapists across the United States working with college and pro sports teams now. And as you said earlier, it's it's a normal thing now, yeah, for a pro team to say, Oh yeah, we've got massage therapists here. And I mean Major League Baseball, the NBA, the NFL. I mean it's a normal thing, a National Hockey League. I mean, all the pro sports that that I interact with, they all have massage therapists on staff, or they contract with massage therapists. So it created many, many job opportunities. 

Whitney Lowe  

And I think you know, certainly as a profession, we owe you a tremendous thanks of gratitude for opening those doors for so many people and for advancing the profession a tremendous amount over that period of time as well. Yes, so my pleasure for my profession, yeah, so I want to look back again over the 50 years, and sort of look at this from both the personal perspective and also the professional perspective. What would you say have been some of the biggest personal challenges for you over that time period. And also, what do you think have been some of our biggest struggles or challenges as a profession during that time period,

Speaker 1  

My personal challenges, and I encounter it less and less now, and by the way, Whitney, for you know our listeners, I've already done three massages today before this interview. So I am a working massage therapist. I'm not just someone who got a license, and I just travel around and, you know, lecture or talk to people. Now I still work as a massage therapist, yeah, so I've already had three clients before I got to this interview. So I just want you know, the listeners, the viewers, to know that I'm a working massage therapist. Yeah. And so getting back to the challenges. So the challenge that I saw the most was the mindset of many in the public about a person of color being a massage therapist, being an extraordinary massage therapist. So in the early days, when a person would arrive for their massage therapy session, not knowing what I look like, would often have a a look of either amazement, surprise or confidence, and I never assigned anything to it, but I would get that look like, oh yeah. And the look was like, Oh, you're a black man, right? Yes, I am, and I'm very good at massage, so, so that was the energy that I would give back, yeah. 

Whitney Lowe  

fit's important or people to have some context too. This is the south in near the 1970s and 80s, where massage itself was not very advanced. And then you lay that on top of that, that's another factor as well,

Benny Vaughn  

Yes, and that's a good point that you make. This is the deep south and and just the whole idea of a man doing massage, let alone a black man, because you know, the general idea was that, well, only women do this uses, yeah, the number of times that I've been called a masseuse, Whitney, if I had $1 for each one of those times, you know, I'd just be living in the Caribbean right now, yeah, hanging out on the beach, yeah, yeah, you know. And so when people say, Oh, you're a masseuse. I knew immediately, okay. They know very little about massage, yeah. And so yeah, it was so, that was but, but what it did is that it taught me, it was an opportunity for me to really. I get very good Whitney at communicating to people about what massage therapy is and what it is not, yeah, and my focus was on what it is and what it can do for you. And so I didn't put any mental energy into, you know, all this other noise around it, and I was just very professional. So I'd have, you know, men make jokes about, like, oh, you you do massage. And then my response was, not "haha" and not "Well, that's not true", I would just speak professionally and scientifically and medically to them, purposely to just overwhelm them with my knowledge and with what I do at the highest professional level, yeah, and then they would get it. So I use those moments as education moments to promote the profession. 

Whitney Lowe  

And I think, for anybody you know, there's a lot of massage therapists who've come and gone or since that time, or joined our field, and have, you know, complained about the struggles associated with building a practice. And I always like to kind of keep that in context of, like, really, that's that difficult. But you know, I know some other stories of you know the difficulties that people build. Yeah.

Benny Vaughn  

And here's my message to massage therapists, nothing will change until you change your mindset. Nothing will change. As long as you think that is difficult to build a massage practice, then it will be difficult, yeah, if you think that there are too many massage therapists so you can't get business, then there will be too many massage therapists and you won't get business. So nothing will change until the massage therapist changes your mindset. And once you do that, the abundance that's available to massage therapists, because every human being is a potential client. There are a lot of human beings on the planet, and this notion that, well, you know, I can't make a living, you know, I can't charge this amount of money, because somebody else will charge less and okay, that model does not work in the world. There are some homes where the investment is $3 million there are some homes where the investment is $50,000 it's the same with automobiles, washing machines, various services. You know, Motel 6 costs this. The Ritz Carlton costs this. And so you decide where you desire to be and what you desire to attract, yeah, and change your mind, and that will bolster this, the professional self esteem of the massage therapist, and that's my message to all massage therapists, is that you are in charge, you are in control, and You can choose the level of professional esteem that you desire, you can actually choose that.

Whitney Lowe  

And that's an outstanding message and very important, I think, for a lot of people to take in so on a professional level, on bigger scale, looking out over the last 50 years, what would you say are some of the biggest challenges we've had as a profession, as a cumulative profession, to overcome, and maybe, you know, looking forward to what, what are some of those big challenges up ahead of us?

Benny Vaughn  

Yeah, I think as a profession. Whitney, the big challenges revolve around how we educate our profession. You know, Voltaire once wrote, a society is judged by how it educates its young. And my recalibration of that is that our massage profession is. Judged by how we educate our students, yeah, how we educate so? So it begins with the schools. It begins with the educational institutions. How are we educating massage therapists from the very beginning? Yeah. And the biggest challenge that I have seen over the 50 years that I have been a licensed working massage therapist are massage graduates coming out of massage school with a scarcity mindset, with a low professional self esteem mindset that's been imparted to them by their massage school. Yeah, and I'll give you just a metaphorical example. When I came out of massage school, I knew immediately that I was going to be the most professional massage therapist out there. I was going to dress professionally. I was going to speak professionally, and I was going to conduct my massages professionally. So one of the first investments I made in terms of equipment, the first investment I made is I purchased two model e1, hydroculator hot pack units. So the stainless steel units that warm up the water you put the hot packs in many of my classmates, if not all of my classmates, they looked at that said, Oh, I'm not going to, you know, spend that kind of money on that. I'm going to use a crock pot. It only costs a few dollars, and it'll still warm it up. Okay. Client comes in to my massage area and they see this stainless steel professional hot pack tank. They walk into my massage therapist classmate, and they see a crock pot on the counter and using the least expensive towels you could find the least expensive. So you're setting up an experience that just says, I don't believe that I'm that good, and I'm not sure I can provide you with the best. And so they make a comment like, Well, I'm just a massage therapist, yeah. And so I always came out, like, high professional self esteem. So that begins at the school level, and when schools are creating this environment. Well, you're just a massage therapist, you know you're below the physical therapist, you're below the chiropractors, you're below the medical doctors, you're below the osteopaths, you're below the physical therapy assistants. And blah blah, blah, blah, blah, no, you're not. You're a specialist in touch. That's what you are, yeah, so you're on the same level. You just chose to do this. That's the biggest challenge our profession. You know, we're, we're, we're not teaching success or professional self esteem in massage schools, at least the ones that I've been familiar now, there's a few old school, massage schools that still exist, that are, you know, single propriety owned, family owned, that are still teaching high professional self esteem, Yeah. But many of these other systems, I just haven't seen it. Yeah, and it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist. I just haven't seen it in general.

Whitney Lowe  

Well, do know that your your message about education certainly stuck with me. You know, I heard you say that back in the late 80s or early 90s, and that's one of the things that drove me to to focus my entire career a lot more on education, because I really, I got that, I got the message. And I really, I really believed it. There was a lot to that so so on. To take a slightly different track here, and you know, talk about some of the the different ways over the course of time that you have opened so many doors for massage in Olympic and national team settings, etc. And what were some of the the toughest misconceptions that you had to grapple with from like the coaches athletic trainers and the other medical support staff as you were trying to get massage introduced into those places?

Speaker 1  

Yeah, let me start with the athletic trainers first. So I. Athletic trainers that I spoke with in the early days before I made the decision to return to school and become an athletic trainer, because it became abundantly clear to me that if I had the same ticket they had, then people would listen to me, or more readily, listen to me, and their attitude was that massage is just a relaxation spa event, and we want our athletes to be tough. We want them to, you know, work with pain and discomfort and all of this. And my retort to that, my reply to that is, do you not think that an athlete who feels good, who's recovering well because they're relaxed, would not perform well on a competition day and and here is what I finally figured out when I would watch athletic trainers do massage with no training in how to do massage, not only were they doing poor massage, but it was hurting them to do it. Yeah, it was hurting their bodies to do it. And then I realized they don't know how to do this, and it hurts to do it. So they have come up with all these reasons of why no massage in the training room. Yeah. And my response to that was, hire licensed massage therapist and then you don't have to worry about this anymore. Yeah. And that's what they started doing. And I just thought, wow, yeah, if my back was hurting all the time, because I know nothing about body mechanics during massage, yeah, I'd come up with a reason not to provide it either. I mean, I would do the same thing. Yeah.

Whitney Lowe  

And I think there's something to be said too for the specialized training that a lot of massage therapists get about refining and becoming more precise and effective at the level of touch of what they do. Because there's a number of instances, you know, I know you've had this, and I have too working with various teams and athletes where there is another health professional on the team who would have massage in their, let's say, scope of practice, either an athletic trainer or a physical therapist. And the athlete would get some of that work from them, and they would get it from the massage therapist, and every time, every time they would prefer that work being done by a massage therapist. And that's just because that's what the specialization is about. That's what the specialized skill is about

Benny Vaughn  

Exactly and and this notion that the more degrees you have, the better trained you are, and that notion has been disproven time and time again in the history of education. Yeah, you know, it's like, you can have two people with PhDs, and one is extraordinary and one is subpar. Well, they both have PhDs. What does that mean? Yeah. So, yeah. So that education model doesn't hold water with me, and that's why, throughout my whole career, I have refused, refuse to be subservient to any other therapy profession because I am a specialist in what I do. Yeah, so you may be an MD and you are a great surgeon, but you are terrible at massage, but just because you have an MD doesn't make you good at everything, or PhD or PT or DPT And and so my whole career, I just absolutely refused, refused to be subservient to any other profession, and the one that I ran into the most in the early days were chiropractors. And this is being said respectfully, because I'm not saying anything that's not true, but chiropractors that I would engage with, and they get into this whole Doctor thing and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and therefore you as a massage therapist should just do what I say. And my attitude was that, well, you don't know what. What I do then, because if you did, you would see that we could be collaborators and create amazing results with patients, amazing results and those chiropractors who figured it out and brought massage therapists on, not as assistants, not as someone to prep the patient for chiropractic care, but brought them on as an equal partner in care, saw dramatic results with their patients, dramatic results. And that's what happens with collaboration. That's what happens with teamwork. That's what happens when you are respectful of other specialists, and you all have the same goal of creating tremendous results with your clients.

Whitney Lowe  

Yeah, I want to explore a different facet of your influence over this last 50 years now, you've been such a powerful mentor to so many people, including me, especially me tell us a little bit more about in the sort of you know, educational models that we have, we have schooling, but mentorship is important, I think, to a great degree in our profession. Tell me a little bit more about why you think that that's so valuable, and how that's been for you as being such a mentor to so many people over that time.

Speaker 1  

Yes, mentorship is important, because the ability to impart wisdom and and here's my definition of wisdom. Wisdom is a combination of knowledge plus experience. Knowledge plus experience equals wisdom, and to transfer wisdom to others requires an intimate mentoring relationship around education, and that's education by demonstrating by the mentee, observing you work, observing you apply this wisdom in A practical setting, and having someone who will answer your questions that are not answered in the textbook, the knowledge part and you haven't had the experience yet. So mentoring is the only true way that I see to impart wisdom, which is knowledge plus experience. So knowledge is easy to access in today's world of Google and AI and chat, GPT and and all these. I mean, this age of technology has made access to knowledge, to information, so fast now and so available if you have a computer and a smartphone, but it doesn't give you access to wisdom. Yeah, and that access to wisdom comes through mentoring. You know, some of it can be dispersed in the classroom when you know the teacher, the professor, etc, are speaking to you, but having that one on one interaction in a practical setting that's mentoring, and mentoring is the the most comprehensive vehicle for delivering and transporting wisdom.

Whitney Lowe  

Very well said. And again, just I on behalf of all of us in the field who have been so strongly influenced by you, thank you immensely again for the extensive efforts. Because, you know, lots of people wouldn't take the time to do that kind of thing to help bring other people up, and you have always been extremely generous with your time, focus and energy on, you know, helping shape many of us who have come behind you and followed in your footsteps. So, you know, a big thank you from all of us, because I think it has allowed a tremendous impact on the profession through all the lives that you've touched. and the people that they have touched as well.

Benny Vaughn  

Yes, and let me add one other point to this, to give massage therapists and others a tip on how to interact with a mentor, how to achieve a connection with the mentor. I receive monthly, various requests, and I'll share with you in all transparency, one of the ways that I utilize to determine who I am willing to and am attracted to mentoring, and there are some easy ways for professionals to get a mentor. So understand that there is tremendous value to mentoring, and that I invite those who are interested in a mentor, to not look at this as something free, not to have this mindset that this is free, because when you put that vibrational frequency out, that this is Free. So when I'm approached by someone with the mindset that, oh, I'm looking for some free education, some free learning. Because that's what mentoring is. You're just helping everybody. No, you have to place value on it, and that doesn't always mean that it has to be a financial number, yeah, but there has to be a value exchange of self esteem, yeah, so last month, when I lectured in Tokyo to Japanese students, they addressed me as Master Benny. So they use the title of courtesy, Master Benny, because I've earned that title in their minds. I've been doing this for 50 years. So I was at the medical and Health Science University in Tokyo, lecturing on massage therapy and human performance when I'm here in the States and I get an email from someone interested in mentoring. So here's the secret people on how you'll get a call back from me. Use a title of courtesy, because you have not asked my permission yet of someone who has mastered their craft to call me by my first name or my middle name, you have not asked my permission. So when I get a Yo, Benny, can you give me a shout out? When you get a minute, you will never get a quote. Shout out from Benny ever. Now, when I get an email, it says, Dear Mr. Vaughn, they use a title of courtesy. They use a title of respect. And you are asking someone for something. So come in with respect that there is value to what that mentor has for you come in with respect, with a mindset that there is high value in this, and approach it that way, not like you're just walking through a supermarket, just pulling things off the shelf. Yeah. So there are many people out there, and you may be listening to this podcast now. You know why I never called you back.

Whitney Lowe  

Okay, there it is. Yeah. So I want to get one other thing in, sort of squeeze in here, in sort of a retrospective look, because you've seen a lot of things come and go over the last five decades. So over that time period, what sort of techniques or strategies have endured in your practice, and what ones have you sort of saying like, Oh, this is, this is just noise or something that's going to kind of go away, a fad maybe.

Benny Vaughn  

I think ART is a fad, you know, Active Release Therapy. And in my opinion, is that most ART that I ever saw was deep tissue massage done poorly by people who aren't massage therapists. So their  touch IQ was not very good, yeah, so, so I felt like that was a fad. I think that right now, I think dry needling is going to come and go. I think that's a fad. I think that the concept of trigger point therapy has come and gone that well, all you have to do is just work on this, you know, one area, and, and, and what has stood the test of time is just touch, you know, touch with a strategy, with an intention, with a with an idea And a mindset of what you're going to do. And what I find is that it begins with the so called Swedish massage. If you master, if you master what we call Swedish massage, everything else will fit in just fine. You don't have to rename touch a dozen different ways and think that it makes your touch better, yeah, just because you your calling is something else you know. Touch is touch, touches, touches, touches, touches, touch and master touch with your mindset and your technique, and you don't have to keep renaming it in order for it to work. You know, touch is touch. And get really, really good at the fundamentals of touch. And what I mean by that, Whitney, is when you touch another human, listen to your intuition, and your intuition becomes very acute as long as you continue to educate yourself With the knowledge anatomy, knowledge the anatomy of the nervous system, understanding the skeletal system and joints, understanding fascia and its relationship to movement, understanding the various systems of the body, the lymphatic system, and so forth and so on. Continue to study these pieces, and that will make your therapeutic intuition even more acute, yeah, and then listen to your intuition, and you'll receive the guidance for what will be best in serving your client.

Whitney Lowe  

So one thing I want to just kind of wrap up with is the put on your Nostradamus hat for a moment. And if you have one or more wishes for our profession in the next 50 years, what would you like to see us accomplish?

Benny Vaughn  

I would like to see the profession of massage be placed into every hospital setting, where patients are recovering from surgical intervention, where patients are recovering from medication intervention, and having touch massage as an important part of that post op recovery, post medication recovery, post health recovery, at every level that massage is included along with the occupational therapist, the physical therapist, the nutritionist, the nurses, the doctors, etc. The missing link in our healthcare system is involving and incorporating touch as a powerful healing optimization tool. That's what I would like to see, and the way we do that is we continue to study and become knowledgeable and listen to your therapeutic intuition when you touch another human being.

Whitney Lowe  

Wonderful message, yeah, well, I'll certainly do my best to help shape that in a direction to get us there. I know, you know, I don't have that many more years left here in our profession, but it's been a wonderful pathway so far, seeing us move in this direction, and I share that vision that you have of our hope to try to get somewhere like that in the future, in the next 50 years. So anyway, I would like to say thank you on behalf of our whole profession, and just celebrate for you a wonderful accomplishment of 50 Years and again, you have touched so many lives and so many people throughout our profession and in many other professions to change the perspective and the ideas of what massage is all about. So that's what being the and, you know, I just want to make this call out to you know, the name of this podcast is the thinking practitioner, and this is something you and I talked about back in the 1980s or early 90s. You talked to me about creating somebody who was a thinking practitioner, and not just somebody doing rote recipes or routine. So that idea and concept goes back quite a long way as well.

Speaker 1  

Yeah, it really does. And in closing, I want to say publicly, Whitney low that your writings and your teachings, which I want to think that I inspired you to go in that direction, oh yeah, has made a huge difference In the careers of massage therapists, having knowledge packaged in a way that is directly relevant to the massage therapist, the knowledge that was always out there, Yap and you have done a magnificent job of codifying that and putting it into direct relevance for a massage therapist. So my hat's off to you, and I am very proud that I played a small role in mentoring you, not small hiring you to do that, not small at all. So it was for me, certainly groundbreaking and career changing. Absolutely it was. There's no question a career changing. For me, it really set, set a direction. So again, on behalf of everyone, we celebrate this great accomplishment, and thank you for spending some time with us today talking about this, and we'll look forward to seeing a lot of the other things from all the seeds that you have planted over the years. My pleasure.

Whitney Lowe  

Whitney, all right, so keep in mind, everyone, the thinking practitioner podcast is proudly supported by ABMP, the Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals, the premier association for a dedicated massage and bodywork practitioners like you, when you join ABMP, you're not just getting industry leading liability insurance, you're gaining practice resources designed to support your career, from free, top tier continuing education courses and quick reference apps like the pocket pathology and five minute muscles ABMP equips you with the tools you need to succeed and grow your practice. ABMP is committed to elevating the profession with expert voices, fresh perspectives and invaluable insights through CE courses, the ABMP podcast and Massage and Bodywork Magazine, featuring industry leading leaders like my co host Til Luchau and myself and Thinking Practitioner listeners like you can get exclusive savings on ABMP membership at abmp.com/thinking. So join the best and expect more from your professional associations. So we'd like to say thank you to all of our listeners for hanging out with us here today and again. Thank you to our sponsors. You can stop by our sites for video, show notes, transcripts and any extras. You can find that on my site at academyofclinicalmassage.com and over on til's site, at advanced-trainings.com.  Til will be back with us in the next episode. We want to hear from you with ideas and input about anything that you'd like to hear us talk about. So you can send us an email at info@thinking practitioner.com or look for us on social media under YouTubes, at our names Til Luchau and Whitney Lowe where that's where people can find us. So we really appreciate if you'd take a moment to rate us on Spotify or Apple podcasts, as it does help other people find the show. So please take a few moments to do that, and we really appreciate the support. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you again next time.