Get excited about your next opportunity to enroll in massage continuing education classes, because the experience can bring all kinds of benefits into your life as a professional massage therapist or bodyworker. However, in order to reap the most possible perks from your continuing education class, it may help to do a bit of homework to ensure you choose the best possible continuing education experience.
One of the biggest benefits of continuing education classes for massage therapists and bodyworkers is the chance to improve one’s practice, and this can happen in myriad ways. One route toward such improvement is to enroll in continuing education courses that will allow you to learn more advanced techniques to put to use in your practice. These types of continuing education classes provide a vehicle for massage therapists and bodyworkers to become experts in their chosen modality.
For example, a massage therapist may begin her career knowing the basic techniques involved in several different forms of touch therapy, from Swedish massage to deep tissue. When it comes time to take a continuing education class, this massage therapist may decide that she would like to learn more advanced deep-tissue techniques. To do so, she could sign up for a continuing education class that teaches the next level of learning about deep-tissue massage.
From there, the continuing education offerings tend to progress like rungs on a ladder, allowing practitioners to climb further and further, advancing their skill sets until they reach the top level and attain expert status. Obviously, being positioned as an expert in a specific type of massage therapy is a great way to gain exposure for your practice and boost the number of clients you see each week.
Besides climbing the continuing education ladder of one specific modality, another great benefit of continuing education classes is you can choose to climb several ladders throughout your career. In other words, you can choose to enroll in continuing education courses on a variety of touch techniques and advance your skill set in each of the modalities you choose to pursue. By taking this approach to continuing education, you can become an expert in several different methods of massage therapy.
Of course, you do not need to become an expert in every single modality that interests you. Many massage therapists and bodyworkers might choose only one or two continuing education ladders to climb all the way to the top, then take continuing education classes on a wide variety of other techniques, so they can gain enough skills to weave a few of the basic strokes into their session work.
It also may be important to remember that improving your practice does not always pertain to the work you do in the session room. There are many continuing education classes out there that aim to teach massage therapists and bodyworkers how to improve the business side of the practices as well. For instance, you may choose to take a continuing education class on marketing.