Proposed Legislation That Can Limit Your Access To Holistic, Spiritual, & Alternative Therapies

An URGENT Call To Action

The Future of Reiki,  Martial Artists, Spiritual Based, & Holistic Therapies in MA & USA

Your freedom to access or practice any of these therapies  is being threatened with regulation.

What’s the threat?

The threat is coming from the private sector, organizations which stand to benefit by controlling from whom you can receive treatment, from whom you can learn any of these therapies, how you practice professionally, and what you teach.

That control can be gained by manipulating state governments that write licensing laws, ostensibly to protect the public from harm.

The National Institutes of Health states clearly that there is no evidence that Reiki practice is harmful to the public

Do I have your attention? Are you ready to protect Reiki and other affected therapies?

Although this proposed bill affects ANYTHING that is deemed a holistic therapy or a spiritual therapy through “word or touch”, I am going to stick to my lane of knowledge in the realm of my extensive experience in trauma healing & recovery especially for domestic violence survivors and sexual assault survivors as well as spiritually based therapies such as meditation & reiki.

For more details on what is happening, please check out my prior post here.

If you teach or are a practitioner who uses other therapies such as

• meditation,
• yoga,
• personal, business, spiritual coaching,
• Thai chi,
• martial arts,
• acupressure

You are being called to TAKE ACTION

If you receive any of these therapies especially for/or a part of a:

• PTSD, mental health or trauma
• terminal illness, dementia, cancer
• senior care, volunteer programs, homelessness
• Military vets
• addiction
• battered women’s shelter
• or the like

Your access to services may become adversely affected … ACTION is needed NOW

Holistic healers are fighting “An Act Regulating Bodyworks,” the latest bill filed by State Sen. Mark Montigny (D-New Bedford) and Attorney General Maura Healey to allow authorities regular access to establishments they say are often fronts for trafficking.

I recently spoke with Rita Glassman who is heading up the lobbying efforts in Massachusetts to object to regulation of reiki that is beginning to sweep through many states in USA.

She and other practitioners from the National Health Freedom Action have been working to protect their right to professionally practice their respective modalities.

There is a Massachusetts Chapter, Health Freedom Action Massachusetts (HFAMA). Please consider joining, become a member, and stay informed.

How Will This Regulation Affect You?

Montigny’s bill defines bodywork as a large swath of practices including touch, words or directed movement, from reiki to reflexology to meditation or martial arts.

For practitioners, you were you able to choose from among diverse practitioners and found the one you thought was the best fit for you.

When you started your professional practice, did you assume you’d always be able to practice according to your understanding your unique practice, without interference from your state government?

All of those choices will be taken away if we allow state legislatures to be manipulated by the private sector into requiring unwarranted licensing.

If you missed my prior blog post on what is happening, please click here to read it for information & background.  Above all … please

• share it,
• take ACTION.

More recently, Pamela Miles (Reiki, Medicine & Self Care), who was instrumental in helping bring reiki on the map in the medical community in NYC and has been featured on Dr. Oz has jumped on the anti-legislative board due to the dangers this widespread legislation poses to  folks in gaining access to specifically reiki.

She wrote a fabulous piece on how the threat of regulating reiki would affect you that I will NOT redo as it is perfectly executed.

You can read her wonderful article here where she talks about

• WHO stands to profit from this regulation,
• how this regulation can affect you,
• the reiki diversity,
• the reiki spiritual practice,
• what states are under attack NOW,
• and what you can do about it.

Pamela Miles has been a national voice and featured on the following:.

Pamela has hosted multiple webinars and sent out numerous emails on how to address what we are faced with in regards to legislation.  Her voice is one highly credible and respected in the industry.

You can listen to her recent webinar, Protect Reiki from Regulation, with Rita Glassman.  You can access it here.

She is going to post a summary of the presentation soon, but meanwhile please read Protecting Reiki from Regulation: What You Can Do Now, Part One and get started on your Reiki statement and ACTION.

ACTION To Take NOW

It is imperative that we start writing and calling legislators NOW to oppose this bill.

The MA attorney general has filed the identical bill in the house and senate to ensure its passage.  It is going to take a miracle to stop it.

We need an army of practitioners to contact their legislator and senator to establish a relationship with them and to let them know how this proposed bill would affect their income and family. They are elected officials and they listen to their constituents.

Rita and her team has made it easy for us to take ACTION. It is all done for you to make it easy for you to help stop this legislation.

Sample letters & talking points

Click on the links below for:

• Draft of an email to students, practitioners, teachers and consumers
• Sample Talking Points, click here
• Sample Letter to Legislators.
• Overview of the bill, click here
• Consequences Fact Sheet, click here

The following is the link to find my legislator to make it easy for everyone to find their elected official. https://malegislature.gov/Search/FindMyLegislator

I STRONGLY suggest that you blind copy (BC) me on your emails to their legislators, so I can present all the letters to the committee it is assigned to at the public hearing.

You can bcc: your letters to healingwithspirit1@gmail.com.

Results?

Last year, Rita Glassman presented the list of over 20,000 who signed the an online petition she had created to oppose the legislation as well as copies of letters that were sent to legislators.

KEY RESULT:  When NH tried to pass licensure legislation, they had a strong turnout of over 400 at the public hearing and over a thousand letters to legislators.  They never filed another licensure bill for holistic practitioners.  We need to do the same and just flood them.

WE NEED YOU.

If we learned NOTHING else from the election in November 2020, it takes the rise of us ALL.   Please do NOT rely on someone else to take action. We can NOT do this alone. This does NOT only affect reiki, but other spiritually based practices as well.

To defeat this will  require ALL of us to step up to the plate. 

As for me, regulating these services will prevent folks in vulnerable communities I serve from gaining access to these therapies which in turn would harm my mission to break the cycle of abuse through healing the unrecognized unhealed epidemic of unresolved trauma that plagues our communities and over burdens our broken health care system.

Please share your thoughts and comments below in regards HOW this may or may not affect you. Thank you for reading.

With appreciation,

Laura