RMT Jennifer

06/19/2026

Benefits Fraud, Healthcare Stewardship, and the RMT Workforce
An Open Letter to Benefits Providers.

An Open Letter To Health Benefits Providers I am reaching out because I believe an important aspect of the recent discussions surrounding massage therapy benefits has been largely overlooked. Because benefit providers are responsible for administering and safeguarding employer-funded health benefi

06/17/2026

As an RMT with twenty years in practice, I've experienced private practice, clinic ownership, contractor, manager, education, regulation, and now returning to practice. Those experiences have changed how I think about the environments where healthcare is delivered.

Over the past several months I've written extensively about workplace safety, worker classification, governance, and sustainability within the RMT profession. Some people have asked why these topics matter to patient care. The answer is simple: workplace structure influences how healthcare is delivered

The latest blog.
Clinics As Workplaces: Aligning Control, Responsibility, Safety, & Accountability.

Recognizing clinic owners as employers is not an attack on clinics. It may be the clearest way to recognize the real value clinics already provide, while aligning control, responsibility, labour protections, safety systems, and accountability.
Clinics are so important that we should stop pretending they are merely collections of unrelated independent businesses sharing a roof.

Clinics are more than treatment rooms. They provide the infrastructure that makes healthcare possible. They carry the lease, build the practice, manage reception, scheduling, billing, supplies, patient flow, and workplace policies. Many also determine fees, hiring, operational procedures, and significant aspects of how the workplace functions.

Those are not incidental roles. They are fundamental healthcare workplace functions.

The problem is not that clinics have control. In many cases, they need a significant degree of control to operate safely, efficiently, and consistently.

The problem arises when clinics exercise many of the characteristics commonly associated with an employer while RMTs remain classified as independent contractors. Workers assume the risks of self-employment without the corresponding autonomy, labour protections, workplace safety structures, reporting pathways, or accountability systems that typically accompany employment relationships.

If clinics function as healthcare workplaces, then we should be willing to talk honestly about what that means.
Employment does not erase professional accountability. Nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists, social workers, dietitians, and many other regulated health professionals work as employees while continuing to meet professional standards and regulatory obligations.

The question is not whether clinics matter.
They do.

The question is whether our legal and workplace structures have kept pace with the reality of how many clinics already operate.
Perhaps recognizing clinics as employers is not about giving them more power. Perhaps it is about recognizing the responsibility they already carry, and ensuring that responsibility, accountability, and worker protections are aligned with the way many clinics already function.

Aligning classification with actual control could create clearer responsibility for workplace safety, reporting, return-to-work support, anti-harassment policies, due process, employment standards, benefits, leave, and workplace accountability.

This isn't about diminishing the value of clinics.
It's about recognizing their value honestly.
It may also be one of the most practical ways to build a safer, stronger, and more sustainable profession.

Recognizing clinic owners as employers is not an attack on clinics. It may be the clearest way to recognize the real value clinics already provide, while aligning control, responsibility, labour protections, safety systems, and accountability. Clinics are so important that we should stop pretendin

06/11/2026

Please consider supporting the Declaration and Call to Action for Workforce Safety, Labour Protections, Governance Accountability, and Practitioner Representation in Massage Therapy.
This declaration was developed following months of research, stakeholder outreach, workforce analysis, contract review, safety advocacy, and discussions with practitioners across the profession.
It calls for action on workforce safety, worker classification, labour protections, safe reporting and anti-retaliation protections, governance accountability, transparency, and meaningful practitioner representation.
The profession has spent years identifying these issues. The challenge is no longer understanding the problems. The challenge is acting on what is already known. The cost of inaction is already being paid.
If you support these efforts, please read, share, and sign.
Please consider supporting the Declaration and Call to Action for Workforce Safety, Labour Protections, Governance Accountability, and Practitioner Representation in Massage Therapy.
This declaration was developed following months of research, stakeholder outreach, workforce analysis, contract review, safety advocacy, and discussions with practitioners across the profession.
It calls for action on workforce safety, worker classification, labour protections, safe reporting and anti-retaliation protections, governance accountability, transparency, and meaningful practitioner representation.
The profession has spent years identifying these issues. The challenge is no longer understanding the problems. The challenge is acting on what is already known.
The cost of inaction is already being paid.
If you support these efforts, please read, share, and sign.
https://c.org/QVnCwQRdfp

BC RMT Workforce Alliance Declaration & Urgent Call To Action

06/06/2026

If pain, injury, or ongoing symptoms are limiting your ability to work, exercise, sleep, or enjoy daily activities, you don't have to navigate it alone.
With more than 20 years of clinical experience, I help people manage pain, recover from injury, and return to the activities that matter most to them.
My practice focuses on evidence-based manaul therapy and active rehabilitation support for a wide range of musculoskeletal and movement-related concerns.

🌿 Manage pain • Recover from injury • Return to activity
https://www.mapleridgermt.ca
📍 Maple Ridge, BC
📅 Online booking available

05/31/2026

Registered Massage Therapists’ Association of Ontario

05/24/2026

Why Things Hurt: Pain Is More Complex (and More Human) Than You Might Think
People usually come to see me for one reason:
Something hurts.
Early in my career, I figured that if I was going to spend my days helping people navigate pain, I should probably develop a strong understanding of it.
That decision sent me down a fascinating rabbit hole.
Because pain is surprisingly complex.
When I first entered practice, I thought my clinical focus would revolve primarily around sports injuries, orthopaedics, and mechanical problems of muscles and joints. And certainly, those things matter.
But working with people living with persistent pain, migraines, TMJ disorders, nerve symptoms, chronic illness, movement intolerance, and “nothing seems to be helping anymore” situations gradually changed how I understood pain, and healthcare more broadly.
The neuroscience of pain is fascinating.
The lived experience of pain is deeply human.
And the more we study pain, the clearer it becomes that pain is not always simple, predictable, or explained entirely by tissue injury alone.
So… what is pain?
The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) currently defines pain (July 2020) as:
“An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling that associated with, actual or potential tissue damage.”
That definition is worth slowing down for a moment.
Because pain is not simply a direct measurement of tissue damage.
Pain is a personal experience.
Real.
Protective.
And influenced by biological, psychological, and social factors.
This is where pain science sometimes gets misunderstood.
You may have heard phrases like:
"Pain is all in the brain."
Unfortunately, that wording can sound dismissive or invalidating.
That is not what modern pain science is saying.
Pain is real.
Your experience matters.
But our nervous systems do far more than simply measure damaged tissues and report back.
They constantly gather information about our bodies and environment.
Injury matters.
Inflammation matters.
Health conditions matter.
But so can sleep disruption, illness, stress, overload, previous experiences, nervous system sensitivity, beliefs, context, hormones, and many other wonderfully human variables.
Sometimes pain closely reflects tissue injury.
Sometimes pain persists long after tissue healing.
Sometimes relatively minor injuries hurt tremendously.
Sometimes major injuries produce surprisingly little pain.
Human beings are complex organisms.
Our pain experiences reflect that complexity.
Why this matters for treatment
Understanding pain is not about convincing people their symptoms are imaginary.
Quite the opposite.
Understanding pain can sometimes reduce fear, increase self-understanding, and open additional pathways for support and recovery.
Persistent pain often benefits from an interdisciplinary and multimodal approach.
Family physicians, specialists, rehabilitation providers, mental health professionals, movement-based therapies, medications, education, lifestyle strategies, and supportive care may all play important roles depending on the individual and their situation.
Massage therapy can be one supportive piece of that picture.
Not because I believe I can “fix” every injury or condition.
I can't.
But I can support people living with pain.
I can help reduce or manage symptoms using evidence-informed, non-pharmacological strategies.
I can help explore movement tolerance, symptom patterns, triggers, pacing, graded progression, and sustainable ways of supporting function and quality of life.
And perhaps most importantly:
I can help people feel understood in experiences that are often frustrating, exhausting, confusing, and isolating.
Pain is complex.
Human beings are complex.
Healthcare is complex.
But complexity does not mean hopelessness.
It means we approach pain with curiosity, compassion, and a willingness to work collaboratively toward meaningful goals.

People usually come to see me for one reason: Something hurts. Early in my career, I figured that if I was going to spend my days helping people navigate pain, I should probably develop a strong understanding of it. That decision sent me down a fascinating rabbit hole. Because pain is surprising

05/22/2026

05/19/2026

Advocacy Project Update
Over the past several weeks, information packages regarding workforce structure, workplace safety, and accountability concerns affecting BC RMTs have been shared with:
• CCHPBC
• WorkSafeBC
• labour and human rights organizations
• healthcare associations and oversight bodies
• and massage therapy associations across Canada.
Responses have started coming in.
One of the most interesting patterns so far has been the degree to which different parts of the issue are being redirected between systems:
• labour concerns redirected toward workplace safety,
• workplace safety concerns redirected toward regulation,
• regulatory concerns redirected toward complaint systems,
• and broader structural concerns redirected elsewhere again.
None of these responses have been inappropriate or hostile. In many ways, they highlight the exact issue being raised:
When healthcare workers exist in structurally ambiguous working arrangements, responsibility and accountability can become fragmented across multiple systems.
This matters because RMTs work in environments with known and documented risks involving harassment, boundary violations, and unsafe patient interactions, often while classified as independent contractors despite significant operational control within clinic settings.
The project is still in the early stages, but awareness is growing and important conversations are beginning to happen across multiple organizations and provinces.
Thank you again to everyone who has shared experiences, contracts, concerns, and support throughout this process.
If anyone has questions about the project, or would like to review the information packages and supporting materials that have been shared with organizations, feel free to reach out privately.

05/18/2026

Unicorns Aren't Real and neither are Trigger Points.

I’ll take “Unpopular Opinions” for $1000, please. Let’s start with a simple question: what does real actually mean? Having objective, independent existence Occurring in reality Detectable and reliably identifiable Now compare that to the traditional definition of a “trigger point”: a

05/10/2026

Many women, especially mothers become very good at functioning through symptoms they would never ignore in someone else.

The headaches become “normal.”
The jaw tension becomes “stress.”
The numbness in the hands at night becomes “sleeping weird.”
The shoulder pain becomes “getting older.”

And because they’re still managing work, caregiving, schedules, meals, school forms, emotional labour, and everyone else’s needs… they often don’t realize how much strain their nervous system and body have been carrying for a very long time.

And often by the time they finally book in, they’ve been compensating for months or years.

One of the things I enjoy most about this work is helping people understand why symptoms may be happening, not just chasing “tight muscles.”

Sometimes the body needs less forcing and more understanding.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the women carrying more than most people realize 💙