If you live in Massachusetts, please take a few minutes out of your day to call/email your rep to ask that they oppose or amend SB 2621 "An Act to regulate bodywork therapy" (formerly 2599), which would impact virtually all holistic modalities (their practitioners and their recipients) in Massachusetts.
THE BILL: https://malegislature.gov/Bills/190/S2621
FIND YOUR STATE REP: https://malegislature.gov/Search/FindMyLegislator
HOUSE COMMITTEE ON WAYS & MEANS: https://malegislature.gov/Committees/Detail/H34/190
This bill will affect practitioners from a wide array of disciplines such as The Feldenkrais Method®, The Anat Baniel Method®, Trager, Reiki, Qi Gong, yoga practitioners and many more, who are currently exempt from massage licensure under current law.
The face of the bill is to stop sex-trafficking, which of course we want stopped, but the scope of the bill extends WAY beyond that to include anyone who uses "touch, words or directed movement to deepen awareness of patterns of movement in the body".
I have included several inspiring letters from my colleagues below. (Thank you to Andrea Higgins for inspiration for the title of this post!) I hope you will read them and find some inspiration to write your own letters and make calls.
I have been a certified Professional Member of the Feldenkrais Guild of North America since 2002. My certification requires that I abide by the Feldenkrais Method Standards of Practice and Code of Professional Conduct. I renew certification yearly, pay yearly dues and complete continuing education requirements.
As a certified Feldenkrais® teacher I was required to have over 800 hours of training. I actually have over double that!
In addition to the more fees, paperwork, bureaucracy, S.2621 proposes to "establish standards for continuing education reflecting acceptable national standards". These requirements would be set by a board of mostly massage therapists and a few "bodyworkers". I am concerned that the proposed bodywork board would not have the knowledge or expertise to set standards for the Feldenkrais Method, which took me many years to understand, and I am still learning!
This bill would potentially limit people from getting access to education that is truly life changing.
Please spread the word and do what you can to help oppose or amend this bill.
Thank you!
Tiffany Sankary
Somerville, MA
Letter from Andrea Higgins:
Dear Chair Sánchez and members of the House Ways and Means Committee,
I am writing regarding Proposed Bill S.2621, which is under review by the House Ways and Means Committee. I teach the Feldenkrais Method® of somatic education. Some of the wording in the bill would inaccurately classify the work I do, and adversely affect my teaching practice. Specifically, it would create body work licensure requirements for teachers of the Feldenkrais Method. So that you will better understand why this language misrepresents my profession, and undermines the commitment I have made to teaching this Method, please let me tell you a little bit about myself.
After a successful professional dance career, I attended the University of Massachusetts at Boston as an Honors Program student, graduated summa cum laude, and was named the John F. Kennedy Award recipient at commencement. From there, I went on to a Master’s Program in Performing Arts/Dance at The American University in Washington D.C.
During my graduate program, I was introduced to the writings of Howard Gardner, the eminent developmental psychologist and Professor of Cognition and Education at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education. Gardner’s research led him to identify distinct intelligences, which he outlined in his groundbreaking book titled, Frames of Mind: the Theory of Multiple Intelligences. One of the intelligences that Gardner identified was kinesthetic intelligence.
Around the same time, I was introduced to a field of movement study called somatic education. One of the special characteristics of the movement methods that fall into this category of education is the idea that:
the brain and body are not two distinct parts of the self, but rather function as a singe feedback loop that is deeply tied into the very nature of how kinesthetic intelligence manifests in the individual.
One of the somatic methods that I studied was developed by Moshe Feldenkrais, D.Sc. I was so impressed with this particular Method, that I pursued a four-year certification in the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education, which I completed in 2005. Since that time I have worked privately with individuals from all walks of life, taught numerous classes, served on the faculty at an independent school in Newton, been invited to speak at the annual conference for the Massachusetts Council on Aging, and published numerous articles and web-books on the subject of Feldenkrais as a method of learning.
I have benefitted from many forms of “body work” over the years, but the Feldenkrais Method would, in my informed opinion, be better described as “body un-work.”
On a fundamental level, when I am teaching Feldenkrais, I am helping to facilitate the conditions that potentiate kinesthetic learning. In many cases, this learning initially manifests as a kind of unlearning—unlearning habits of mind and body that cause discomfort. As a consequence of this unlearning, a metacognitive process is triggered in the individual. The student’s innate ability to sense movement and perceive through awareness is heightened.
This is not something I am doing to the student; it is at the very center of our genetic inheritance to learn through movement.
Feldenkrais Practitioners are teachers. We specialize in creating learning situations that expand ones ability to learn and grow through kinesthetic intelligence.
I humbly ask that you implement the proposed changes that have been recommended by the Feldenkrais Guild of North America (FGNA), the certifying and professional organization that oversees professional standards, ethics, and practices for Feldenkrais teachers based in the United States. Their recommendations are as follows regarding Bill S.2621:
1. Oppose requiring licensure for the Feldenkrais Method.
2. Support amendments to the bill to change the definition of body work
3. Add exemptions with accountability
More specifics with regard to the language of the bill can be found in a letter that the FGNA has sent to you regarding this matter.
I thank you for your time and consideration.
Sincerely,
Andrea Higgins
www.KinEdge.com
Letter from June LaPointe:
Dear Chair Sánchez, Representative Zlotnick, and members of the House Ways and Means Committee,
Rep. Zlotnick I am writing as a member of your district, 2nd Worcester. You have crossed paths with my sister, Jane LaPointe, at the Ingleside Utilization Committee meetings and as recently as yesterday at Winchendon’s Healthy Food Access initiative.
I offer the following remarks in response to proposed legislation S.2621 that would unfairly and unjustly restrict the practice of the Feldenkrais Method® of Somatic Education in Massachusetts and I ask for further changes so that this bill does not impose inappropriate and unfair licensure requirements on citizens of the Commonwealth. Specifically, I ask you to support changes to the bill that would exempt the Feldenkrais Method® from licensure requirements because it is not bodywork. Moreover, a bodywork regulatory board would not have the knowledge or expertise to set standards for the Feldenkrais Method, which has been done successfully for over 30 years by the Feldenkrais Guild of North America.
After a nearly twenty-year career as a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner, I currently see students in private practice at two locations in Massachusetts: Winchendon and Arlington.
I first discovered the Feldenkrais Method in 1990 while studying Educational Therapeutics, (a multi-year certification program in the fields of learning and perception to help people recover from physical and emotional trauma), with its founder, Dawna Markova, PhD., herself a student of the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education and who studied directly with Dr. Feldenkrais in the early 1970s. In the mid 1990s I worked at MIT in the Sloan School of Management’s Organizational Learning Center as a Transformational Learning Coach to Senior Leaders at Fortune 10 companies. The educational approach of the Feldenkrais Method (learning how to learn) was a key component of my coaching senior executives who were given the challenge to fundamentally change how they perceived their role as leaders — to become learners rather than knowers.
In my late thirties, the Feldenkrais Method helped me learn how (1) to heal from a head and neck injury and an accompanying auto-immune illness and (2) to recover from chronic pain, for which I was bedridden for three years, in a way that no other medical or complementary intervention could help.
I credit the Feldenkrais Method of Somatic Education with my recovery so that I could once again become a productive member of society. After a few individual lessons with local practitioners, I sought professional certification in 1998, a four-year training requiring 800 hours of study and practice. Currently, I attend and help organize Advanced Trainings in the Feldenkrais Method that meet or exceed the yearly certification requirements of the Feldenkrais Guild of North America (FGNA). This commitment is an investment of thousands of dollars a year in my continuing education that is highly specific to the nature of the Feldenkrais Method.
I came to this work as an educator and, like my colleagues, I frame my professional practice as an educational approach. I am a teacher of the Feldenkrais Method. I teach classes and individual lessons, and the people I see are students.
It is an educational approach of motor-sensory and mindset questions designed to help students perceive options that they are unable to perceive with their current habits of thinking, sensing, feeling, and acting.
Although I may use gentle and specific touch while students are fully clothed to help the student sense a pattern of movement through the skeleton, I do not frame my practice as bodywork. This distinction is fundamental to understanding the intention of the Feldenkrais Method. Our work is about facilitating learning by bringing awareness to students' thinking, sensing, feeling, and acting while they orient to the environment around them. Additionally, the ethos of the Feldenkrais Method is one of facilitating students’ awareness of their own choices and personal authority.
The professional requirements of the Feldenkrais Guild of North America are rigorous and ongoing for the life of a Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner and it would be a misunderstanding and a reduction of the method to refer to it as a trade or a bodywork modality. For these reasons, I strongly and respectfully request that you exempt Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioners from the regulations of proposed Bill S.2621.
Given my own recovery from chronic pain and illness, I’m passionate about working as a Feldenkrais Practitioner to help others get the support they need to be better at whatever they love to do, whatever makes their life worthwhile. Although we are not many in number, Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioners are highly skilled facilitators dedicated to life-long learning for themselves and for their students.
It is for myself, my colleagues, and our students in communities across Massachusetts that I, with great clarity of purpose, request this exemption for our profession.
Proposed Bill S.2621 is under review by your House Ways and Means Committee. As requested by the Feldenkrais Guild of North America (FGNA) in their letter also dated July 23, 2018, I would like to reiterate the following:
1. Please hold a hearing to fully consider the issues raised by their letter, mine, and by those of my colleagues.
2. Please remove the words “the practice of a person who uses touch, words or directed movement to deepen awareness of patterns of movement in the body”
3. Please keep the words “or the affectation of the human energy system or acupoints or Qi meridians of the human body while engaged within the scope of practice of a profession with established standards and ethics.”
4. Include an amendment in statute as suggested in Appendix 1 of the FGNA letter that provides exemptions suitable for Feldenkrais Practitioners who are already well-covered by the Feldenkrais Guild of North America, and already paying $250 per year to maintain professional certification.
Sincerely,
June LaPointe, Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner
www.junelapointe.com
Letter from Mara Yale:
Dear Chair Sánchez, Representative Gentile, and members of the House Ways and Means Committee,
Rep. Gentile: I am writing as a member of your district, 13thMiddlesex. We have crossed paths in the past on the Cochituate Rail Trail project, as I was the founding chair of the Framingham Cochituate Rail Trail Committee from 2000-2006.
After nearly a twenty year career at MathWorks in Natick, I recently have embarked on a new career path to create a small business as a Guild Certified Feldenkrais PractitionerCM. I first discovered the Feldenkrais Method®while I was a doctoral student in geophysics in California in the late 1990s.
In my early twenties, this approach helped me heal a shoulder injury that nothing else had helped.
After a decade of self-care with local practitioners, I sought professional certification in 2002-2006, a training requiring 800 hours over four years.
Several years later, my younger daughter had a stroke at birth. She was diagnosed quickly at Massachusetts General Hospital, and thanks to my Feldenkrais® training and colleagues, she was in the most skillful hands of other Feldenkrais practitioners who work primarily with children with cerebral palsy and other early brain injuries.
My daughter's level of functioning is the best that could be expected and exceeds what is typically seen in perinatal stroke survivors.
She’s bilingual thanks to Barbieri School and plays ice hockey, soccer, and lacrosse. Most people cannot tell she ever had a stroke.
It’s for this reason that I’m passionate about working as a Feldenkrais Practitioner to help other families get the care and rehabilitative support their children need. I have a number of collaborative projects with a pediatric neurologist at Massachusetts General Hospital, Dr. Patricia Musolino, and together, we hope to improve the outcomes for young stroke survivors. In addition, I am actively working in the community in Framingham to offer Feldenkrais classes, including as part of a Healthy Living Series through the Framingham Public Library, funded in part by the Metrwest Health Foundation. My library class last week engaged more than 30 people.
Proposed Bill #2621 is under review by your House Ways and Means Committee. As requested by the Feldenkrais Guild of North America (FGNA) in their letter also dated July 23, 2018, I would like to reiterate the following:
1. Please hold a hearing to fully consider the issues raised by their letter, mine, and by those of my colleagues.
2. Please remove the words “the practice of a person who uses touch, words or directed movement to deepen awareness of patterns of movement in the body”
3. Please keep the words “or the affectation of the human energy system or acupoints or Qi meridians of the human body while engaged within the scope of practice of a profession with established standards and ethics.”
4. Include an amendment in statute as suggested in Appendix 1 of the FGNA letter that provides exemptions suitable for Feldenkrais Practitioners who are already well-covered by the Feldenkrais Guild of North America, and already paying $250 per year to maintain professional certification.
Sincerely,
Mara Yale, Guild Certified Feldenkrais Practitioner
marazoemia.net
SAMPLE SCRIPT (provided by the FGNA):
Dear Representative ____________:
As your constituent, I urge you to oppose S.2621 unless it is amended to exempt the practice of the Feldenkrais Method of somatic education.
In 1999 I was going to physical therapy for 9 months, post operatively, for 8-9 hours a week. I was strong, but not able to walk without my cane. I asked my PT what to do, and he referred me to a Feldenkrais® teacher. Ten days and three lessons later, my Feldenkrais practitioner taught me how to walk again. I went from "disabled" to "able" in three 45-minute lessons, period. It changed my life. The Feldenkrais lessons were nothing like massage or bodywork. I love massage and bodywork, and it helps me too, but the Functional Integration lessons from my Feldenkrais teacher were totally different.
I don't think a bodywork board should oversee Feldenkrais teachers, because what they study and what they do is completely different. Feldenkrais teachers are regulated by other Feldenkrais teachers, through their Guild. My teacher had 800 hours of training over 4 years, and she has to do continuing education every year.
Please oppose S.2621 in its current form. (Suggestion: Please amend the broad definition of bodywork by removing the words “the practice of a person who uses touch, words or directed movement to deepen awareness of patterns of movement in the body.”)
Sincerely,
Your name/contact information