ABMP Podcasts for Massage Therapists & Bodyworkers

Ever wonder what would have happened if you had made different choices in your life? In this episode, Allison sits down with Christy Cael—author, instructor, bodyworker, and biomimicry master—whose story has taken turns she never dreamed possible. Christy’s success, she reflects, is all thanks to her willingness to say yes to opportunities that she at first wasn’t sure she could accomplish. 

In practice as a bodyworker and body-psychotherapist for 20 years, Dr. Cynthia Price worked extensively with individuals who were disconnected from their bodies due to stress, trauma, and pain. Inspired by Focusing, an experiential psychotherapy approach of present attention to the “felt sense,” Dr. Price developed Mindful Awareness in Body-Oriented Therapy (MABT) as a mindfulness-based approach for use in body-centered therapy practice.

T-cell lymphoma is a relatively rare form of cancer that can affect lymph tissues, bones, organs, and the skin. In this episode we’ll look at this condition in two different clients with very different presentations that take us to similar conclusions.

Massage therapists’ hands are a powerful tool. Like an extension of the brain, hands are a highly intelligent sense organ that can perceive and communicate without words. But are we taking them for granted? In this episode, Heath and Nicole Reed discuss the “elusive obvious” that is our hands.

A client has Dupuytren’s contracture, a progressive thickening and shrinking of the palmar fascia that causes her pinky finger to be bent all the time. Now it seems to be starting on the other side. Is massage safe? Can it help slow the progress? What is Dupuytren’s contracture, anyway?

Can you get too many massages? #Wellness has taken on a whole new meaning. In this episode, Allison highlights the autonomic part of the nervous system and relates it to the balance we seek in wellness and in the work we do as massage therapists. 

Tracy Walton’s belief is simple: Everyone deserves compassionate touch. She has developed guidelines that are already at work in hospitals, massage schools, and clinics across the country. This includes a pressure scale she developed, based on the work of Gayle MacDonald and Dawn Nelson. In this episode, Tracy discusses her beginnings in oncology massage, how frustration in the classroom helped develop the pressure scale, and her hopes of trauma-informed massage therapy instruction in the classroom.

Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), called myalgic encephalomyelopathy (ME) in other countries, is one of my least favorite topics. It is just so slippery, and we understand very little about how it comes about, how to treat it, and how massage therapy might help.

Can reducing excess tension during bodywork sessions promote career longevity? Author and educator David Lobenstine thinks so. David is a proponent of efficient practitioner performance, and during this podcast we talk about his recent article in Massage & Bodywork magazine: “Find Your Floppy.”

From appendicitis to vertigo: a quick tour through the first year of I Have a Client Who . . . episodes in alphabetical order. I am so grateful to our listeners and podcast hosts and sponsors who have made all this possible, and I’m looking forward to another great year of I Have a Client Who . . . stories!

Have you ever tried to ignore something or someone only to find that it gets amplified and becomes even more of an annoyance? In this episode, Allison compares the quadratus lumborum to being the youngest child in a very large family of very loud muscles.

Amelia Vogler had a “humdinger” of a family life growing up in North Carolina. She was influenced by both her father’s funeral home business and her mother’s horticultural background. From her father, she learned about grief and therapeutic space, and from her mother she learned about physical and spiritual blooming and flowering. Amelia joins the podcast to talk about the challenge of growing up an empath.