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.

Reiki practitioner Rita Glassman  (Staff Photo By Chris Christo/MediaNews Group/Boston Herald)

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.
Pamela Miles https://reikiinmedicine.org

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.

Laura at the Ma State House to testify against the harmful bills & supporting the Safe Harbor 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:

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

Holistic & Spiritual Therapies Threatened in USA & MA


AND What You Can Do About It.


*** If you provide or receive benefit from alternative, holistic, or spiritual based therapies and/or practices, this is a MUST read. ***


There are currently THREE pending legislations in Massachusetts that could have an impact in your rights of access to holistic and spiritual based therapies.

Two of the bills are potentially harmful and the third is a Safe Harbor bill to address the concerns  of legislators while protecting the rights of Americans to access as well as protect many sacred teachings that fall under religious practices without government interference.

Holistic and spiritual practitioners in the state of Massachusetts who do not otherwise fall under professional or national licensing requirement (like Acupuncture, Chinese Medicine and Massage therapy) have been under potential threat of being controlled by the state.

The practitioners from the National Health Freedom Action have been working to protect their right to professionally practice their respective modalities and there is a Massachusetts Chapter, Health Freedom Action Massachusetts (HFAMA).

According to the folks at this group, “Massachusetts previously introduced Safe Harbor Exemption legislation to protect the right to practice for, and the right of consumers to access, health care practitioners and healers who do not have conventional medical licenses such as herbalists, homeopaths, traditional naturopaths and many more.”

It was looking favorable last time we checked in early 2020. Unfortunately, like everything else, Covid slowed down the process of the Safe Harbor Bill going through.  View the Bill here  SD.1085/HD.1169


NEW Concerning Developments

Laura in Meditation

Since then, there have been interesting and concerning developments.

1) There is an (alleged) federally sponsored organization that is working toward creating a mandatory licensing for a variety of modalities, including shamanic practice. They have developed standards, certifications and applications that would force certain practitioners to become licensed under them. They plan to get this passed in 8 applicable states, beginning with Massachusetts.

2) At the state level in Massachusetts, there were bills filed on Wednesday, co-sponsored by the Attorney General that would require a variety of modalities (listed below), to be licensed and overseen by the state and/or individual towns. From what it looks to me, they are putting these “alternative healing therapies” into a similar category as massage therapy.

These are the categories that I am reading about in the Massachusetts bill that was filed on Wednesday, February 10, 2021:

  • Feldenkrais Method
  • the Trager Approach
  • Ayurvedic Therapies
  • Polarity or Polarity Therapy
  • Qi Gong
  • Body/Mind Centering
  • Reiki, levels II and above

Laura at the Ma State House to testify against the harmful bills & supporting the Safe Harbor Bill.

Here’s where I need your help:

This bill referenced in the Call to Action below, known as the Safe Harbor bill, would work to protect the rights of the practitioners listed. This would work in favor of these practitioners and allow them sovereignty over their healing art.

PLEASE SIGN HERE as this gets emailed directly to our legislators. It takes one minute.

Only Massachusetts residents can sign this.

You do NOT need to be a practitioner to sign. If you run a volunteer program or you have benefited in any way from these modalities, you are encouraged to sign.

Please share with clients or groups you work with who benefit from these therapies too.

** This is NOT a petition, it’s a direct email to legislators that can help us. **


What Else You Can Do NOW

Get Involved.

Protect YOUR rights and Access

Please do NOT expect someone else to do it FOR you. As we have witnessed in the last year, and if we learned nothing else from 2020, EVERYONE must rise and take action.

1) Read about the Safe Harbor Bill that is designed to protect you and your rights.

Key provisions of the Health Freedom Bill include:

    • Greater access to healing arts practitioners by the acknowledgment of its inherent benefits
    • Strengthened consumer protections to ensure public rights and safety
    • Enhanced practitioner safety underscoring the right to practice
    • Required disclosures relating to services and skills
    • Uniform informed consent mechanisms

2) Learn About the Health Freedom Action of Massachusetts (HFAMA).

HFAM “has worked to advance an initiative that balances consumer protections and public safety with the rights of those practicing healing arts.  With the recent passage of health care reform on the state and national levels, it is now more important than ever that consumers have the right to safely access healing arts.”

Become a member

Donate to support this expensive legislative process to protect our rights and the groups mission.

Volunteer

Submit a Testimony in support of Safe Harbor Bill. Click here.

Learn How To Get Involved. Click here.

Follow on Social Media for updates

3) Learn About the Parent Group: National Health Freedom Action and their work nationwide and in grassroots organizations in various states where legislation is pending.

The Mission: “To ensure that the people of this nation have access to the broad domain of healing and health care information and services, to ensure the right of practitioners of the healing arts to practice, and to educate the public, promote health and well-being, conduct surveys and research, and participate in legislative, regulatory, legal, or public policy-reform and lobbying to accomplish the goal of health freedom.”

In full disclosure, I am a paid member of this organization and of their chapter HFAMA.

Join their email list. Click here.

Follow on Social Media for updates

Click here for ACTION ALERTS

4) Know the other 2 bills presented for legislation that are potentially harmful especially towards vulnerable populations, interference with religious practices, discriminatory, and culturally targeted.

Right now, this one is currently filed as mentioned above https://malegislature.gov/Bills/192/SD1068.

The other one is still pending as it is being re-written, but you can read about MA Bill 168 here prior to the pending re-drafting.

Laura (right) with Tadao Sensei, Representative of The Jikiden Reiki Institute, Koyto, Japan, and Iku from JRI in 2019 at an International Congress.

Please protect these sacred practices targeted.

Please develop a stronger back bone and self police unethical professionals to minimize harmful impacts to our communities.

Why Do I Care?

You can read about MY VIEWS as to WHY I support the Safe Harbor Bill and why I do NOT support the other 2 bills by clicking here.  You can scroll towards the bottom of the post for the MY VIEWS part of the post.

Here I speak as a survivor of rape and domestic abuse who was subsequently diagnosed with CPTSD taking decades to reclaim my life as well as someone with years doing advocacy work in Massachusetts for victims.

The two harmful bills would also have a significant harmful impact on those faced with end of life too and not to mention low income communities.

So YES, I am quite passionate about THIS.

I will update you all as new information comes to light.

Thank you for reading and supporting the sacred arts.

With appreciation,

Laura