Massage Therapy Journal Winter 2025

Winter 2025 • 33

Unfortunately, we can’t say the same about a human massage experience. After years of candidly talking with both clients and massage therapists who have received massage, my anecdotal research estimates about 40% of us have had a massage where the pressure levels went way past our boundaries and imposed pain on our system. This would leave us in more pain after the massage than we came in with, and the negative effects often last for days or weeks afterward. Many liability claims fall in the “inappropriate touch” category—any physical contact or behavior that is unwarranted, non-consensual or beyond the scope of the therapeutic treatment . The spectrum of this behavior ranges from a lack of communication and informed consent on one end to a massage therapist overstepping their boundaries around ethical touch and blatant sexual assault on the other. Obviously, this major pain point is not present in an AI robotic massage experience, and greatly reduces the fear a client may have with traditional massage .

Nunez: We have developed an incredibly safe system for delivering massage, and for those that worry about injuries being caused by Aescape, I can just say that they have not seen or felt how our system operates. Once people see and feel an Aescape massage, how integral safety and comfort was to the creation process will be evident. Additionally, as someone who has operated high-volume spas that would annually perform over 30,000 massages a year, injuries happen that are caused by human therapists, too. I feel that we have removed a lot of the potential for harm simply based on the methods used to create Aescape massages. Our systems are strong enough to deliver a deep massage, but not strong enough to hurt and cause damage to a client . During the production of this story, Paul Nunez left his role as Director of Partnerships with Aescape. We’d love to keep this conversation going. Share your thoughts on automation in the massage therapy profession! Email us at communications@amtamassage.org.

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