Mindful Medical Massage Therapy for PTSD
and Veteran’s Career Opportunities
Introducing Mindful Medical Massage Therapy for PTSD at the Veteran’s Administration in 2025
Relieving PTSD (and Other Afflictions)
AND Giving Veteran’s Career Opportunities, Too!
— Or Attempting Too, Anyway —
PLEASE NOTE:
This is a very ambitious and highly speculative Potential Project.
It might not be fully workable in the details I’ve outlined here, but it could
possibly come about in different ways rather than exactly as presented here.
Back in 2017-18, I was caring for my Elderly & Sick parents in Surprise, Arizona. One thing I learned along the way of working with my now-deceased Dad on his VA situation and benefits was how many veterans are in pain, in distress, and have little in the way of career opportunities. They many of them needed an income. But the barrier to entry to most jobs was too high form amy of them.
And if they had PTSD or such, getting motivated to find a new, good paying line of work often seemed too high of a drain on their psycho-physical resources. Mindful Medical Massage Therapy with Myo-Structural Balancing & Yoga Therapy might have some potential.
However, it’s very often easier to earn an income if your profession includes or builds on your past experiences in life. ESPECIALLY if those experiences are very intense and in some ways profound, or have had profound implications.
And as the Buddha once said, one’s profession or occupation should ideally be their Therapy In Life.
Veterans who have gone through PTSD or related symptoms and gotten through it are more likely to be able to support their fellow veterans through the process as well. They would be far more likely to relate to and help a vet with PTSD.
Potential for Veteran’s Career Opportunities in Mindful Medical Massage Therapy & Treating PTSD
So my plan was to develop a program, preferably under the supervision of (for example) an orthopedic surgeon AND a physical therapist. A neurologist would be great too. And more than one of each would be even better. Their primary job in this project would be to do initial patient interviews, make sure there were no other issues needing to be taken care of first. Then, ideally, they would participate in MY initial interview and evaluation of the Veteran with the affliction, and approve, or at least acknowledge, my treatment plan.
Then, I would find, or the doctors would refer to me, 6 or so Veterans with, for example, PTSD, and IDEALLY, had some interest in possibly becoming a soft tissue therapist. To be fair for a pilot program, I would ask these initial candidates to have no significant physical tissue damage (as in, no amputations, crushed bones, severly lacerated soft tissues, or such), and at least be open to the possibility of such an “alternative therapy.’
So their trauma would be primarily in high states of musculo-fascial hypertonicity producing significant pain & dysfunction. It is very reasonable to expect there are many former military men and women who have been through extreme, stress-inducing situations without too much actual tissue damage such as ripping or tearing to the musculo-fascial fibers.
Essentially, we’d be looking for veterans — potential Clients or Patients — whose primary issues are in the psycho-neuro-musculo-fascial system, rather than actually torn or crushed tissues. Even though often challenging, these are potentially VERY treatable with Mindful Medical Massage Therapy with Myo-Structual Balancing & Yoga Therapy.
Not that we cannot help the more tissue-damaged too, but for this particular pilot project, we’ll want to focus on the psycho-muscular elements of stress & tension. This is in part due to the fact that in MANY cases even those in severe pain are people with NO noticeable tissue damage. Heavily lacerated (torn or cut) tissues are on a different level of pathology than psycho-muscular.
Also, for the participants who might be interested in becoming musculo-fascial therapists, we do not want to set the bar too high for their initial experiences in giving and receiving therapy. Experience with more complex issues will come later when they have more confidence in their abilities.
And given there are SO many people in the civilian population with primarily soft tissue issues rather than severe lacerations, this would be a more fair study, and in the long run help a LOT more people, veterans and civilians, if successful.
Treating the Veteran for PTSD & Professional Therapeutic Education, Too
We would then proceed with treatment, and I would work with the veterans several times per week (3 is a good number) for maybe 8 weeks. The doctors should periodically reevaluate based on their preferred time frames. Seesoin time would probably go from two to three hours, if possible.
Some therapy instructors will say things like a client cannot tolerate more than, say, 20 minutes of effective manual soft tissue therapy. They say the client gets “burned out” or something like that.
Yet most of those who say therapy is too invasive to be tolerated, is because of their style of treatment. It is very often one form or another of Deep Tissue Therapy. That is where the therapist feels the need to “get in there” and dig around in the deeper musculo-fascial tissues right away and “get the job done.” They are “breaking up the adhesions” and “breaking down the muscle knots.”
Very often, clients of such therapists spend a lot of energy tolerating or resisting the therpsits manual pressure. There is NO need for this.
For those who say that a Client cannot handle long periods of thearpeutic intervention:
I have 44 years of experience treating severe cases with Mindful Medical Massage Therapy. Most of my therapy sessions have been three or more hours long.
Too many therapists work excessively aggressively. But when a client is not experiencing ANY intrusive, invasive, or aggressive sensations, and are going into deeper and deeper states of relaxation as the session progresses, they most of the time do NOT get irritated from the therapy.
For me, we use a NO Pain, MORE Gain philosophy. There should NEVER be enough pressure that the client is tolerating or resisting the sensations being produced by the Therapsit’s pressure. The Client should be INVITING the sensatiaon, NOT FFIGHTING the sensations. With The DSL Method, the Client’s first job while on the treatment table is to always let their Therapist KNOW when the sensataion is getting too intrusive. The therapist then backs off until the Client returns to a more neutral state.
Therefeore, we can spend a LOT more time in each session, spend a LOT more time working with each muscle, or fibers within a muscle, and build up a lot of neurological momentum that is difficult to do in shorter sessions. Intense sensations are okay, as long as the Client is still INVITING and NOT FIGHTING or Resisting those sensations.
Very Often, the Client falls asleep! … NO, there is NO need for the Client to be enduring ANY discomfort. It does NOT take much longer to get into the deepr tissues witht hat method, becasue the Client is relaxing the whole time.
The treatments should, when possible, involve Participatory Medicine, such as Mindfulness applied to receiving hands-on therapy. The therapy sessions would be structured such that the veteran would be educated in the process of being treated. Becasue there IS an “Art” to recieving bodywork and massage therapy.
Particpapatory Medicine versus spectator medicine:
Part of the PTSD phenomenon is the victim’s mind and emotions are very often as or more damaged than their soft tissues are. Having them actively “participate” in the therapeutic process engages more of their full-spectrum BodyMind systems, including memories, thoughts & feelings. This is accomplished primarily by a running dialogue between the Client & Therapst so the Client stays as focused as possible on the sensations generated from the manual therapy.
This can be as simple as the Client just giving the Therapist in-the-moment feedback as to how well they are accepting the sensations generated by the manual pressure produced by the Therapists’ hands. That can be just three words of instruction: Less, Deeper, Edge.
In order to maintain the NO Pain, MORE Gain philosophy of the DSL Method of Therapy, when the pressure from the Therapist is generating too much intense sendsation or pain, the Client says “LESS,” and the Therapists lightens up their pressure. When the Client says “Deeper,” the Therapist increases manual pressure. This is done very incrementally and gradually.
When the sensation is “just right,” the Client says “EDGE.” That is the place where they are getting the most amount of relaxatoin and NOT resistance to the sensations they are experiencing. … We call it Playing The Edge of Pain, Fear & Resistance.
Modern Neurological Research has demonstrated that the very act of paying attention produces positive changes in the nervous system and brain. Mindful Medical Massage Therapy brings full-body attention to the Clients state of being, nnot just mental activity.
IF after 3 or 4 sessions, each veteran had significant or at least recognizable improvement, or at least felt the therapy was beneficial, we would continue on with therapy for them. Then, when the veteran felt he or she was “out of the woods,” we would have final interview with the doctor(s).
The doctors would then decide whether what I was doing was valuable enough, OR NOT. But if SO …
We would continue with the therapy until the veteran was fully functional and recovered, or sufficiently so that their life could return to a more “normal” state.
At some point, individual veterans under treatment would decide whether they wanted to pursue what I was doing with them as a Mindful Medical Massage Therapy Career Path.
If so, we would then pursue such a treatment schedule until some number of veterans (6 to 12, should be an even number) were on board to become soft tissue therapists. When we reached that number, we would start the training & coaching program. Then, THEY would be treating other veterans under my supervision, and hpefully under the auspices of the VA the program is being administered at.
If there are only a few to start, I would work with them individually if necessary.
Their training program would be VERY comprehensive, giving a very high level of knowledge of all relevant sciences — advanced anatomy, kinesiology, physiology, neurology, pathology — to the extent they could talk to a neurologist or orthopedist and the doctor would KNOW these people “knew their stuff.”
Getting the Mind Involved
They would receive SOME psychological training, NOT to be psychotherapists, but to recognize when the patient should be referred to a psychotherapist, or at least be able to present themselves properly in such a Client / Therapist environment. Ideally, we will find one of mroe therapists who are psychologically trained AND deeply appreciated the Psycho-Neuro-Musculo-Fascial work produced by Mindful Medical Massage Therapy that we’re doing.
When using the prefix “Psycho-“: The root meaning of the prefix is “relating to the mind or psychology, the breath or soul.” I am therefore referring to the fact that most neuro-musculo-fasical issues have much or at least some participation from the mind and/or emotions. Even if the stress, tension, or trauma is not caused by the mind or emotions, we can use our mind & emotions to intervene in and influence the physcial stresses & tensions.
Mindfulness is getting a LOT of attention in Clinical Research these days, and the influence of in-the-moment awareness is showing a LOT of promise in helping people heal from a variety of conditions.
I would also suggest that a training segment include the works of Dr. John Sarno and Tension Myoneural Syndrome and of the Poly-Vagal Therapists, and possibly the Hakomi (Body-Centered Psychotherapy) Method, who can help more thoroughly bridge the gap between physical and mental issues.
Among some physicians and medical researchers, Sarno, Poly-Vagal, and Hakomi type hypotheses & modalities are subject to many significant criticisms from orthodox medicine and psychiatry. Yet VERY often in medical science, as in ANY sciences, what is initially postulated then ridiculed eventually becomes well-accepted theory after a lot of controversy, sometimes over many years or decades.
Yis is similar to the experiences of 
Ignaz Semmelweis who discovered hand-washing to be a preventive measure against the spread of disease. The pregancy ward he ran in a hosipital had FAR fewer complications and deaths than other wards becasue of his insistance on hand-washing between patients. He was ridiculed by his contemporaries and driven out of the medical profession for his ideas and practices.
Many such stories abound in medicine, partly because there is an entrenched resistance to new ideas in many if not most human beings, even those who claim to be “scientific.”
Mindful Medical Massage Therapy with Myo-Structural Balancing & Yoga Therapy will probably be one of those ideas the orthodox medical system will be skeptical of. Yet massage therapy in general is getting more acceptance all the time, and is getting harder to ignore. Mostly because more clients and patients have been getting good to great results with it.
I could tell you MANY stories about all that, from personal experience and working with a number of doctors who had been persecuted like Semmelweiss in more modern times, but that’s a discussion for another day and place. I’ll save that for another article.
Back To The PTSD / V.A. Proposal …
If the participating veterans were already medically trained & licensed as physical or occupational therapists, or other disciplines such as nurses or physical therapy assistants, depending on the state and their regulations, that would make things quicker and easier for them to become practitioners of Mindful Medical Massage Therapy. They, presumably, already know some anatomy, kinesiology, and physiology, so they’re not starting from scratch.
If not, we might need to get them into a massage therapy school to get the educational basics and a license, as that would be adequate for them to practice legally.
If we started in Arizona, a friend of mine has a certified online course for massage therapists satisfying 305 hours of their 750-hour requirement for an Arizona massage therapy license. I would provide a LOT of additional hours in sciences and theory, and actual hands-on practice. And we would negotiate with the Massage Therapy Board in Arizona for whatever additional hours were necessary. We would probably be WELL over the minimum 750 minimum hour requirement by the time we were done.
Regulation Rollback in Arizona:
In his first term, President Trump aggressively pushed for DE-regulation of much of health care at the federal level since the beginning of his first term in office. This rollback of regulations is, along with reduced taxation, credited with the NOT-so-surprising increased level of economic activity as well as innovatoin in America prior to the COVID-19 breakout. Post-COVID, and with Trump’s return to office, it appears that dereguatory trend will be working again, as well.
In Arizona, the past Governor (Ducey) had likewise been pushing for ” … ‘Regulation Rollback'” [as] a strategic step in his on-going work to make Arizona the best state in the nation to open a new business or to expand an existing one.”
Whether the new governor (Hobbs) is open to such things remains to be seen. But Arizona has traditionally been a more freedom oriented state at many levels, and might well be ready for a return to such.
With large VA operations in Arizona, and President Trump’s cooperation, any unnecessary barriers to entry for veterans wishing to be trained and become practitioners as Soft Tissue Therapists could possibly be significantly rolled back.
Currently in Arizona, if a student of massage therapy is under the supervision of a physician, the student can practice as a therapist. (There is some controversy as to whether that physician should or must be a chiropractor or not, but that is a relatively small detail.) If we could find V.A. attached physicians, that might be a great benefit to the Project and shorten the training time.
Starting at the Arizona Veteran’s Administration?
IDEALLY, we would then work with Arizona VA Facilities to set up a more formal therapy clinic and get these veteran therapists working on more veterans, initially under direct supervision until they are competent to perform on their own. It appears that many of the initial client base would come from the VA itself, as they claim to be over-run with too many potential PTSD victims. Many other soft tissue issues can be treated with the same methods.
I would initially supervise therapy until we found the most competent people — possibly Physical Therapists or very well trained Massage Therapists — who could be Point Persons for evaluating and strategizing therapy sessions. They would then become the leaders of the massage/bodywork department in that particular clinic.
I, or someone I trained Mindful Medical Massage Therapy, would go on to the next clinic being trained and set up. We would probably start in Phoenix, then Tucson, then to other areas where demand is highest.
Based on my training a number of therapists in the 1990s, I estimate motivated and serious individuals could be sufficiently trained to begin practicing supervised therapy in a full-time, intensive, two-week period.
So that is, without the precise details, the plan I came up with.
Infiltrating the Veteran’s Administration
In my efforts to help introduce some innovation, such as Mindful Medical Massage Therapy, Myo-Structural Bodywork & Postural Yoga Therapy, to the Veteran’s Administration, I tried going in at lower levels of the power structure; the “regular people” at the VA. I got very good feedback as to the potential value of what I was proposing, but little in the way of direct support to get there.
I tried going in via people who were outside the VA but were doing many things WITH the VA. Their responses were similar. They thought my plan was well worth pursuing. I got a few contact names & numbers but did not get very far with them. Becasue I was taking care of my parents full time, and they lived pretty far from the V.A. in Phoenix, I did not have the time to invest too much time into this project.
I even went to the Top Floor, the Executive Office, at the Phoenix VA to find someone who could intelligently and responsibly discuss the possibilities. The main feedback I got was how convoluted and almost impossible it would be for a “little guy” like me to get anywhere.
In 2017 & 2018, no one in, around, or near the VA seemed to be sufficiently interested. Or they were unable to see how to penetrate the bureaucracy. … Most saw it as a steep, uphill battle.
I realized given my position in life (a licensed massage therapist, NOT a medical physician or physical therapist), what I needed to do was on my own find a half dozen or so Vets with PTSD, get them on my program, and treat them with my methods, and I probably had to finance it all out of my own pocket. (I knew not too many Vets could afford to pay much or anything for treatment.)
This would have been a grassroots, bottom-up approach, in an attempt to Prove The Concept, which I was, and am, very confidennt would work.
But I realized unless I had a VA-associated physician to monitor and approve the results, this might all get written off as anecdotal “stories” (not “evidence”) and therefore of no significant value from an adminstrative point-of-view. So unless someone at the VA was TRULY evaluating my results in an official & recognized capacity, it did not seem like I could at that time afford the investment of my time and money.
And so, with VERY limited resources at hand, I had to put that idea on a LONG hold. … But NOW …
A lot of that appears to be changing now with the new health care mandates from President Trump and RFK Jr. Unfortunately, the changes Trump wanted were not being implemented fast enough to help my Dad nor my plan much, if at all.
Thank You Very Much for Reading about my Proposal to introduce Mindful Medical Massage Therapy for PTSD to the Veteran’s Administration and help provide more Veteran’s Career Opportunities.
If anyone is interested and motivated in how this might be implermented, please get in touch.
CELL PHONE: 928-255-6677
Thanks for Reading,
David Scott Lynn (DSL*)
* DSL: Your Hi-Touch Up-Link to the Inner-Net*
* Inner-Net: Your Psycho-Neuro-Musculo-Fascial System
Mindful Medical Massage Therapy – PTSD – Veteran’s Career Opportunities