Thousands of people pay for massage and other forms of bodywork out of their own pockets, since, by and large, insurance companies will not yet cover the procedure.
Massage is an ancient art that has been revived in recent years and raised to professional stature.
This has occurred as our understanding of the therapeutic value of touch and the nature of kinaesthetic intelligence has grown. Membership in the American Massage Therapy Association, the profession's largest organization, has doubled in the past three years to 17,300 members. Earlier yet, the Veda books of wisdom, which describe yoga practices, refer to breathing exercises used for religious and lealing purposes. Egyptian, Persian, and ancient Japanese medical literature is filled with references to therapeutic baths and massage. In the 19th century, Per Henrick Ling founded the Central Royal Institute of Gymnastics in Stockholm, Sweden and organized much of this earlier work into a system for physical manipulation which is now called Swedish massage.