This Page is under construction. I intend it always to be, actually, but I don't even have its whole skeleton out there yet.
First of All
In a class by itself is Paul Ingrahams Pain Science site. Paul sells e-books about various common pain conditions, which are probably the best-value resources that exist, digital or paper, for people who have, or who treat these conditions. But there's tons of information here for free on this site, too.
If you're looking at massage to fix your lower back pain or your neck pain or your knee pain, I'd go to one of Paul's tutorials first, and get a good sense for the range of things you can try. Maybe massage is your best bet and maybe it isn't.
Paul actually reads and evaluates the recent research on these things, and reports on it in wonderfully pithy, and often hilarious articles. If you're a massage therapist you really ought to be reading his articles as they come out. There's no better "one-stop" way to keep up.
Massage Therapists in Portland
Local people I can vouch for -- I've received massage from them and they're terrific!
Lisa Hunt Seniff at Bridgetown Massage (the other in-home massage person you want to check out!)
Liz Prato
Deborah Taylor
Kari Powell (Thai massage)
Massage Blogs I Read and Web Resources
These are probably of more interest to massage therapists than to massage clients
When I found Laura Allen's blog I quickly realized that the authoritative spot in massage blogging was already taken. She's on top of everything, she knows everybody, and she writes lovely, insightful, balanced commentary. If you're going to read just one massage blog, this is the one to read.
Todd Hargrove's Better Movement always has interesting, thoughtful considerations of the sorts of things that people come to us massage therapists to get fixed, and the sorts of things we do to fix them. Todd is a rolfer and advanced student of Feldenkrais. I share his conviction that no manual therapy is magic enough to undo the damage that sitting still inflicts on the body: that there is simply no substitute for healthy movement. And I like his emphasis on the central nervous system -- on, as he puts it, software rather than hardware.
David Lauterstein's Enlightened Body Blog is wide-ranging and beautifully written: it's also one of the few place I actually get useful pointers that I use in my own practice. Most massage blogs are oddly, even aggressively, disembodied. I suspect that for David, as to me, Massage belongs to the arts and humanities more than to the sciences: Whitman really has more to tell us about how massage works than Per Hendrik Ling does.
Alice Sanvito's blog at Massage St. Louis has been especially wonderful lately. Like me, Alice trained in a structuralist tradition that she now views somewhat skeptically -- in her case, Russian massage -- but she has no intention of throwing out the baby with the bath.
Kelli Wise's Massage Therapy World is one of my favorites: a practical nuts-and-bolts blog about the business of being a massage therapist, from the point of view of someone who was accustomed to managing projects and thinking in timelines before she got into massage. Always shrewd, refreshing, and fact-based.
If you're up for hardcore science geekery, Diane Jacobs' Human Antigravity Suit is a wonderful blog. Diane is the most plausible current theorist of how manual therapies work, when they do. (Hint: it has nothing to do with correcting supposed defects in muscle or connective tissue, and everything to do with engaging the nervous system.)
Business Stuff For Massage Students
Massage Business Blueprint Allissa Haines and Michael Reynolds. Definitely the "go to" massage business site. They know their stuff, they know the massage business, they're fun and shrewd and sensible.
Book Yourself Solid, Michael Port: the most useful guide to marketing and networking that I've seen.
pintsizedsites.com Great websites for independent massage therapists. Kelli knows her stuff.
The Only Investment Guide You'll Ever Need, Andrew Tobias. What to do with all that money you'll be raking in.