In Traditional China they never used to dissect the human body because they said that once the chi has left then they are not interested any further in the body. Most Chinese and Japanese and Thai massage is based on the movement of chi in the body along the sen lines or the meridians. In my opinion, and in many traditional healers’ opinions, this is what makes an excellent therapist and has nothing to do with Western anatomical learning. Sometimes, also the emphasis that many massage schools place on anatomy as opposed to Chinese medicine etc means that students are taught to think in a certain way, that may lead them to miss the big picture of the human being they are working on and only see them as separate anatomical systems, rather than as a complete whole being.

Instead of trying to "feel the chi" they analyze with their mind what muscle it is etc... These are two different parts of the brain that are used. One is the analytical and the other is the sensory. To "feel chi" actually one has to turn off the analytical side of the brain and go into a state of consciousness of pure feeling. This is why I believe good massage is more of an art than a science. In Japan , traditionally, the best shiatsu massage practitioners were blind people because they had the best sense of touch. This still continues today. For example, one of my best shiatsu mentors learnt at the Tokyo Shiatsu School of the Blind.

Furthermore, people with low IQ's but who have a caring sense of touch can be better massage therapists than those with a lot of intellectual knowledge but little heart energy. However, these intellectually disadvantaged people would fail at many modern massage schools. I read of a dyslexic man failing massage school because they wouldn’t let him take his test orally. Such narrow minded bureaucratically focused people that ran the massage school didn’t see that just because he couldn't write properly, didn’t mean he wouldn’t be a good massage therapist.

That’s why I believe that the whole emphasis of many massage schools is off-track, emphasizing intellectual knowledge rather then feeling chi and developing a compassionate and respectful way of touching people. They are trying to be like some doctors caught in the "ivory tower syndrome" where they feel better than their patients and bamboozle them with jargon that the person doesn’t understand with the main goal being to gratify their ego rather than care for their patients.