There are so many different approaches you can take to reach success as a professional massage therapist or bodyworker, from the practitioner who dives in and becomes an expert at one specific modality to the touch therapist who carefully selects an array of complementary techniques to round out her practice menu. No matter which path to success you pick for you and your practice, continuing education can help get you there.
Perhaps the most difficult part of deciding how to use continuing education courses to boost your level of success is deciding which approach will best suit you and your goals, passions and personality. Most of the time, this is a process, which means it may take time and even a couple of wrong turns before you know which approach really resonates with you.
Taking continuing education classes is actually a vital piece of this process, and massage therapists and bodyworkers should consider themselves fortunate to have such a broad array of continuing education courses available at any given time. By taking a particular continuing education class, you can get a feel for whether the topic of that class might be part of your path to success.
For example, most massage therapists and bodyworkers graduate from school with a great foundation for practice and the skills necessary to begin providing sessions to clients. However, at some point, most of these practitioners feel the urge to begin branching out and moving their careers to the next level, and this is where continuing education comes into the picture.
Let’s say one of these massage therapists has always been intrigued by shiatsu. She remembers learning about it a bit in school and has found shiatsu to be a memorable and wonderful form of bodywork to receive. This massage therapist may decide to start looking into continuing education courses on the topic of shiatsu, so she can learn more about the modality.
The strategy here would be to take a beginner or level one continuing education course on shiatsu. By taking this continuing education class, the practitioner could get a better feel for whether shiatsu is a modality she would like to integrate into her own practice.
If this continuing education course convinces her that she would like to begin practicing shiatsu in addition to her current techniques, then she could go in one of two directions with the continuing education experience. For one, she could decide to learn just enough via continuing education to offer some basic shiatsu to clients or to weave a few elements of shiatsu into her regular massage routines.
The other route she may wish to take if she finds herself growing more interested in shiatsu, would be to continue taking continuing education courses on this modality, gaining more advanced skills with each continuing education experience.
As you can see, it’s up to you as the individual practitioner to take note of your feelings on various continuing education classes and proceed according to those feelings.