Joanne Brig­gs

Jochede Goodridge was look­ing for a place to es­tab­lish her mas­sage ther­a­py busi­ness. Qual­i­fied with a de­gree in Ap­plied Sci­ence–Mas­sage Ther­a­py from a New York uni­ver­si­ty and some work­ing ex­pe­ri­ence in Man­hat­tan, Goodridge de­cid­ed now that she was back home in Trinidad she could con­tin­ue what she left off in the Unit­ed States.

But when the land­lord asked if she could do those "spe­cial" mas­sages, she knew it was time to va­cate the premis­es.On an­oth­er oc­ca­sion, out of cu­ri­ousi­ty, she re­spond­ed to a news­pa­per ad look­ing for masseuse at a spa. "They asked about my age and asked if I was pret­ty. I asked if this was re­al­ly a spa. This was the re­sponse: the girls have to be young and pret­ty. If you are over 25, we don't want you.'

"We are no longer called masseurs for that very rea­son, be­cause of the con­no­ta­tion–you know the af­ter-glow ef­fect one gets af­ter a "spe­cial" mas­sage," she said, defin­ing the dif­fer­ence be­tween ther­a­peu­tic mas­sage and pros­ti­tu­tion.

Mas­sage ther­a­py is the study of body of mus­cles. Peo­ple in Goodridge's pro­fes­sion are ei­ther called ther­a­pists or body-work prac­ti­tion­ers. Grant­ed that there are well-es­tab­lished beau­ty Day Spas that of­fer Swedish and East­ern mas­sages and some may con­sid­er them ex­trav­a­gances but there is great val­ue in hav­ing good body work.

"Mas­sages can be looked at as pre­ven­ta­tive than cu­ra­tive ther­a­py which should be had twice a month," Goodridge said. Im­prov­ing blood cir­cu­la­tion and lymph drainage are two such rea­sons.

Goodridge is sec­re­tary of a new as­so­ci­a­tion called the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Mas­sage Ther­a­pists (CAMT), which aims to unite ther­a­pists and raise the stan­dard of the pro­fes­sion. While there is one agency that al­ready is­sues li­cences for mas­sage ther­a­pists, CAMT's in­ten­tion is to pro­vide ed­u­ca­tion sup­port so that the du­ties of the pro­fes­sion are ad­hered to. "We are look­ing for one syl­labus for all, so that we are on the same lev­el of un­der­stand­ing," she said.

Pres­i­dent of the As­so­ci­a­tion, John Davis said CAMT has a mem­ber­ship of 100 and has been a reg­is­tered NGO as of No­vem­ber 20, 2014 al­though it has been in ex­is­tence for a while.

"Al­lied modal­i­ties such as Rei­ki and Shi­at­su are al­so in­clud­ed in our group. The in­ten­tion is the reach to a wider cross sec­tion since T&T is pop­u­lat­ed with qual­i­fied or diplo­ma cer­ti­fied ther­a­pists," he said. "Peo­ple trained in mas­sage ther­a­py in the Caribbean would have stud­ied in­ter­na­tion­al­ly. The mar­ket for it is lim­it­ed so we are us­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty to reach out. Ed­u­ca­tion pro­mo­tion is the right con­cept."

Davis said com­pet­i­tive­ness is not an is­sue. For ex­am­ple, a phys­io­ther­a­pist's work is dif­fer­ent from a mas­sage ther­a­pist's but they can work side by side to en­sure prop­er func­tion and move­ment of the body mus­cles. He would like to see his pro­fes­sion recog­nised by the Min­istry of Health as an al­ly of the med­ical field. "We vis­it­ed the Min­istry of Health pre­vi­ous­ly and talks are on­go­ing," he said. Sim­i­lar­ly, he hopes to have a meet­ing with the Min­istry of Sport.

"Ath­letes are of­ten de­nied the ben­e­fit of mes­sage ther­a­pists since they could help with in­jury re­cov­ery," Davis said. "Like­wise, The T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee is aim­ing at 10 gold medals in 2024. Stake­hold­ers must in­clude mas­sage ther­a­pists."

In the mean­time, CAMT has been mak­ing their pres­ence felt this week to in­ten­si­fy their aware­ness cam­paign. Last Sat­ur­day, they launched their aware­ness week on the Bri­an Lara Prom­e­nade, of­fer­ing pro­mo­tion­al items, free chair mas­sages and ex­pos­ing passers by to a pos­si­ble ca­reer in mas­sage ther­a­py.

On Sun­day, CAMT were vol­un­teers at the UWI SPEC Half Marathon, eas­ing the mus­cle ten­sion in par­tic­i­pants be­fore and af­ter the race. On Tues­day, they of­fered their ser­vices to the bpTT and NP. On Wednes­day, they were at Guardian Group, St Au­gus­tine. Yes­ter­day, they vis­it­ed the Autis­tic So­ci­ety in the morn­ing and of­fered their ser­vices to Ernst and Young in the af­ter­noon. To­day, the mem­bers of CAMT will meet to dis­cuss their way for­ward.

"We want to part­ner with busi­ness­es so they could ben­e­fit from the val­ue of mas­sage ther­a­py. Did you know in Chi­na, mas­sages are manda­to­ry at their busi­ness­es? We want to be more than a mem­ber­ship or­gan­i­sa­tion, rather we want to be a busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tion to share knowl­edge as well as en­cour­age fel­low mem­bers to thrive. We want to nur­ture stu­dents in mas­sage ther­a­py and take them to next lev­el," Davis said.

One step is the in­tro­duc­tion of David Palmer, in­ven­tor of the chain mas­sage, who will of­fer an in­ter­na­tion­al­ly cer­ti­fied chair mas­sage prac­ti­tion­er's course at Mt St Bene­dict Re­gion­al Sem­i­nary be­tween No­vem­ber 6 and 8.

MORE IN­FO

For more in­for­ma­tion about Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion of Mas­sage Ther­a­pists con­tact 350-2778.