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Bo Walker
A Lifelong Student of Massage
By Livia Zimmerman, Membership Engagement Committee
I’ve had the pleasure of interviewing Bo Walker and chatting with him about being a Licensed Massage Therapist for over 40 years. Bo was at the forefront of many developments in our field, witnessing the changes and improvements in massage therapy over the years.
Before his career in Massage, Bo worked in theatre for 20 years. Being the Artistic Director of three theatres, his focus was on directing and fight choreography. He was a member of the Society of Fight Directors and stumbled across being an equity actor and AFTRA voiceover artist. With such a fantastic career, Bo didn’t feel quite fulfilled. He wanted to learn, grow, and do work that was much more meaningful to him. In his quest to find himself, he stumbled across Massage Therapy.
In 1986, Bo embarked on his Massage career, graduating from the Swedish Institute in Manhattan, NY. Shortly after being licensed, Bo became active in supervising programs and participating in various clubs, including the Big Apple Triathlon Club, the Swim Around Manhattan, the Roadrunners Club, and the sports team division of the AMTA. In 1989, Bo became a member of the AMTA and enjoyed participating in AMTA’s state and national conventions.
This led to Bo serving on the AMTA board as Vice President, then as Director of Education, and Sports Director in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Bo remembered, “I did a lot in sports massage for a lot of years, twelve years with the New York City roadrunners club, and during those years. The AMTA was doing amazing things in sports and track and field.” For Bo, involvement in the community mattered, and the AMTA was a great way to be involved.
Bo spoke about how it was an intuitive leap of faith that encouraged him to learn more about the world of massage therapy and become immersed in the field's knowledge. His favorite subjects in school were anatomy, physiology, and pathology. As a “student of massage,” Bo was inspired by some of the field's continuing education greats, including Aaron Madison (Active Isolated Stretching), Paul St. John (Derma Therapy), Gil Hedley (anatomy), and Doug Nelson, with whom Bo studied Neuromuscular Therapy.
Bo enjoys life every day. “I like bicycling, and I have a dog. I spent a lot of quality time with my daughter up until about a month ago. My daughter got a job in Illinois now. I’m very proud of her.”
Mr. Walker pays it forward by mentoring other students, practitioners, and massage therapists. He runs a successful practice in Manhattan where he uses neuromuscular therapy as the foundation of his practice. “Even though I've studied so much from the cranial sacral, soma, emotional relief, and most recently, four days of lymphatic drainage, it's great to explore all these modalities, but I love what I do with neuromuscular therapy. It’s been the foundation of my strategy and my approach to massage therapy. I love to solve problems, I enjoy doing detailed work, and helping people in that way,” Bo shared with us.
Bo feels honored to be a part of the massage therapist community and AMTA, and we feel honored to have him.
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