The Long, Bumpy Road in Massachusetts                                  March 2004
As the final touches were put on a massage-therapy bill to ready it for introduction to the Massachusetts state legislature, possibly by mid-January, members of the coalition that worked to revise the bill acknowledged that the road to legislation has been long and bumpy.

The first attempt to gain licensing took place in 1995, but was derailed at the last minute by opposition from the American Physical Therapy Association. In 1999, a second attempt at licensure was thwarted by a lack of consensus within the massage-therapy industry.

Revisions to the current bill, House Bill (HB) 3155, have been taking place since March 2003, shortly after the bill was introduced independently by Rep. Antonio Cabral of New Bedford.

Rush said AMTA-MA reached out to bodyworkers throughout Massachusetts to form a coalition for the revision of the bill. The coalition included representatives of massage schools throughout Massachusetts, the Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals (ABMP), and members of other non-massage bodywork associations.

However, some coalition members have called the group effort less than equitable.

“It was not a coalition in the true sense of the word,” said George A. Rhoads, legislative representative for the Massachusetts chapter of the American Organization for Bodywork Therapies of Asia (AOBTA). “It was the AMTA’s hired lobbyist and attorney directing traffic.”

In December, 10 months into the revision process, leadership of AMTA-MA imposed a confidentiality agreement on anyone who wanted to view the revised bill.

Anne Lynch, lobbyist for AMTA-MA, said the confidentiality agreement was put in place to protect against any misinformation until the final language of the bill has been tacked down and voted on by the coalition members, in a meeting that was scheduled to take place in January, past this publication’s deadline.

The basics of the proposed bill, prior to the final coalition meeting, include the creation of a massage board under the division of professional licensure; a 500-hour education requirement; passage of a national exam for massage therapy; grandfathering language for current massage therapists; reciprocity for massage therapists licensed in other states; and an exemption clause.

However, several members of the coalition told MASSAGE Magazine that these terms were not agreeable, specifically the education hours and exam requirement, and that they would fight the bill if introduced as such.

Other non-massage members of the coalition simply wanted out from under the umbrella of proposed massage regulation.

The proposed exemption clause would exclude practitioners of the following modalities from regulation under the massage law: Feldenkrais Method^®, reflexology, Alexander Technique, Trager^® work, polarity therapy, Asian bodywork therapy, acupressure, Jin Shin Do, qigong, shiatsu, body-mind centering and reiki.

What is the impact of state regulation?                     Back to Laws & Regulations