The Back Story: A Note from Hope Katz Gibbs, LMT (Virginia, Delaware), author, Massage School Memoire, publisher BeInkandescent Health & Wellness magazine — Sometimes, you just gotta make a change. That was true for me in 2018 I knew that I couldn’t do my life the way I had been for the last three decades. I had recently gotten divorced, my kids were in college, the contracts for many of my PR clients were coming close, and I didn’t want to live where I was in Richmond, VA.
The mission-critical question: What was I going to do next?
For me, it was to become a licensed massage therapist (LMT). From August 3, 2021 to August 3, 2022 — the day I passed the national Massage and Bodywork Licensing Examination ( MBLEx ) — I studied at the Bodymechanics School of Massage in Santa Fe, NM. At 58, it was a journey to learn about kinesiology (how the body moves), anatomy (how it’s structured), physiology (how it functions), and pathology (what makes it sick) — as well as a myriad of massage techniques that do a body good.