Massage-Research.com

Book Review: Modalities for Massage and Bodywork

This is a wonderful book contains introduction to 21 modalities in massage and bodywork.
The editor Elaine Stillerman does a wonderful job in compiling this book. I have an old favourite book, Bodywork Basics by Anne Kent Rush, which covered lots of modalities in brief. This book has more detailed in it. Each chapter is written in a consistent style by experts in their field. Each chapter has an intro, history, definition, techniques, indications & contraindications, certification/training, case history, resources and questions at the end. The “boxes” provide useful information. In some chapters, the authors provide their personal ‘In My Experience’.
All colour pages make this an interesting read.

Some chapters are summaries from authors’ book (published by Elsevier) on the same topic: Whitney Lowe on orthopedic massage, Sandra Anderson on Shiatsu, Sandy Fritz on sports massage, Elaine Stillerman on prenatal massage, Richard Gold on Thai Massage.

The book start with Aaron Mattes’ Active Isolated Stretching by Joe Muscolino. A great introduction to the theories of stretching and reciprocal inhibition. Sonia Elisa Masocco wrote an excellent introduction to Ayurvedic therapies, certainly a challenge to summarise the whole therapies in 12 pages. This is followed by cancer massage by Beverly Byers, craniosacral therapy by John Upledger, geriatric massage by Susan Salvo. Diana Moore wrote about infant massage. The chapter on Lomi Lomi is great, clarifying the term and history. Manual lymphatic drainage by Robert Harris provides a clear history and techniques based on Dr. Vodder’s work, but also listed other methods.
I particularly like the chapter on Myofascial release by Art Riggs and Keith Eric Grant. The history is comprehensive and the anatomy and physiology attempt to provide a scientific basis of the technique. Although blending it with recent fascia research would make it more solid.
Judith DeLany authored neuromuscular therapy and trigger point release. There are overlap between these chapters, some may not agree to lump it together as one. The history is helpful and clarifies the different schools.  Leslie Korn describes polarity therapy, a section on research is also given. Peter Schwind wrote Structural Integration, which is mostly derived from Ida Rolf’s Rolfing. Jack Blackburn on Trager, a wonderful summary of the work. Laura Norman on reflexology and Terry Norman on Tuina.

The history part is always interesting, as it put in perspective where and how the modalities come about. Nowadays there are a huge number of new techniques appearing that are just slight modification of some established modalities. Some people put a slight twist on it and called the technique after themselves. This book certainly clarifies it, by presenting the top 21 “mainstream” modalities. Of course, it is not complete, Reiki, Swedish, Feldenkrais, Alexander technique an others are not covered, but you can’t have everything.

Currently people like to talk about evidence-based approach. And certainly in some chapters, the authors tried to explain the mechanisms on how the modalities work. Now the problem is there are still very little scientific research on finding the mechanisms. Some and most explanations are based on clinical experiences, hypotheses, guesses and sometimes lead to pseudoscience. This can be seen in the chapter on reflexology, which stated several hypotheses, which we know that are myths: the lactic acid hypotheses, and nervous receptors. The lactic acid hypotheses was proven to be a myth. And there is no evidence that the are direct and unknown connections between certain part of the feet and hands and the different organs in the body. There are also various statements that are not true: gravity pulls down toxic and waste and build up in the bottom of the feet. There are also statements without any references: “the Chinese have shown that reflexology provides some improvement 95% of the time”.

The sol to gel theory, which was proven unlikely to happen during manual therapy, is given as the goal of NMT. Recent findings in fascia research by Robert Schleip and co. has shown that it is impossible to elicit this changes by manual therapy.

Another chapter I have troubled is the history of Tuina, which is also not well researched. It said that Swedish massage, along with all forms of massage and manual therapy, are derived from Tuina. It said that Per Henrik Ling, the father of Swedish massage, learnt Tuina from Jesuit priests who brought it from China. There is no evidence of such link, and I don’t know where the author got this story from.

It is indeed difficult to balance the art and science. Despite these snags, overall this is a great introductory book for the most commonly used modalities in massage. Beginners or even experienced bodyworkers can get a good intro to the modality they are interested in in, and they can consult the resources if want to pursue further.