How was massage effected during the age of enlightenment?
It was effected quite significantly in respect to our practice today. The most major change was one championed by Renee Descartes who wanted to use cadavers for examination. The church was against this, so an inquiry was made. At the trial, Descartes managed to convince the church that the body and mind (spirit) are not the same thing, and so after someone dies it is only their physical body that remains. He then proposed that the body worked in a mechanical way and could be studied. The created a major shift in modern medicine that effected the cottage industry of massage hundreds of years later. The separation of body and mind led to therapies such as Rolfing and Swedish massage. It has only been recently that bodymind therapy has become more popular because it works to integrate both body and mind.
