Touch Therapy & Advertising

I am curious on how you will move forward with advertising for massage therapists with the new title act coming up, where it will become illegal to call yourself a CMT or CMP without being certified through the CAMTC (CA Massage Therapy Council). I know some other states' publications have disallowed people to falsely represent themselves. I am just curious because I am wondering about ways that this is going to be enforced.

Thoughts?

We don't expect we'll have to police bodywork therapists who offer their services on these pages. The situation is probably analogous to our current policy with psychotherapists, who publish listings stating their credentials, work experience, and, where required, state license numbers. With OPEN EXCHANGE's widespread readership, therapists who are out of compliance or misrepresent their credentials tend to be exposed quickly.

We're gratified that the massage therapy profession is finally getting the respect and recognition that it deserves. However, we're still not clear to what extent the act of touching may become stigmatized. Will unlicensed providers start to advertise as "peer massage" or "touch education"? (Teaching is generally protected under the constitutional right of free assembly.) Will there be two tier pricing, higher for licensed bodywork therapists and lower for peers? Will unlicensed providers be driven underground? We invite all interested parties to offer comments, which we'll publish on these pages.

Please Decriminalize Massage Therapy

Re. the "McKinnon Bodywork School Update: State Licensure For Massage Therapy" (OPEN EXCHANGE, July-Sept. 2009): Historically, no "volunteer" or two tiered state level regulation has survived. As you know, it is built into this "volunteer" bill that the lower tier die.

You can read a letter I sent to the Berkeley City Council after speaking at their public hearing on the 14th of July, Please Decriminalize Massage and Touch In Berkeley," at http://iscaaty.blogspot.com/

Regarding the "two tier" system for bodyworkers, our present experience with other licensed professionals offers some useful precedents. Peer counselors and group leaders who offer instruction, without performing "psychotherapy" or "medicine" as such, are practicing their right of free assembly as guaranteed by the United States Constitution. Sharing information among consenting adults, i.e., adult education, isn't against the law quite yet.

Real Success / Healthy Shame

I totally agree with Sue Roberts' beautiful article, ("Skillful Handling of Fear, Loneliness, Dead Ends," OPEN EXCHANGE, July-Sept. 2009.) What a pity that so many people feel stressed and self-critical at not being able to live up to our culture's hyped-up standard of material success. The surest way to real success—defined as what brings your true self forward—is to accept and even love what is true right now.

Sue Roberts shares her rich experience and practical attitudes that help with emotional balance. I especially like her response to shame about our neediness, that it's just shame FEELINGS, not real shame. 'Real shame' in this sense would be healthy shame. These shadowy feelings of shame that linger from the past are remembered feelings that only FEEL real in the present. With [the help of] a therapist, we can stop fighting them alone in our daily lives.

Sue Roberts lists under Counseling, and has written another article for this issue.

Solar City A Capitalist Plot

"America's First Solar City" did not ring true. (OPEN EXCHANGE, "Healthy Living News," July-Sept. 2009.)

Here are several problems with such an idea: Any time you allow such a centralized solar system the owners get rich off of free sun and the tenants pay thru the nose, forever.

Florida is a flood plain. It is a mistake to build any housing in Florida, unless it is 30' above sea level.

My father used to say that if we allow the capitalists to build solar power, it will just be a trick to sell free solar power to us. Instead, each house should be built decentralized, with solar panels, so no one can sell us the power, and so no power is lost in transmission. 50% of the power put on any GRID is lost in transmission, due to resistance in the wires.

My colleagues and I have built a solar powered house near Yosemite that requires no power from PG&E. It is totally self-sustainable and stands alone. This is my way of opposing the growth of nuclear power.

Each one of us can do the same. A solar powered house pays for itself in seven years. We can build one for you!

Kudos to YOU for being a sustainable energy pioneer! Meanwhile, we'll have to wait to see if the proposed Solar City becomes a reality. Despite many obvious benefits of owning your own solar panels and going "off the grid," many people would prefer their power company to handle the details, just as some people prefer the convenience of renting to home ownership. Does it have to be "either-or"? Why not both? Politics aside, the first order of business is to slow climate change by converting to clean, renewable energy.

PS: Several high profile environmentalists, most notably Stewart Brand, James Lovelock, and Patrick Moore, say that nuclear energy needs to be part of our energy mix, at least for the interim. More about this in upcoming issues!

Really Leary Of Psychedelics

Your magazine is supposed to be about healthy lifestyles, but there's a lot of trash in it. Trash about sex and groups where you have promiscuity and non-monogamous relationships. It's trashy and illegal, evil and wrong and horribly destructive. That's a horrible thing you're doing, promoting cults. The other horrible thing you're doing is with Tim Leary. Do you know how many thousands of people all over the world committed suicide after taking LSD? Like Diane Linkletter, Art Linkletter's daughter. If you promote these activities you're criminals and murderers, too.

Sex between consenting adults, behind closed doors, is pretty much legal in California, and most of us think we're psychologically healthier without government intrusion. So we plead "Guilty As Charged!" to advocating sexual freedom. But promoting cults? No way! Cults imply some kind of hidden agenda or secret recruitment, to which we plead an emphatic "Not Guilty!" The therapists we highlight almost universally say that the best way to build intimacy is with honest and open communication.

Regarding psychedelics, last issue we asked the rhetorical question, "Is it time for a reexamination of Tim Leary's life and times?" ("In Conversation with Ralph Metzner," OPEN EXCHANGE, July-Sept. 2009.) We'll record your response as a definite "No." But you really should get your facts straight. First and foremost, the use of LSD was legal when Tim Leary and hundreds of other researchers were studying its effects. And it's not a crime to try to repeal the current prohibition!

It's true that Art Linkletter blamed his daughter's suicide on LSD, but the Los Angeles coroner found no evidence of drugs in her system. This is just another urban legend—check the records yourself. And as for "thousands" of people dying from acid, well, the facts don't bear that out, either. According to "The Consumers Union Report on Licit and Illicit Drugs by Edward M. Brecher and the Editors of Consumer Reports Magazine, 1972," reviewing over 25,000 documented uses of LSD by nearly 5,000 people: "No instance of serious, prolonged physical side effects was found either in the literature or in the answers to the questionnaires." Furthermore, the published LSD literature, "directly records only one suicide and that in a schizophrenic patient." One LSD death! Compare that to alcohol, which is responsible for about 25,000 roadside deaths each and every year—and it's a legal drug! For the record, OPEN EXCHANGE doesn't advocate the use of LSD or any other drug, legal or illegal. On the other hand, we're suspicious that the government's "War on Drugs" has ruined far more lives than the drugs themselves. Read more about Tim Leary's colleague Ralph Metzner elsewhere this issue.

Whole Foods Boycott A Leftist Plot

Let's see: Whole Foods' CEO John Mackey speaks out against government mandated healthcare in a New York Times OP-ED, and then his stores are boycotted? So, if you don't like the message you shoot... the grocer??? Whoa!

Let's back up a moment. Sure, progressives are frustrated. After all, town hall meetings on the subject of healthcare reform have been hijacked by right wing goons bent on disrupting free speech.And corporate media has only fanned the flames by exaggerating the protests and ignoring the facts about healthcare. The media still lets fly charges and counter charges about whether 47 million are uninsured—or is it "only" 9 million? And there's precious little analysis about how the U.S. can have "the best healthcare system in the world" when we have one of the highest rates of infant mortality, or when overall life expectancy is several years less than most countries with "socialized" medicine.

So how do some Lefties respond to all this frustration? By organizing a wrongheaded boycott against a company headed by a principled—and arguably wrongheaded—libertarian who dares to express his reservations about public healthcare proposals. Since when did free speech become intolerable to the Left? The best way to counter a bad argument is with a good argument—not to bash the speaker! As Voltaire might have said, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it!"

The Whole Foods boycott isn't about union busting, or grape pickers, or buying local, or "fair trade," or maybe even about healthcare. Whole Foods is, after all, politically correct on some, if not all, of these issues. But in this crummy economy there's lots of pent up hostility toward the buff, beautiful yuppies who can afford to drop hundreds of dollars at a time for organic heirloom tomatoes, baked sesame chips, and fruity Zen spritzers. Sour grapes, anyone?

Now, those who don't like Whole Foods can always shop at independent grocers or farmers' markets or grow their own veggies. "Vote with your dollars," as they say. But an organized boycott against a quality brand like Whole Foods is not likely to work, and could very well backfire if it did. (Republicans are even staging Whole Foods "buy-cotts.") So what's the "politically correct" corporate alternative? Safeway? Walmart? C'mon!

If the Left is serious about universal healthcare they should put pressure where it will do the most good, on the real foes of healthcare reform: "moderate" Democrats, the CEOs of Big Pharma and Big Insurance, and the corporate media which all too often fails in its responsibility to keep the electorate properly informed.

The healthcare debate is well worth having, and we agree that the news media needs to support honest civil discourse rather than headlining with staged protests.

By way of full disclosure: Several wonderful independent grocery stores generously make space available to distribute OPEN EXCHANGE and other free community publications. These include Rainbow Grocery in San Francisco, Berkeley Bowl on Shattuck Avenue, The Alameda Natural Grocery, Oliver's Market in Cotati, and New Leaf Markets in Santa Cruz. Several outstandingWhole Foods Markets in Marin and North Bay also carry OPEN EXCHANGE, and we are grateful for their support. If the managers of these stores can tolerate a rich diversity of opinion in the marketplace of ideas as well as the produce aisle, it would be hypocritical of us not to respect their CEOs' free speech rights as well.