There are so many different ways in which professional massage therapists and bodyworkers can benefit from taking continuing education classes on a regular basis. In fact, the benefits of continuing education seem to vary almost as widely as the practitioners who compose the vast field of massage therapy and bodywork.
First and foremost, a big benefit of taking continuing education classes may be that earning continuing education credits is necessary to maintain one’s license to legally practice professional massage therapy or bodywork. In other words, one of the benefits of taking continuing education courses would be the ability to stay in practice through the consistent renewal of one’s massage therapy or bodywork license.
Of course, this basic benefit applies only to those practitioners who happen to work in one of the many states, regions or areas where massage therapy and bodywork is regulated, and part of those regulations involves earning continuing education credits for the renewal of one’s license.
Another huge benefit of consistently participating in continuing education classes is the fact that these classes can help steer your practice in the most successful and satisfying direction. This benefit applies whether or not you are required to earn continuing education credits.
The sheer variety of continuing education classes geared toward professional massage therapists and bodyworkers means you should be able to find a class that appeals to you and can help you shift your practice in the direction that feels most suited to where you are in your life right now, and where you feel your work as a massage therapist or bodyworker needs to be heading.
As the years go by, your interests may likely change, at which point you can select other continuing education classes more suited to those interests. In this manner, taking continuing education classes on a regular basis can help you stay in harmony with your practice and passionate about your day-to-day work as a professional massage therapist or bodyworker.
For example, if you have long been practicing general deep-tissue massage therapy, with a bit of more relaxation-oriented massage mixed in with each session, you may begin to find yourself growing curious about a technique to address a certain issue that seems to be cropping up among clients more and more often.
This issue might be frozen shoulder, sciatica, chronic headaches, jaw problems, carpal tunnel syndrome or something else entirely. The point is, if you are finding yourself drawn to learning new methods of addressing one or more of these issues, you can use continuing education classes as your avenue for learning those exact techniques or modalities.
A third big benefit of continuing education for massage therapists and bodyworkers is that these classes provide an arena for both social and career networking among colleagues. Through continuing education classes, you can meet other massage therapists and bodyworkers who share similar interests, and these new contacts could become friends, sources of support and inspiration, or possibly even future business partners.
As you can see, continuing education can have a wide range of benefits, depending on the individual traits and goals of each massage therapist or bodyworker who enrolls in the continuing education experience.