For professional massage therapists and bodyworkers, enrolling in continuing education courses is not just something that is done to earn credits and maintain one’s license to practice. Taking continuing education classes is also a method of improving one’s career, and continuing education can also serve to steer one’s career in many different directions.
The career-enhancing benefits of continuing education for professional massage therapists and bodyworkers come from the fact that the field of continuing education for touch therapists is so broad. Therefore, there tends to be a continuing education class available that can meet the needs—or at least come close—of nearly every massage therapist or bodyworker.
With such a rich array of continuing education classes, the main task for touch therapists is to decide exactly which continuing education experience would most suit their needs at the moment. Of course, for those who happen to work in areas where the field of massage therapy and bodywork is regulated, meeting the requirements for maintaining one’s license to practice will be a primary need.
For many of these practitioners, the requirements for obtaining and then continuing to renew a massage license include earning a certain number of continuing education credits on a regular basis. Depending on how detailed the continuing education requirements are in your state or region, the governing board may also specify the topics of the continuing education classes you must take or approved continuing education providers.
Obviously, before you can dive into continuing education classes that are geared toward enhancing your career, you must make sure you maintain your license to practice. For this reason, every massage therapist and bodyworker should stay on top of the specific requirements in his or her state or region, when it comes to earning continuing education credits.
Fortunately, you may often be able to “kill two birds with one stone.” In other words, you may be able to earn the necessary continuing education credits by taking a continuing education class that also benefits your career. Whenever possible, this is a wise and wonderful choice. However, sometimes the required continuing education courses may not exactly hit the mark in terms of improving your career.
Still, there are benefits to be derived from nearly any continuing education experience, such as networking with peers, learning new information and getting refreshed on certain details that are covered in the continuing education class. Also, once you have made sure to meet any continuing education requirements in your state or region, you can then take elective continuing education classes that more specifically meet your individual needs.
For example, if you have begun to notice a demand within your community for a certain type of touch therapy, such as abdominal massage, you may decide to seek out a continuing education course on this specific topic. If there are few other providers of abdominal massage in your area, taking a continuing education class on this technique can set you up to bring in more clients and make more money.