For USA practitioners and teachers: Your livelihood is at stake! There is model legislation being proposed that would required a massage license for all somatic practitioners. Commenting now is much easier than having to fight state by state, legislature by legislature. See below for a letter from ISMETAs director, legislative liaison. and president. The Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards ( FSMTB ) has proposed a Model Practice Act that is poised to usurp our right to legally practice our profession in the United States. ISMETA has been working tirelessly to communicate our concerns to the FSMTB and mobilize the community to speak up on behalf of our profession during the public comment periods. The FSMTB was impacted by our first round of comments and have made some revisions but clearly not enough. The second (and potentially final) Public Comment Period will end Friday August 15th and they need to hear from all of us. Please forward this email widely and be sure to make your comments by this Fridays deadline ! Where to comment: https://docs.google/forms/d/1yaAVt_nGJiH0qa4DVqhArlzUpdv-HD9OBBA9ZrynzSw/viewform ISMETAs Position: (please feel free to cut and paste those points that you share with us into the public comment link) Somatic Movement Education and Therapy is not a modality of massage. It has a unique body of knowledge different than massage. Somatic Movement Educators and Therapists (RSME, RSMT) should not be required to attend massage school and obtain a massage license in order to continue to practice within their distinct profession. Massage Therapists are not qualified to practice Somatic Movement Education and Therapy, a profession in which they were not trained. If massage therapist are interested in becoming Registered Somatic Movement Educators or Therapists they need to acquire the appropriate education and become Registered Somatic Movement Educators or Therapist through ISMETA and not assume their massage education gives them the skills to practice as a RSME or RSMT. The Model Practice Act should specifically state that it is not intended to regulate Somatic Movement Education or Therapy. Section 105 would be a place for this to be added. Exemption language is currently being used in 20 states to clarify what IS and IS NOT massage therapy. Having exemption language as a part of the Model Practice Act would be supporting the states to regulate massage therapy while clearly defining what is not in need of regulation. The Scope of Practice defined in Section 104 is too broad. The statement, The Practice of Massage Therapy means the manual application of a system of structured touch to the soft tissue of the human body including but not limited to: is problematic. The Scope of Practice of Somatic Movement Education and Therapy uses structured touch as an educational tool with fully clothed clients. This is a clearly different practice than massage therapy. The use of including but not limited to completely oversteps the scope of practice of massage therapy and any scope of practice should not include an open statement such as this. In addition the use of the phrase that the scope of practice is broad to account for current and evolving practice is of particular concern since FSMTB Board Members are not experts in the profession of Somatic Movement Education and Therapy and this statement gives the FSMTB and the states that adopt it the authority to include more aspects of our profession into state massage laws at any time. Registered Somatic Movement Educators and Therapists should not be required to obtain massage licenses for providing one or more of the services listed in this broad, overstepping, scope of practice ! The language in Section 106 should be kept to massage therapy only and not include bodywork unless the specific exemptions are placed into the act to protect Registered Somatic Movement Educators and Therapists right to practice their distinct profession. Some Somatic Movement Educators and Therapists define their practice as bodywork. Bodywork by definition is the umbrella that covers multiple professions of which massage is considered to be one, not the other way around. The FSMTB should work cooperatively with ISMETA and other professional associations who have expressed concerns to include exemptions of their professions in the Model Practice Act. Sincerely, Elisa Cotroneo ISMETA Executive Director Mary Abrams ISMETA Government Relations Consultant Mark Taylor ISMETA Board President
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 19:59:32 +0000
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