Ruth Werner

I serve the massage therapy community with the best writing, education, and art that I can provide.

I started teaching massage before I graduated from massage school—which is a clue to how long ago that was. With the exception of a hiatus while my children were young, I taught continuously from 1984-2010 at schools in Washington, Massachusetts and Utah. In 2005 I was honored to be chosen as the Jerome Perlinski AMTA Council of Schools Teacher of the Year; I suspect that had a lot to do with how I explain irritable bowel syndrome (hint: my theatre degree comes in very handy in this discussion).

In 1993 a job change required that I leave my beloved home in Seattle. As a parting gift my mentor and employer, Brian Utting, gifted me a Mac Classic II and a charge: write a contraindications document for use in our school.

I took a year to do that, and when it was done I thought it might be possible that other massage schools might find such a thing—fully developed and referenced—useful. I eventually connected with Williams & Wilkins (later acquired by Lippincott), an academic publisher in Baltimore, and by 1995 I had a contract to start over and write what would become A Massage Therapist’s Guide to Pathology. It was the first book they published specifically for massage therapists.

In addition, she has written a column for Massage and Bodywork magazine (“Pathology Perspectives”) and teaches continuing education workshops all over the country. She has served on committees for the Utah Department of Public Licensing, the AMTA, the National Certifying Board for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork, and the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards.