If you find yourself growing even slightly bored during your daily work as a massage therapist or bodyworker, it may be time to consider enrolling in a continuing education class to reignite your passion and enthusiasm for this career. After all, it is not just physical exhaustion that can lead massage therapists and bodyworkers to the dreaded point of burnout, but also a lack of mental engagement and commitment to the work.
By learning a new skill or taking your current skill set to the next level, via continuing education classes, you will likely find yourself once again curious and excited about the hands-on work you are doing.
For example, perhaps you choose to enroll in a continuing education class that will teach you a whole new modality. This may be a wise choice if you have been practicing at the most advanced level of your current main modality for several years now, and you are beginning to feel a bit bored with your repertoire of techniques and session sequences.
Starting out learning a new and different brand of touch therapy should be an exciting adventure for a practitioner who falls within the description outlined above. Besides the appeal of exploring a new modality, these kinds of continuing education forays offer other benefits as well.
For instance, once you complete the continuing education course and become certified or otherwise authorized to practice this new modality, you can expand your practice menu. Adding another type of touch therapy to your massage therapy or bodywork menu not only means more options for your existing client base, but it can also mean drawing new clients to your practice, thereby increasing your income.
A third benefit of signing up to learn a different skill during your next continuing education class is the chance that this new modality may be able to help your clients in a way your old skill set could not. With the knowledge you pick up through the continuing education class, you should then be able to weave bits and pieces of the new technique into your sessions as you see fit, to best benefit your clients, along with offering the second modality in stand-alone sessions.
Before you run out and sign up for a continuing education class on a modality that is new and different from the one you currently practice, consider if you have taken your existing skill set to the most advanced level possible. Becoming an expert at what you do is a great way to increase your success and further carve out a niche in your community as a highly skilled massage therapist or bodyworker.
Be honest with yourself, and if you know you could refine your main modality through more advanced continuing education classes, then sign up for those classes. Learning more advanced ways to apply familiar techniques should serve to rev up your passion for your practice—and better benefit your clients—just as much as taking on a new technique.
–Brandi Schlossberg