Take your career to the next level with continuing education classes for massage therapists and bodyworkers. Once you know how to approach the continuing education experience and select the correct classes, you should see that continuing education is one of the most effective methods of creating your ideal practice.
Among the most common ways in which professional massage therapists and bodyworkers use continuing education to their advantage is by taking classes that will help build their own level of expertise. As it turns out, taking continuing education courses to earn advanced skills is a wonderful way to gain recognition and clients in your local community.
Consider the massage therapist who possesses basic skills picked up during massage school and maybe one or two continuing education courses. If this practitioner decided to focus her energy on a particular niche, she could then begin to take continuing education classes targeting that one specific topic.
As an example, this massage therapist may have an interest in working with pregnant women. Her first step would then be to find and enroll in a basic continuing education class on massage for pregnant women. By taking this continuing education course, the massage therapist will get a chance to see if her interest in working with this population is strong enough to be taken any further.
If so, the practitioner might then decide to build on the skills she gained in that beginning course on pregnancy massage. At that point, it would be time to enroll in progressively more advanced continuing education classes dealing with massage therapy and bodywork for pregnant women.
Eventually, this massage therapist could become known as the go-to source for massage therapy for pregnant women in her community. The advanced skills gained through all those continuing education classes might even make her a candidate for a position offering massage therapy in a hospital or other clinical setting where pregnant women are patients.
The beauty of continuing education classes for massage therapists and bodyworkers is that these classes offer practitioners the chance to “test the waters” of various niches and modalities, by taking those basic classes to see if their interest is strong enough to warrant more advanced continuing education.
Once you start moving down the path of a particular niche, you may find even more ways to use continuing education to become an expert for your targeted community of clients. Going back to the example of the massage therapist who decides to build a niche around pregnancy massage, she may find she wishes to branch out a bit while at the same time deepening her connection to this community of clients.
In that case, she might decide to enroll in continuing education classes about post-pregnancy massage, or perhaps on the topic of massage for infants. This could be a great way to expand her expertise beyond pregnant women and keep her clients coming back even after the baby is born.
Pay attention to your passions, and explore any interest you might have in a particular niche by taking a beginner’s continuing education class on that topic.