The profession is made up of people that are passionate about what they do and they do it one client at a time, in a small room.  So forgive us, the average MTs that do not translate well to large concepts, organizations, meetings or politics.  The greatest majority of MTs do not vote in national elections, do not attend national conventions, and do not have time or motivation to stay abreast of these politics.  They are too busy trying to make a living.

Being a full time Massage Therapist for over 20 years, and a certificant for many years (’92-’07) I had an opportunity to experience the benefit of being Nationally Certified in Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork.  Having been an educational provider for a number of years (’95 – ’04) I had an opportunity to experience the benefit of that as well.  Unfortunately, I cannot say that there was any benefit.  Now that I have tossed off that burden of paperwork, cost, and unnecessary initials after my name, I feel like the slow kid in class that just got the joke.

You would think that with all the brain power and advanced-degreed individuals involved that they could have looked at history and learned from other professions.  You would not have been surprised or offended if they had modeled themselves after those that were successful.  I and many others appreciated the beginning of the NCB and the potential it had.  We could only see it getting better and better.  Unfortunately it did not.  It got worse and worse.  It became a monster.  I am not a degreed scientist but I can find little to no comparison to any other professional healthcare organization when I look at the NCB.

When NCB began, they made great statements that the average MT thought were promises (We were not skilled at reading doublespeak spin yet).  We believed that they would set the standard for education.  I would have never believed that they would (this many years later) still be accepting a certificate from, not a licensed school,  but a community education class that meets in class for 36 hours and does everything else as homework to get a 250 hour certificate, (then does it twice to get a 500 hour certificate).

We were told the grandfathering was going to be offered for only 2 years, then it was 4 years, then they just renamed it.  In spite of there being licensed schools available in every state, and there being an apparent availability of student loans for students, they still continue to offer a portfolio option.  This not only devalues the certificants but also the schools.

We believed that the leadership would be Massage Therapists like us, people who had at least for a significant amount of time, had lived by their hands, and would understand us and our needs.  These leaders we envisioned would be passionate and progressive, not overpaid, egotistical, disconnected, talking heads.

We were told it would matter.  We thought it would be meaningful.  What is meaningful to the average Massage Therapist is that they can do their work and pay their bills.  So, of course, I foolishly thought that this credential could help with creating actual jobs and strengthening the profession.  It also seemed follow that the certificants would benefit from the massage consumers preference for credentialed professionals.  Was I the only one that thought that?

Many people just pay for things without thinking about them.  When we pay an organization or credentialing body, we are doing that because they in turn must do us a service.  In that vein, they work for us.  No one at the NCB in recent years seems to have grasped that concept.  Instead they have forged ahead as if they were invincible.  They are only invincible if we give them that power.  How could it have shifted so subtly and yet so dramatically?  How is it that the very organization that was so supportive of massage legislation could turn like a mad dog and dump huge sums of money (that we paid them) to work against legislation?  Can we fire them now?

A credential is only as good as its governing body.  At this point the value is highly questionable.  In spite of their horrible customer service, negligent management, selfish leadership, irresponsible stewardship, and blatant avarice, they managed to create a monster.  Not a gentle, misunderstood Frankenstein – a very expensive monster, who quickly forgot who created it, why it existed, and for what purpose it was created.  It became a purposeful, malicious, greed-driven monster.  The answer, at this point, is not to give the monster more legs and make it more expensive, nor is it to continue to monetarily reward the monster’s keepers for not doing their jobs.

We need to grasp the revolutionary concept that we are not just a lowly mass of practitioners; we are more powerful than we realize.  As a profession, we have more control than we ever imagined, if we can just stand together.  The monster is actually in our employ, it works for us, we feed it (pay it) and give it the power.  Some of the keepers may be power mad, but I don’t think they really understand the potential that could weigh in here.  It may be time to fire the monster.  I know that is very difficult to think about.  How many states are still ONLY requiring the NCB?  How many will have to go through lengthy, expensive legislative action to change that?  I have no idea, but I know people that read this blog do.  I can only hope it is really easier than it seems.  Most things are.

Things can change.  The average MTs need to come out of their small rooms and stand together.  They need to vote, show up to meetings and let their voice be heard.  When they do, I seriously doubt you will hear any of them say they cannot do their next massage, (or any session in the future) without the NCB.  When it comes to credentialing or a governing body, we have to look at what is truly necessary, essential, and functional.  We have to look to the future and stop paying others to pretend to while they line their own pockets and ignore us.

Let’s get clear – the sky is not falling.  One organization gone bad and going away will not stop a single practitioner from continuing to practice in the future.  It might save us all some money.  It will open new doors of opportunity.  It will create new ways of doing things.

When I check the date on the milk carton, if it is bad, I pour it out!

After 17 years I need to come clean. I feel I have to make this statement. I feel a deep sense of disappointment and betrayal. I am no longer Nationally Board Certified in Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork. The initials NCTMB have not been on my business card for well over a year now. It feels very strange to not do that. Not strange at all to me is that this is the impetus for me to finally blog.

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I am writing this as a massage therapist that has made a living doing massage therapy full-time for 21 years now. Even when I owned a school for 12 years I still had a full-time massage practice. I am used to speaking my mind, and most people that know me are not surprised when I do. People listen, laugh, or leave. I am okay with that. I am not writing this as an elected chapter leader. I am not a professional writer nor do I have delusions of grandeur that this will be read by anyone other than my dear friends and clients. I am aware there may be some backlash from this. It will be worth it if one person reads this and understands better what is going on in our industry.

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Seventeen years ago I sat for the first ever National Certification for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork exam on a warm Saturday in June, 1992. It seemed to me that anyone that was anyone in the field of massage & bodywork knew it was coming. We knew that it wasn’t just a small group of therapists. We knew it wasn’t just the AMTA that was making this happen. The AMTA perhaps was the beginning – the financial, organizational, and motivational concepts. However, a large number of practitioners from many bodywork fields and organizations participated in the actual creation- the item writing, the developing, and the implementation of the National Certification Exam (NCE). Everyone seemed to know it would change the playing field. Still I heard, time after time, about how it would be unfair it was for “The AMTA to do this”, or for “one organization to have the certification exam and sell insurance and be a membership organization”. It was clear they really didn’t get it.

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Seventeen years ago I had been practicing for 4 years. I refused to actually study for the exam- I wanted to know if I had it or not. Not if I could cram for it. This was a very meaningful thing for me. At the time I was a full-time employee at Hillcrest Hospital in Tulsa. I was one of the very few people at that time that had full-time employment as a Massage Therapist in a hospital. I worked at the Women’s Center and with the Geri-Psych Unit. For those that were pioneering and “bridging the gap”, so to speak, in this field an accredited exam was huge. Again, I was forging ahead where some people had said a massage therapists would never be. We would be eligible for a raise! (Because it was an actual board exam) So what if it was only an additional fifty cents an hour, it was the same thing the RNs got- it mattered! Because of it we were able to get a new level of credentialing as well as credibility. Credibility was very important, because we were all striving for massage and bodywork to be taken seriously. We would no longer be disregarded because our certification would come from a trade school. We were Nationally Board Certified in Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork. The fact that I got to do “Grand Rounds” very soon after I became Nationally Board Certified was not lost on me, or the physicians (that still to this day) refer to me.

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Over the years we all put the NCTMB initials on our cards. We took classes for CEUs like never before. We made sure we were getting our CEUs from NCBTMB approved providers. We signed up, paid more fees, and some of us prepared loads of papers to become approved educational providers. We prepared curriculums to prepare students to successfully practice massage, and be able to pass the exam. Some of us even looked down on those that decided to just “teach the test”. We knew then that was not enough. We knew then there was an intangible invisible burden on the schools and educators. No one really wanted to talk about that.

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Certification from the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork was actually a great idea. It actually worked for a long time. I was so proud the the NCE became accredited in about 2 years. Wow! It took the Recreation Therapists 12 years to accomplish that. It was very meaningful to those of us in unlicensed states. It was something that actually separated the “wheat from the chaff”. It was a way for the consumer to know they were getting and educated professional and not someone that had apprenticed and didn’t know their parotid from their piriformis. There were large numbers of practitioners that sat for the exam that was not required for licensing. They did it because it was meaningful and it did at one time matter. Not anymore.
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Small insidious changes began to occur:

• The grandfathering was extended. Then it became never ending; in that people to this day can do a portfolio with 4 years of             experience and only 200 hours of education. This looks better in print than it occurs in real life.
• The NCBTMB wasn’t too picky about what education people had to sit for the exam. So for instance, if someone had a 500 hour certificate, not from a state licensed school, but, from a community education program where they went to class for less than 80 hours and everything else was homework and practice – it was just fine.
• Later, the NCTMB suddenly had another level, the NCTM. (Hmm….just because people didn’t want to answer a few questions about oriental bodywork? Seriously!? ) There needed to be an easier exam?! That seemed strange to me when most of the people I was conversing with were asking about Advanced Credentialing and specific exams like medical massage, sports massage, prenatal bodywork etc…
• When it was announced that the NCBTMB would be accepting 300 hours of “distance learning” to qualify to sit for their exam, I was not only surprised, I was very disappointed. How many more ways can they water it down?

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Seventeen years ago my NCBTMB number was 306. I knew something didn’t feel right when 4 years later, I was given a new 4 digit number, and then later a longer number each time I recertified. It made me wonder how many times they were counting me! Did I count? What is this number that has to change?
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There have to be thousands of massage therapists that have volunteered with the National Certification Board over the years. They have held offices, performed speaking engagements, manned trade show booths, and have participated in numerous meetings (item writing, survey analysis, and leadership committees). I always felt a great sense of camaraderie during the events I had the opportunity to volunteer with. I always felt that we were all there for the benefit of the greater good, for the good of all, for all the right reasons. Then other changes started to occur. People were leaving; there was drama, accusations, and people were moving up in the organization almost too quickly.

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I did begin to wonder. After I had done a stint at item writing, and during a job task analysis survey committee process, someone said something that ignited me- we needed to change the word “effleurage” to “gliding” in all the exams to make the language more modern. They said this would be beneficial and reasonable, so that people would understand it better. What!? Did I hear that right? Were they joking?! I made a joke too- I suggested that if they were serious, we could change “friction” to “rubbing”, and “petrissage” to “squeezing”, and use the Journey tune “Lovin’, Touchin’ and Squeezin’” to help the students remember better! Nobody laughed. They were serious. So was I! I stated something along the lines that this would be the “Californication” of massage, and would be a big mistake. If Per Henrik Ling (a Swede) used the word “effleurage”, and it had served us well all this time, why would we change it now? Our heritage, history, and foundations are closer to Europe, France and Asia than San Luis Obispo. I really was upset- we already had the NCTM as well as the NCTMB, and now they felt a need to make it easier, and dump years of tradition and history. Unfortunately, there were other, more important voices than mine that were raised after that, but we all continued to move forward, progress, and work on the tasks at hand, even if we did not agree on every little thing.
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I didn’t wonder when one of the leaders at NCBTMB actually sat my husband and I down a couple of years ago and asked us point blank what we thought about them creating state chapters (He’s also massage therapist – formerly NCTMB as well). THUD! The other shoe had dropped. We told them it was a horrible idea! We told them that was not their mission… that as a “Credentialing Organization”, it seemed way out of their scope. We told them the AMTA had state chapters, and having state “units” would be seen as copying them. We also told them that it was difficult enough to get people to attend AMTA state chapter meetings, and tossing another “chapter” in the mix would be challenging for massage therapists. We also told them they would stand to lose a lot of certificants that were happily AMTA, ABMP and whatever other organization- they already had someone to purchase insurance from! We even said that would betray the public trust they had because the NCE credential was being used as a state licensing requirement. We didn’t really matter – they didn’t listen to us – I wonder why they bothered to ask now?
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Now it almost seems that there has been a cat and mouse game going on. The NCE is now required or accepted for state licensing in over 30 states. They had plenty of money, and were moving on with their plans, but not progressing on the one thing massage therapists need….Advanced Credentialing. Then the MBLEX appeared on the horizon. Suddenly there was a new exam! The MBLEX folks were very clear; they were a state licensing exam, not an advanced credential. So the NCB fearfully spent loads of money on suing state massage boards and fighting massage legislations that did not let them continue to be recognized exclusively. One massage therapist I spoke to was shocked. She knew the NCE was coming to her state while there was a legislative meeting. She thought they would be supporting their efforts. “The NCE turned on us like mad dogs as if we were not the same people that had been supporting them and promoting them and being certified by them all these years”, she said.
They obviously do not – they have a new program! They have created a new organization, the USA Massage Resource Alliance (usaMRA) that will be selling insurance and becoming a “membership” organization. The NCBTMB’s recent response to the AMTA’s decision to support the MBLEx was; “the existence of the MBLEx is “redundant” and will threaten the profession at large”. It is redundant to have two exams? Threaten the profession at large? Can they hear themselves? If two exams are redundant, how redundant is it to create yet another membership organization for the profession? They don’t have any experience being a membership organization. Wait a minute- one organization with the NCE, and now they are creating a membership and insurance organization too? Isn’t that what so many people violently opposed it 17 years ago when it was first created? Why yes it was! Then it was said that it wouldn’t be fair for one organization to do all these things. They wouldn’t understand that the NCB was separate from AMTA. So – what they really meant was they were upset that AMTA was doing all these things.
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The NCB’s new membership plan seems to depend on all of the AMTA, ABMP and other groups’ members (that are currently nationally board certified) staying nationally board certified and being members of their new NCB organization, USA Massage Resource Association (USAMRA). They are also depending on continuing to certify new graduates. In fact, they even have a new level of membership available in their new association for those practitioners that haven’t taken or passed one of their exams! I was speechless for several minutes after I read that the first time myself.

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Of course this could really boomerang in a very amusing way… What if every single member of the AMTA, ABMP, and all the other groups, just decided to stay loyal to their original groups? What if they decided not to recertify with NCE? Being from Oklahoma, there is something in my DNA that says “C’mon – Let’s try it….Just to watch what happens…It will be fun!”
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.So forgive me for ending this relationship. It won’t be the first time someone said, “We have been together for over 15 years, but they changed so much…and they are just not what I can have in my life right now”. There is usually a moral and/or ethical betrayal in that situation. In this situation, I feel there is a moral and ethical betrayal that cuts to the heart, hands and pocketbooks of every certificant.

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I am not Nationally Board Certified. I am not ready to make nice. I am appalled at their betrayal. I am disappointed -because fear, greed and power have undermined what could have been a progressive, beneficial board certification for massage and bodywork practitioners. I am upset because the “National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork” are hiring “spin doctors” who are better at winning popularity contests than making a living with their hands.
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As usual, we aren’t paying close attention – allow me to explain this again. They have hired a few members from at least one organization (and I am guessing there are others from other organizations as well). The problem is that it will not help. It isn’t the answer. Everyone thinks, “Oh yeah….They will go straighten the NCB out!” – That won’t happen. That’s not what they are being hired for. That is not where their expertise lies, I promise you. They are being hired because the NCB sees only one pie, and would like to keep the whole thing for themselves. Now, they had a whole pie once (and I think they let it spoil), they didn’t take great care of their certificants, they repeatedly betrayed the very profession they said that they supported, and they were not good stewards of their finances. It was impossible to get anyone on the phone- hell! They forgot to send out recertification notices at least one year, and that was the main thing they do! Now they want another pie (which isn’t theirs), so they are hiring people to convince you that it is indeed their pie. Do you really understand that? These NCB folks are gearing up to convince you that there is yet another valid massage organization you need to be a member of and they have created it especially for you. This new organization is not one you have already been member of for years – it isn’t any of the organizations that have supported you and the industry loyally for all of these years. I am offended at how stupid they must think we are.
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So I didn’t recertify with the NCB, (I have been certified since I graduated from Body Mind College in San Diego California in 1988), what are you going to do?
Xerlan Geiser-Deery, CMT