Lafayette Man Is World's Third-Best Massage Therapist

LAFAYETTE, CO -- Confused? For many, getting a massage is a spiritual, relaxing, and private experience, but for it's practitioners, massage is also a practiced skill and an art form — and that means it can be judged. According to the Daily Camera, at the 2018 World Championships of Massage, the work of Lafayette's Jonathan Grassi was judged quite well — and he returned to Colorado with a bronze medal in the freestyle division.

"This is the mecca," Grassi, a student of the Boulder College of Massage Therapy, told the Camera. "All these masters are here. I came to Boulder because I heard the call."

There are five categories available to competitors each year at the world championships: Swedish massage, Asian massage, wellness massage, chair massage and freestyle. The final category — Grassi's specialty — will be split into two distinct categories for the 2019 competition for practices with roots in either Eastern or Western traditions.

Grassi studied a type of massage called phenomenal touch, an invention of Boulder's Leslie Bruder, according to the Camera. Phenomenal touch is a unique approach to massage in which the client has various body parts lifted, stretched, and held through a variety of ranges of motion.

"Touch in general is a wounded place" in American culture, Grassi told the Camera. "There's a real fear around it. Massage hold thousands of years of lineage. It's one of the oldest medicines. It's as deep as food, as deep as songs, as deep as myths. Touch is as deep as any of those things. To have a culture of educated touch (would be) so revolutionary."

Get the full story from the Daily Camera here.

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