Tracy Walton
Massage therapy for cancer care and general stress reduction: 20 years of experience in practice, teaching, and research.
Tracy Walton, LMT, MS, is a massage therapist, researcher and educator in massage and cancer care. She has worked in private practice, hospital and spa settings since she graduated from the Muscular Therapy Institure (now Cortiva) in 1990. She is the author of a textbook, Medical Conditions and Massage Therapy: a Decision Tree Approach (Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2010). Her column on cancer and massage appears regularly in Massage Today.
Tracy helped create the award-winning film "Touch, Caring, and Cancer," massage instuction for caregivers and partners. She teaches "Caring for Clients with Cancer" and other courses for massage professionals around the country.
As a researcher, Tracy has concentrated her work on massage therapy and cancer, including NIH/National Cancer Institute funded clinical trials involving massage by caregivers. Research partners include the Osher Institute at Harvard Medical School, Beth-Israel Deaconess Medical Center, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center, and Collinge and Associates.
Although she enjoys her research and teaching, Tracy's first love is hands-on work. She sees clients at all points in the life cycle, often at important or transitional times: during pregnancy, in the postpartum period, at end of life, and during illness, to name a few. Her clients use massage therapy for stress reduction and pain relief, improved energy, relief of nausea and anxiety, support for movement and exercise, and improved sleep. Tracy has worked in the same warm, spacious office at CHA for 20 years.
She writes:
With my hands on people, I have learned much about the various ways we humans go through life. There is no one way. We live differently, and get sick and well differently. We cope with medical treatment differently, and manage pain and suffering differently. We die differently. And when we seek massage therapy, giving ourselves over to someone's full attention, one of the most healing things we can receive is respect for our uniqueness: the uniqueness of each path, each burden, each loss, and each choice. It's been said before, but it's worth repeating: Being welcomed, right where we are, is healing.
(From Massage Today, June 2009)