Letters to the Editor
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Tainted Love
The saddest thing about this article is that these phony "teachings" of a dangerous, misogynist hoaxter are STILL being taught in massage schools, yoga intructor programs, and hypnosis workshops all over the country. I still hear words like "tensegrity" bandied about with complete seriousness in these circles. Massage, yoga, and hypnosis have all been scientifically proven to be extremely powerful and medically effective therapies for many kinds of problems, physical and emotional -- IF practiced with knowledge, intelligence, and ethics. So it is all the more unfortunate that so many teachers and practitioners of these therapies are credulous of the very kind of nonsensical, nonscientific New Age garbage Casteneda peddled with such success. Worse, many people are so willing to believe that their illnesses are caused by "imbalances of energy" or "bad chi," that they will give their money to people who wave crystals or perform "Reiki," rather than actually WORKING with them. I am a massage therapist of seven years practice and I believe in the work I do, and I won't deny that there are what might be called "spiritual" or "energetic" elements to it that are very real. But I consider the people who taint their massage work with blatant voodoo to be almost as bad as the prostitutes who call themselves "masseurs/ masseuses." There is good body/mind work being done out there, but I fear it has been seriously discredited by all this nonsense. I've sent this article to the massage school in Austin, TX where I studied, HOPING they will cease giving legitimacy to Casteneda's (and other similar) ideas in the future.