I owned a massage school, taught massage for over 20 years, practiced massage for nearly 30 years. Massage/bodywork -- some folks who do bodywork don't like the word massage but I don't care. Bodywork sounds like car repair to me. It's all about educated touch.
Now, here's the thing I came to understand during all those years of all kinds of bodywork, some related to physical therapy, some pretty woowoo stuff. I used to try to get students to understand this, but often they didn't get it. In bodywork, using maybe polarity as an example, first of all there's the thing you DO. You put your hands in specific places, move them in specific ways, with specific pressure, specific timing. That's the technique, it's what we teach in school.
THEN, there's what comes next. The client reports changes, like maybe less pain, less anxiety, better sleep, better digestion, whatever. And the bodyworker can see/feel changes, such as softer muscle tissue, greater range of motion. The temptation is to say that the two are related - what you DO and what follows, in other words that polarity or whatever massage technique you are using has caused the changes in the client. BUT, you can't really say that based on one or a few experiences. You can maybe start to believe in the effects of the technique IF you can replicate the results, using the same techniques on different people, other people using the same techniques can replicate the results, and there is a large enough group of similar results to provide some basis for making the claim that bodywork can help with these problems.
FINALLY, there's what you believe about it all. Do you think that you are achieving these results because you are moving energy around? What is energy, anyway? Do you think that you are achieving these results because people are touch-deprived and any skillful touch will help them? Maybe you think it's mechanical - relax these muscle tissues and you get this kind of range of motion? Maybe you think it has to do with the nervous system? Maybe you think you are channeling Jesus Christ?
The thing that matters is learning the techniques well enough to give the client a good massage session -- good meaning they enjoy it and feel good afterward. For me, the rest is all subject to debate. It's hard to do scientific studies of something as subjective as massage, although tons of studies have been done. It's hard to make sure the study isn't flawed in some way. Still, I agree from my own experience that clients get some good physiological and psychological benefits from massage. I just don't think that all the benefits that massage therapists claim are really true. Also, who cares what the mechanism of the change is? I don't really, except I think that physiological changes are probably due to physiological causes, not mysterious things like qi/chi that can't really be defined or measured. To some people that matters a lot, and they either make up theories based on their understanding of how the body works, or they try to do some studies to figure it out.
Oh well, does anyone besides me care? The amazing Randy cares - he's offered a big prize to anyone who can "prove" polarity works. What he means is that he wants some proof that what polarity practitioners believe about what they do is true, polarity theory in other words. Obviously people feel better after a polarity treatment, not all, but at least enough in studies to make it likely that the technique makes people feel better. But the theory on which polarity is based isn't very likely to be true. I think I make a couple of distinctions that the amazing Randy doesn't make.