From meeting an upcoming licensing requirement to branching out and building your practice—or perhaps a little bit of both—continuing education classes have much to offer professional massage therapists and bodyworkers. Continuing education courses serve as a convenient way to keep advancing one’s career long after graduating from massage or bodywork school.
It may be the case that a primary reason so many practitioners enroll in continuing education classes each year is to meet any requirements for licensing and renewal. In areas where the field of massage therapy and bodywork is regulated, earning a certain number of continuing education credits per renewal period is often part of that regulation.
Even so, the benefits of taking continuing education classes on a regular basis go far beyond simply checking a box so one can renew his or her license to practice. When practitioners take time to find and sign up for the right continuing education courses, that is when the benefits of branching out and building one’s career come into play.
Of course, it may take a while—a bit of trial and error—for practitioners to figure out how to find the right continuing education class to meet their current needs. Sometimes, it may not be possible to earn the necessary continuing education credits to renew one’s license and take the best possible continuing education class for one’s career.
This may be due to lack of money or a restricted schedule on the part of the practitioner, preventing him or her from taking the most suitable continuing education class, or it may be because the regulations in one’s area dictate a specific continuing education class that must be taken in order to renew a massage or bodywork license.
However, barring these circumstances, many practitioners may be able to knock out the licensing renewal requirement with a continuing education class that also serves to boost their own personal practices. For those touch therapists who happen to work in areas that are not regulated by a governing board, or where the regulations do not include a continuing education requirement, it should be even easier to find the right continuing education class to meet one’s current needs.
One of the best ways to approach the continuing education experience is to think about these courses as steps you can take to strengthen and improve your career as a professional massage therapist or bodyworker. By thinking about continuing education in this way, you may be more likely to notice specific ways in which you and your practice could use a change or a boost.
As an example, a massage therapist may find herself feeling a little bit bored by her working life. By attempting to figure out where this boredom is coming from, she may end up landing on an issue that could be remedied with the right continuing education class. The issue could be that she is too used to the techniques she has been using for years and needs to take a continuing education class on a new and different technique that has aroused her interest.