About our instructor

As a psychologist/medical massage therapist Dr.Karen Mooney partnered with her late husband in a practice for over 25 years focusing on patients with chronic pain. They developed with research and clinical application a unique protocol for treatment of patients with Fibromyalgia.

Dr. Mooney,recently relocated to FL, is offering a unique CEU program to massage therapists interested in the medical focus of massage.

In addition to teaching continuing education workshops,Dr. Mooney facilitates and consults with support groups, and advocates for the integration of researched massage techniques in pain management and treatment of many illnesses and dysfunctions.

Comments from ://www.scienceofmassage.com/?s=karen+mooney

This article is contributed by Karen Mooney, LMT, PhD, CMMP. She is our former student and is an exceptionally talented therapist, educator and now massage scientist. We don’t have many PhDs in our profession who earned their degree specifically in the massage therapy field. However, this is not all. Karen’s PhD is the first degree in the USA awarded to a therapist in the Medical Massage field and this is the most exciting news for all of us in SOMI and we hope for all massage therapists.

Here is the opinion of Dr. D. Moss, Chair of the Graduate School of Mind-Body Medicine from Saybrook University expressed about Karen’s PhD dissertation:

“This is one of the best written and best edited dissertations I have ever received for review. Each chapter is well organized and clear. I am just completely impressed and proud of the work you have done. You know me. I usually send back pages of red marks and comments.  No student has ever received so little markup the first time a final copy was submitted. This is an excellent study, and must get published.”

Dr. D. Moss

The article you will read below summarizes the result of a study Karen conducted to examine the effect of soft tissue rehabilitation in patients with Fibromyalgia. There is another unique aspect of her work. Instead of testing a single modality or approach, Karen materialized the main point of our vision she also shares – successful somatic rehabilitation as a result of the integration of different modalities. It is a dead end in our profession if therapists let themselves be pulled into a world where massage therapy is fragmented and Karen’s PhD is a great illustration of how it should be.

R. Turchaninov, Editor in Chief

https://www.scienceofmassage.com/?s=karen+mooney

Integrative Health and Medical Massage

Dr. Mooney has been integrating Medical Massage into her practice for 20+ years. This modality is used in the clinics and hospitals throughout Western Europe and originally taught in medical schools there. Presently only a few practitioners in the US are exclusively using Medical Massage.

Medical Massage is considered a respectable branch of medical therapy in Western European countries. The methods have developed from scientific studies and clinical trials of specific massage techniques for chronic somatic and visceral pathologies.

The lack of pharmaceuticals and the respect for the inner wisdom of the body to heal spurred a cultural quest for healing treatments. As a result Medical Massage is a science that has been meticulously investigated for over 150 years.

We are excited to introduce this modality that is just recently witnessing a return to the US.

https://www.scienceofmassage.com/