We, the undersigned, believe that the Federation of State Massage Therapy Board's Model Practice Act (MPA) for the massage therapy profession is neither valid nor fair. Their efforts to subsume all bodywork practices into massage therapy demonstrate deep and fundamental misunderstanding about those practices, and therefore will not serve their goal of protecting the public.

The MPA will force all bodywork professionals to take the MBLEx, a massage therapy licensing exam, which was created by the Federation and provides them an income stream. Not only is this an obvious conflict of interest, but this exam does not test basic competency in other fields of bodywork.

The MPA also suggests that a massage therapy education is a necessary prerequisite to other bodywork professions. This is simply not true.

We call on the FSMTB to make an effort to work with, and educate themselves about, other bodywork therapies to establish guidelines for appropriate regulation of these professions.