How Can I Become a Massage Therapist?
The process of becoming a massage therapist is relatively simple, but developing a career in massage therapy is somewhat more complicated, especially in urban areas, where the market for massage is often heavily saturated. While anyone has the potential to be a good massage therapist, it helps to be strongly self-motivated and driven, and to have excellent people skills, as a large part of the job involves being able to work with very diverse people. Before pursuing a career in massage and bodywork, it can help to think about the type of massage therapist one wishes to be, as massage therapy is an incredibly diverse field. Some massage therapists offer basic relaxing massages based on the Swedish and Esalen styles, for example, while others like to work on more therapeutic massage techniques like deep tissue, sports massage, Rolfing, and trigger point. It is also possible to blend energy work into massage, in the case of craniosacral massage, Reiki, and acupressure, and massage therapi
A crucial question influencing what program to pursue is where you want to practice. In the U.S., there are no national requirements. 33 states and D.C. have their own, and, generally, counties and cities can be more restrictive. (Used to be my 100 hour certificate would have allowed me to practice in Berkeley. No more — now it’s 500.) Looking at the ZIP in your member profile, and doing some quick googling, it looks like Illinois requires 500 hours of training. That’s good enough for nearly all the U.S. (New York State being a notable exception at 1000 hours.) If my massage school experience holds true, you’ll find both that you’re taught absolutely straight rock-solid anatomy and physiology in those classes, and hear airy-fairy New Age mumbo jumbo terms like “running energy” in the practical massage classes, so I’m glad to hear you’re keeping your mind open. You definitely can make a living doing massage, but you do have to work at marketing and building a clientele. Keep in mind th
I’ve heard that the “registered massage therapy” courses in Canada are one of the absolute best in the world and the different classes are all pretty well standardized (to the.. uh, same standards). Also, during the Salt Lake City Olympics, Canadian RMTs are heavily recruited to take care of the atheletes. I have a (guy) friend-of-a-friend doing the (2 year) course right now. TONS of anatomy, more than doctors have to take in med school. There’s also some people starting to do ‘research’ that’s strict enough for submission to scientific journals. As for money, there’s pretty good demand in most metropolitan areas. A decent therapist runs about $50 CDN an hour (they’ll have to pay rental fees) and airport RMTs charge upwards of $80 an hour (although their rent’s probably more expensive). You’ll get to meet a lot of interesting people, too.
