# Any massage therapists in the house?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-massage-therapists-in-the-house/694506>\
**Category:** In My Humble Opinion\
**Created:** [July 31, 2014, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-massage-therapists-in-the-house/694506 "2014-07-31T17:32:31Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 2

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**Author:** ![papergirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/aca169/32.png) [@papergirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/papergirl)\
**Post date:** [August 7, 2014, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-massage-therapists-in-the-house/694506/21 "2014-08-07T23:24:34Z")

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Yeah, I’m more than a little ambivalent about chakras, energy work, etc. If I have to learn about the ideas/philosophies to pass the test, okay…but I don’t see myself aligning chakras for a living.  
The chakra jewelry I’ve seen is really cool, though! 🙂

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**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\
**Post date:** [August 8, 2014, 6:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-massage-therapists-in-the-house/694506/22 "2014-08-08T06:37:57Z")

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You’ll primarily learn Western style massage techniques (specifically, Swedish), but you will probably get at least some introduction to the Eastern style techniques, which tend to be more grounded in Eastern style mysticism – chakras, meridians, [_qi_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qi), reflexology, shiatsu, Reiki, stuff like that. Later on, you have options to take more advanced and specialized training. Then you can go into any of that stuff (or not) as you wish.

There’s an interesting form of massage called [Watsu®](http://www.harbin.org/community/watsu/) that’s done in a heated pool of water. It involves a lot of stretching exercises (that the therapist does to the client) while floating in the pool. I knew a practitioner who couldn’t do regular massage because she has Fibromyalgia, but she got into doing Watsu.

There are other specialties: Geriatric massage for elderly clients; maternity massage for pregnant clients (there are specialty massage tables with a pit in the middle of them so a pregnant client can lay face down comfortably with her belly hanging in the pit); hot stone massage (sounds like woo to me, but clients swear by it – at least it apparently feels good); and options for, y’know, actual medically prescribed medical therapy.

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**Author:** ![papergirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/aca169/32.png) [@papergirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/papergirl)\
**Post date:** [August 8, 2014, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/any-massage-therapists-in-the-house/694506/23 "2014-08-08T22:37:20Z")

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I want someone to do Watsu to me now! I read about a local therapist that does stretching-type massage, but I can’t remember what it was called…just that it wasn’t the usual Western style. Her clients swore by it, and I thought it sounded awesome.

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