HudsonMemo7

__**Kenner Memo 7 - Historizing a Project**__

This memo was hard and I am definitely not in a position to historically contextualize bodywork in the US. There are a couple of books that I came across while doing this memo that I think are going to help in this way—I’ve listed these below. Besides key dates and events I did learn a lot more about yoga and massage therapy in the US. I learned more about the genealogy of yoga in the US, particularly the lineage of teachers, students, and various yoga traditions. This really began towards the end of the nineteenth century. Massage was also used (or at least explored) by medial professionals at this time, including Charcot and Freud. Based on my cursory investigation into the history of massage in the US, the field followed a time frame that paralleled gerontology; lots of positive, exploratory interest at the end of the nineteenth century and into the early twentieth, then a few fallow decades before a resurgence in the 1940s. Yet it wasn’t until the 1980s and 1990s that massage began to row exponentially—here I’m using membership in professional associations as a marker; this could also speak to the institutionalization or disciplining of massage therapy. Still, it seems from the early documents—such as the founding texts from 1949, see below—that massage therapists from this period were determined to be recognized as legitimate medical practitioners.

Yoga, on the other hand, did not truly emerge again until the 1970s after the Beatles—[|or so the story goes]—brought it into mainstream culture via Transcendental Meditation. But there are other channels here. I need to know more about what has been going on in the yoga and massage therapy worlds for the last thirty years. On the CAM front, it seems as though the late 1980s and early 1990s were big years, noting that the government established its first office in 1991 (later renamed NCCAM in 1997), and other organizations seemed to pop up around this time.

Again, I still need to map out this terrain and this wikipage may serve as a space where I continue to dump historical information. I haven’t yet been able to pinpoint a landmark year. Since my project will be situated in the contemporary moment I imagine I’ll pick a year closer to today, such as the early or late 1990s. The 1990s seemed to be a big healthcare decade, in one way or another.

1880 – Yoga is introduced to the US; in NYC by two physicians

1893 – World Parliament of Religion’s held in Chicago, address by Swami Vivekananda

1929 – //Art of Massage: A Practical Manual for the Nurse, the Student and the Practitioner// by John Harvey Kellogg

1943 – Founding of American Association of Masseurs and Masseuses (AMTA today)

1949 – Massage Registration Act

1989 – Founding of American Holistic Health Association: http://ahha.org/

1991 - Founding of Federation of Therapeutic Massage, Bodywork and Somatic Practice Organizations

1991 – Office of Alternative Medicine was established; now National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM)

2005 - //Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States//, influential report published by the Institute of Medicine


 * Books to Read:**

Calvert, Robert Noah. The History of Massage: An Illustrated Survey from around the World. 2002. http://www.amazon.com/History-Massage-Illustrated-Survey-around/dp/0892818816/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1233407882&sr=8-1

Eisenberg, David. Trends in Alternative Medicine Use in the United States, 1990-1997. JAMA. 1998; 280:1569-1575. http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/280/18/1569

De Michelis, Elizabeth. A History of Modern Yoga: Patanjali and Western Esotericism. 2005 http://www.amazon.com/History-Modern-Yoga-Patanjali-Esotericism/dp/0826487726/ref=pd_sim_b_1

Kadetsky, Elizabeth. First There Is a Mountain: A Yoga Romance. 2004. http://www.amazon.com/First-There-Mountain-Yoga-Romance/dp/0316890960