Well, I did it again. I opened my big mouth, probably where I shouldn't have, but I did it anyway. Because of this, I now find myself back in the middle of the fight over whether Reiki is massage or not.
A couple weeks ago, one of my students-to-be was at one of the local bookstores and found Reiki Magazine. First off, I never realized that there was a magazine strictly on Reiki. It is created and published by William Rand who runs the International Center for Reiki Training. (His web site is referenced by this one on the links page.) For those of you who don't know, William Rand is a big name in the Reiki industry, and creator of Karuna Reiki.
In the article, Rand was talking about ways of keeping Reiki free from government lawmakers, especially those that didn't understand it at all. In a couple of places, he talked about Florida's massage board which defined Reiki as massage. He also laid into them quite heavily for their thinking as it is obvious that it is simply a way of controlling the practice of Reiki even though it has nothing to do with the practice of massage.
I contacted the ICRT and was given an address to write to William directly. I explained that I felt his article was undoing what I had done when I went before the board two years ago to deal with the issue of my providership. On the date I was before the board (see the April 23, 2003 and April 24, 2003 journal entries), I felt that the board had changed this opinion and that they had decided Reiki was not massage. In fact they had gone so far to say that it was not massage, but massage related. The crux of the matter had to do with this definition as to whether Reiki is massage which had bearing on my getting my providership or not. If Reiki was massage, I had not been a massage therapist long enough to be teaching massage techniques. If Reiki was not massage, I had needed only to be teaching the subject for two years. In the fact that they passed my classes and providership, they effectively stated that Reiki was not massage. (The providership allows me to teach Reiki to massage therapists and give them continuing education credits for it.)
William, of course, had not heard of this as I didn't exactly announce it to the world, although I did pass that information to Jan at his organization to let them know what the status of things were. Everything William has seen (as well as Deborah Miller, the attorney heading up the coalition for holistic health care freedom or whatever its called) was that the board still considered Reiki to be massage and did not know anything about what transpired during the meeting that I was at. He was kind enough to give me a link to Deborah Miller whom I have corresponded with through e-mail several times.
The way she sees it, the massage board is its own autonomy with the power and ability to define massage anyway they want to. The fact that they have never stated that Reiki is massage in the written laws comes under a very, very gray area. Basically the board can make any opinion they want, and a practitioner may not know that it has even made this opinion until somebody shows up at the door with a cease and desist order. That's comparable to the president deciding one day that he doesn't like people with blue shirts, and that people who wear blue shirts are breaking the law. Actually, it is verbal legislation that is never written down and no one can ever be aware of it until they find that they have broken the law.
Realistically, someone taken to court over these orders could probably get off as the opinions are physically not stated in the laws. However, involved with that is the cost of going to trial, the hiring of an attorney, the long drawn out period where one's business could effectively be closed down until a judge makes a decision. According to Deborah, one could sue the state and the board of massage, however such entities are protected from lawsuits as this, and although the plaintiff may win, there might not be any compensation to cover the cost of the attorney in the trial and so forth.
(Similar things have happened locally as my teacher Kay was refused a license to do psychic readings in the city of St. Augustine Florida because of a law that banned psychics and soothsayers. This went on for 17 years until she sued the city in federal court. During the trial, there was some law that protected the people in the licensing department from testifying on the stand. Basically they could not be called to tell why they did not want her to have a license. Another similar thing happened several years ago in St. Johns County, which is the county that St. Augustine is in. They passed a law stating that psychics could not work within a half-mile of each other. This effectively did away with psychic fairs in the county. Now, personally, I'd like to see a law that says lawyers can't work within a half-mile of each other. J The law is illegal, and restricts free trade, but until someone spends the thousands of dollars necessary to push it through federal court, it will never change.)
Today I got a call from a Reiki practitioner in Gainesville. He is actually looking to work in an office with other health-care professionals, and these other professionals do want him there. His problem is that he is facing the issue of licensing. Like me, he got an occupational license to practice Reiki in his county, but he has no state licensing to satisfy the massage board or whatever other entity wants to control it. It is thought that he might be able to work under the auspices of one of the other healthcare professionals there under their license. I'm not sure if this is going to work, but it sounds like the best path at the moment.
Deborah Miller asked him to petition the board of massage for the transcript of the board meeting that I attended. In fact they are asking only for the parts dealing with Reiki. He said that by law, the board has to honor his request within 60 days, but it usually takes 59 days for them to do anything about it. There have also been cases where they seem to not be able to find the recorded or written transcripts of certain meetings. Hmm. What they're looking for is to see if the attitude of the board actually did change as I thought it did during the meeting that I was before them.
The board today still maintains that Reiki is massage. In fact there are FAQs on one part of their site that specifically states that Reiki is massage. Unfortunately, judging how the board does not do a very good job of keeping up their web site, it could have simply been missed or just left up there because no one wanted to change it. Or, it could also be that they really didn't change their opinion. The problem with that is if their opinion is still that Reiki is massage, my providership is illegal, at least for another six months. After that time I’ll have been a massage therapist long enough to teach massage if I want to.
At one time when the board had been contacted, they claimed that massage was energy work, therefore all energy work was massage. Being a person that has worked with logic extensively over the years, I see some flaws in their thinking. If one follows their thought patterns, then apples are red fruit, therefore all red fruit are apples.
I am being as helpful as I can to Deborah, and Terry in Gainesville, and William. At the same time, I'm trying to keep a low profile. The last thing I want is to see the board coming down on me and taking away my providership. I also don't want them dreaming up other possible punitive actions even though I've given them no cause to do so.
So, now that I thought I had actually won the fight that I didn't want to end up in the middle of, I seem to be back in the middle of the fight again. Oh well, live and learn.