If you want to become a massage therapist, something you need to be prepared for is the constant need to improve your education. You should plan on taking about six hours’ worth of continuing education classes per year. Although each state has its own requirements regarding the amount of continuing ed classes you need to take, six hours a year should keep you caught up.
One of the complaints some massage therapists have regarding the subject of the NCBTMB Continuing Education classes is that if they are massage therapist for enough years, they’ll run out of NCBTMB Continuing Education that they need to take. While this concern is reasonable, it isn’t very likely to happen.
The first reason you should always be able to find a NCBTMB Continuing Education class you haven’t already taken is because as knowledge of the human body and massage improves, new classes will be introduced. For example, many massage therapist regularly take a class on good ergonomics which not only discusses techniques, but which also covers changes in equipment that will make your job easier, and the massages you give more effective. Many massage therapists are surprised by how much the equipment changes and improves over just a few years, and take the ergonomics class on a regular basis. The six hours of NCBTMB Continuing Education classes will keep you up to date and at the top of your field.
Other continuing education classes you can take, including classes that cover the topics of boundary training, career plan development, and ethics, will be a more in depth study of the topics than what you received when you took your original training course to become a massage therapist. These classes are a good choice for young massage therapists trying to navigate their chosen profession.
The second thing you need to understand is that even though you must take the courses from an accredited school, and the classes do have to be part of a massage therapy course, but that doesn’t mean the classes you take all have to be on the topic of shoulder rehabilitation. In fact, most a large chunk of the classes you can take have to do more with the industry itself. Continuing massage therapy education classes such as licensing requirements are a great choice when you thing you would like to explore other areas of the industry and maybe become more involved in the administrative side of things.
Although you can choose to attend day long seminars to fulfill your continuing massage therapy education requirements, most massage therapist find that taking the classes online is the most convenient way to keep up on their education. Not only will the online classes fit nicely into your schedule, you’ll find that they also tend to cost less than the seminars.
