From: Janice Marie Durand
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2014 6:17 PM
To:
Subject: letter sent to Board
To: the North Carolina Board of
Massage & Bodywork Therapy:
Date: Thursday, June 26th, 2014
Re: Input Ad Hoc Committee meeting
June 30th Proposed CE Changes
From:
Janice Marie Durand NC LMBT #1349,
Director of Tree of Life
Center, NCBTMB CE provider #312991-00
I share here, as an experienced CE
provider for many NC,LMBT’s thru the years. As Tree of Life Center
Director and educator we offer small quality professional Continuing education
enhancement classes as an NCBTMB CE provider since 2002. I’ve been a NC,
LMBT since it’s inception 1/2001 and prior to that held a Florida Massage License
while practicing in North Carolina from 1991-2001 after graduating from a NC
massage school.
I’d like to add to the input and
questions that I hope you might consider in the important decisions that are
now being made with this upcoming June 30th, 2014 ad hoc committee meeting
on the proposed changes to the continuing education statute (Rule .0700) and
recommendations made by the FSMTB committee.
These decisions will deeply impact many of us and our livelihood’s as well as
what is potentially available for many NC LMBT’s to have access to in choosing
CE classes. You sit with many of these decisions and as a member of the
NC Coalition of Massage and Bodywork Instructors, we want to help shape and
have input into the very thing that will determine our profession’s wellbeing
as both Educators and Therapists.
~Would you consider that NCBTMB
still be an option to cover professional enhancement classes and FSMTB be
responsible for ethics and safety classes? Many of us have gone thru the
many evolutions of NCBTMB and it’s continued to evolve and change and learn
from past mistakes. I have finally, in the past years, forged an
excellent and functional, personable and professional relationship with
NCBTMB. They have been helpful and supportive as I have overseen as
director, Tree of Life Center with 6 other CE instructors. For all too
many years as the NCBTMB CE system was evolving it was common to leave messages
and emails and never hear back from anyone and communications went into a
vacuum. I am confident and trusting now that there are a couple people by name
that can help, answer questions and guide in a professional and responsive way
and they also know me by name. I am reluctant to loose this valuable
asset that has been fostered and is cooperative and co-creative after it not
being absent for so long. Can you guarantee a comparable system in
it’s place? Will the new system be bureaucratic and
impersonal and at what expense? Or... Will we need to wade thru the
evolution of yet a new organization as it starts from scratch... or will it be
a big business “one size fits all” approach that takes the soul out of
the work that we take seriously and love?” These are all questions and
concerns I sit with and ask you to preserve these resources that presently
exist and not throw everything away if possible.
~ If NCBTMB is no longer the
resource for CE’s in NC, I would request that our time periods on our
current NCBTMB re-certification status be honored by our NC Board decisions before
we would each need to switch to a new process. For example, a month
of administrative time will be put aside this fall to re-certified with NCBTMB
again for the next 3 years. I would like to enter that administratively
in a confident and positive way being assured that it will be honored and not
cast aside a year from now and not wasted time. The financial/time
investment will take me away from teaching and private practice in order to do
this and I am not sure if it will hold up as valid within this 3 year period
with changes that may come thru the NC Board decisions and how that will impact
the 6 teachers offering CE’s thru TLC and many of the competent and qualified
CE educators in our state.
~ I question, what the actual new
process will be to become a CE provider and if as individuals & smaller
continuing education providers who provide quality education in our state, we
will even be able to go thru this new process? Will there
be restrictions and fees that will make it not as easy as the present way we
apply? Is there a trend in the decisions, like so much else in our
world, to intentionally eliminate some of us and gear toward bigger
providers and a ‘big business’ model that is the opposite of what massage
therapists who touch people thru body, mind and soul, want from CE
classes? I ask you to please keep intact this integrity of existing
values embedded within our profession from the top down for providers and
therapists to continue to develop and enhance our field while still
keeping safety uncompromised and in the forefront for the public.
So often it is this sort of feedback we get from students and has been
important in their professional CE development to have these values aligned in
every step of the CE educational process.
~ Another question I sit with
is: Will Massage Therapists and Bodyworkers in our state and elsewhere have
the same access to diverse continuing education trainings with this new
process? Or... What will be eliminated?
~ Please consider limiting CE
hrs. for self-care but not totally removing this category. I have
tracked many therapists thru CE teaching who are giving so much in their
practices with not enough replenishing time for themselves. I feel the
more we teach practitioner skills such as tools to be grounded and embodied
within themselves as well as developing more of their ‘neutral-witness selves’
thru self-tracking that we enhance the
“protection of the public.”
Self-Care leads to less burn-out and less burn-out leads to less ethical
situations arising. That has been my experience in the many years
teaching ethics.
~On a different note, Is it
the intention of our NC Board to take the Energy Based exemption out of our
current licensing law eventually based on the definition that FSMTB has
included it in the defining of what Massage Therapy is? This is
important for me to know so that I can ethically and accurately let my students
know. Presently, I train student in Polarity Therapy and although 90% of
my students are Licensed massage therapist, there are 10% who are not and
purely work doing energy work with clients fully clothed and elderly elderly
populations and cancer patients who are not interested in Massage Therapy but
respond well to energetic I need to know this trend and information to
fairly educate these students and would like a response from the NC Board in
where they stand with this particular issue so I can do so in a responsible
manner.
I am very grateful for each of you
and the time you have taken to consider some of these questions and points as
you sit with these broad sweeping decisions with so many angles to take into
account.
I hope to meet you at future board
meetings to stay educated on changes that are abound,
Janice Marie Durand
919 563-4454 jmdchi@mindspring.com
4316 Bradford Ridge Rd. Efland, NC
27243
Janice Marie Durand,
LMBT 919 563-4454
jmdchi@mindspring.com