History of Massage Therapy

As long as there has been healing, there has been massage. Cave paintings in the Pyrenees that depict the use of massage date as far back as 15,000 BC. Physicians and healers in every time and culture have espoused the benefits of massage.

In India massage has been used for thousands of years as part of their tradition of holistic
healing. Other ancient cultures, including the Egyptians, Romans, Mayas, Incas, Hawaiians, Cherokees and Navajos, reportedly used massage in treatment a variety of illnesses.

The oldest known book written about massage, "Cong-Fu of the Toa-Tse" dates back 3000 BC China. It discusses massage, acupuncture, and the burning of herbs for therapeutic purposes.

Egypt was discovering the benefits of massage about the same time. Tomb paintings in [pic tomb paintings] Egypt depict individuals being massaged by others. Egyptians invented reflexology in approximately 2500 BC.

In Antique Greece massage was widely practiced and massage therapy history was well documented. Aesculapius, a 5th century BC healer, promoted massage in conjunction with herbs, diet, relaxation, and hydrotherapy. Hippocrates, the father of Western medicine, believed that massage, along with fresh air, good food, baths, music, rest, and visits to friends, was a key to treating disease. He described stroking the extremities upward (toward the heart) and returning with a light stroke back up again to push the venous and lymph upward toward the heart. Massage was widely used in Greek gymnasiums to prepare athletes for the sporting events and to treat their bodies after training and competitions.

Around 124 BC Asclepiades, a Greek physician, settled in Rome to practice and teach medicine. He promoted diet, exercise, massage, and bathing. Julius Caesar used massage therapy regularly to relieve his neuralgia and epileptic seizures. During the first century BC Galen, a physician to many emperors, began using massage therapy to treat different types of physical injuries and diseases. In his work, Galen gives detailed description of massage: "The rubbings should be of many sorts, with strokes and circuits of the hands, carrying them not only from above down and from below up, but also subvertically, obliquely, transversely and subtransversely ... in order that so far as possible all the muscle fibers should be rubbed in every direction." 

While the wealthy received massages in their homes by personal physicians, many Romans were treated in public baths where trainers and doctors delivered massages. The recipients would first bathe themselves and then receive a full body massage to stimulate circulation and loosen their joints. Massages typically included oils to benefit the skin.

Roman physician Pliny the Elder wrote in a letter to his emperor how his life was saved by the ministrations "of a medical practitioner who cured many of his patients by the process of rubbing and anointing." He derived so much benefit from the remedy that he asked the emperor to grant the non-Roman physician all the privileges of Roman citizenship. 

After the collapse of Roman Empire, western medicine and massage therapy history experienced a period of decline, but in the East massage continued to flourish as an important part of every health routine. Around 990 AD one of the greatest physicians in the history of medicine, Avicenna (also known as Ibn Sina of Persia), wrote "The Canon of Medicine." This work has been called the most famous single book in the history of medicine in both East and West. In it, he describes massage as one method of relieving pain.

Massage began to flourish in Europe once again during the Renaissance. Doctors such as Ambroise Pare, a 16th-century physician to the French court, praised massage as a treatment for various ailments. Around the sixteen century in the East other important works in massage therapy history emerged. The Chinese text "Chen-chiu ta-ch’eng" had a chapter about pediatric massage. Japanese "San-tsai-tou-hoei" mentions passive and active massage procedures.

In the early 1800s, the Swedish physician Per Henrik Ling developed the Swedish Gymnastic Movement System. His system, based on physiology, formalized a series of gymnastic movements and massage techniques, including stroking, pressing and squeezing, and striking to manually treat physical issues. "We ought not to consider the organs of the body as the lifeless forms of a mechanical mass," he wrote, "but as the living, active instruments of the soul." The implications of this idea for massage are that we should consider not only the mechanics of each bodily system, but also its role in life and the positive impact massage therapy may have on it.

Scientific massage therapy was introduced in the United States in the 1850's by two New York physicians, George and Charles Taylor, who had studied in Sweden. John Harvey Kellogg, better known as the inventor of cold breakfast  cereal, used massage and hydrotherapy at his Battle Creek Sanitarium. In 1880 two New York City medical Doctors and professors, Mary Putnam Jacobi and Victoria A. White, researched the benefits of massage and ice packs in the management of anemia. The Society of Trained Masseuses, formed in Britain in 1894, set up study of massage along with prerequisites for education and criteria for school recognition.

In 1899 Sir William Bennet inaugurated a massage department at St. George's Hospital, London. Sigmund Freud, practicing in the late 1800's, used massage therapy to treat hysteria. He postulated that what we did not or will not confront in our lives would be buried in the body in the unconscious mind. The 1800's also saw the birth of Canadian Deep Muscle technique, a fundamental technique that addresses specific muscles and muscle groups and offers fast results for both pain and stress.

Dr. William Fitzgerald rediscovered Reflexology in 1913 and called it Zone Therapy. During World War I patients suffering from nerve injury or shell shock were treated with massage. By the 1930's hospitals staffed Physical Therapists who were doing massage. St. Thomas's Hospital, London, had a department of massage until 1934. The 1930's and 1940's saw the organization of the Florida State Massage Therapy Association Inc. and the Chicago American Association of Masseurs and Masseuses. This later eventually became the American Massage Therapy Association. The first Massage Act was passed by the Florida Legislature in 1943. 

The study of and invention of new massage techniques slowed during the 1940's and 1950's, although doctors and nurses used massage as a regular part of their practice into the 1960's. John Barnes developed Myofascial Release Therapy in the 1960's. But interest in massage, which had already waned in the '50's, didn't see a true resurgence until the 1970's, owing in part to the development of electrical equipment for manipulation, the growth of the pharmaceutical industry, and the shady image of sexual "massage parlors."

In 1976 Bonnie Prudden developed her book "Myotherapy." The late '70's saw the birth of two forms of rolfing, the Aston-Patterning developed by Judith Aston, and Hellerwork developed by Joseph Heller. Soma Neuromuscular Integration was also developed in the late '70's by a student of Ida Rolf, Bill Williams, Ph.D. In the 1980’s the Association of Bodywork and Massage Practitioners was formed. Watsu (water therapy) and the Taws Method of Soft Tissue Release were developed, and studies were conducted on identifying and treating tenderpoints, Myofascial Pain and triggerpoint therapy. David Palmer created and marketed the first On-Site Massage using a massage chair in the early 1990's. About the same time a protocol for fibromyalgia syndrome (FMS) was defined by the American College of Rheumatology. The Touch Research Institute was created in 1991, and in 1992 National Certification began.

Today, with millions of baby boomers entering their golden years, interest in complementary and alternative medicine growing exponentially. Hospitals across the United States are beginning to embrace massage therapy as a viable and important component of patient care. With numerous studies that suggest the effectiveness of massage in helping cancer patients and others facing debilitating illness, hospitals are beginning to realize the benefits of not simply treating the condition or disease a patient has been diagnosed with, but also treating the person behind the disease. Many hospitals are beginning to add therapists to their staff. They are utilizing massage therapists with expectant mothers, postnatal care, geriatric care, for those suffering from chronic pain and for other special-needs patients as well. With numerous studies showing that massage decreases recovery time from illness and injury and can even help prevent disease, even health insurance companies are beginning to see the wisdom of including massage in their medical plans

This trend has provided massage therapists with new and exciting opportunities within traditionally restricted health care fields, a point underscored by the latest American Hospital Association (AHA) survey which, for the first time, singled out massage therapy. The AHA survey found that a large number of consumers and health care providers are using massage therapy and bodywork for pain management and other health issues. The survey also found that massage is among the most popular complementary and alternative medicine therapies offered in hospitals. Of the 1,007 hospitals that responded to the survey, 82 percent of hospitals offering complementary and alternative medicine include massage among their care options, with more than 70 percent using it for pain management and relief.

"Massage therapists are helping to heal patients, staff and the entire medical system by simply and profoundly reminding people, through touch, of the place of stillness and compassion within us all – the inner spark and connection with divinity from which all healing flows," said Laura Koch, founder and director of the Hospital Based Massage Network, an organization that "supports massage and touch therapists pursuing integration of complementary care into mainstream medicine through their work."