Massage Therapy Frequently Asked Questions: Fill & Download for Free

The answer popped into my head right away as it’s even something that I think about from time to time.As with so many things in our sexually repressed culture, the thing that most people ask questions about, naturally, are sexually oriented questions.“What is the craziest thing anyone has asked you to do in a massage?”“Have you (or has someone) ever touched (you) inappropriately in a massage?”Things kind of like this, essentially directly or indirectly asking about sex and massage.I usually don’t bother responding because people aren’t usually curious they just want to read entertainment.

Ugh. I hate answering this question yet feel compelled to do so. It depends on where you are working I would say. When I first started out I worked at a budget friendly local chain in Arizona. Their policy towards inappropriate behavior was a travesty in my opinion. I think this led to a higher than normal level of incidents. Most clients who act inappropriately do so in a way that skirt outright harassment. Just short of asking for or initiating sexual contact. I would say this happened to me maybe once a week. I found it very demoralizing and depressing. We were trained to basically ignore the behavior unless it crossed the line then we were allowed to end the session or speak up. I put up with this for way too long (a few months). Then I quit and made the leap to private practice. I almost quit the business entirely but so glad I didn’t as it is a very rewarding career when boundaries are not challenged.Please please please don’t be that creep. Massage is non-sexual, therapeutic touch. Do not seek out massage therapy to satisfy your sexual desires!!!!

ORIGINALLY ASKED: What are the best massage therapist schools in the world in terms prices, quality, recognition of the certificate/diploma, and that allow to work in many countries?Your question is literally meaningless. There is literally no correct answer to your question.Your question is basically like someone asking “What’s the highest-altitude, Northern-most point on earth with the highest precipitation that’s the most fun, where I can buy the cheapest real estate?” You’re asking to optimize too many variables, and there’s too much variation on each variable to select one solution that’s going to be good for all of them. It has to depend on your specific situation. Let me explain.If you asked me what medical school has the best recognition in the world, I’d say “probably Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge, Johns Hopkins, Stanford”. Someone could debate me on it, and maybe win, but that’s a reasonable answer.But none of those is “best”—or even close to best among medical schools—when it comes to price. They’re among the most expensive places to do your medical degree.But there are even bigger problems with your question. “Medical doctor” means close to the same thing in Tulsa as it does in Timbuktu. (One major difference: people in most other parts of the world are baffled and horrified to find out that North American doctors have very little training in nutrition. Still, they’d never say that an American doctor isn’t a “real doctor”.) “Massage therapy” does not mean the same thing everywhere.One of the things you’re looking for is portability. So you want something that will allow you to work in more places. But standards for allowing someone to practice massage therapy (or to call themselves a massage therapist) vary extremely widely throughout the world. Some jurisdictions will require somewhere between 2000 to 3000 hours’s worth of training. These commonly require a year or two of college before even entering massage school, so that you have some anatomy/physiology under your belt before you start. What those massage therapists do is more like what physiotherapists do in other parts of the world. Other jurisdictions will require as little as 500 hours. And in much of the world, there are no legal restrictions whatsoever as far as minimum standards of training.Well guess what? The program that maximizes portability (by providing you the highest standard of training) is going to cost about five times as much, and take five times as much time as a program that allows you to practice, say, anywhere in the US. But it’ll open doors for you in Canada and London, and I’m not sure what other places.And you can’t just show up in any jurisdiction, show your diploma, and start practicing. In places where it’s regulated, you have to pay registration/licensing fees with the state or regulatory college, take licensing exams, ethics and jurisprudence exams, get a criminal records check, and jump through whatever other hoops they may have. That can takes months, or a year. In other places (usually the ones with no restrictions for minimum training) you can just show up and start working, no hassle.So if you’re willing to restrict your “portability” to, say, 85% of the world instead of 95%, you can drop down the amount of training drastically. But then you’re completely shut out of some places. How do you weight your priorities? Is the additional training worth it if you’re going to get to a new place and have to jump through more hoops anyway? That depends on you. What places do you want to work in, and how frequently do you think you’d be moving along?So you see how just one criterion (portability), if you take it seriously, has a huge trade-off against cost and time. You could say that in this case, portability and quality coincide somewhat. The programs that train you to the highest level are probably the ones that will allow you to work in the most places. But these two variables are strongly positively correlated with cost.But “quality” is way more complex than that.Massage therapy is a lot of different things. It’s highly-skilled, highly-technical rehab. It’s spa relaxation. It’s folk medicine. Often, it’s a blend of two or three of the above. There are more modalities of massage than I could list in an hour. Getting really good at any single one can take many years—a whole lot longer than massage school itself. So one person’s idea of “best” is different from another’s. And when it comes to training programs, do you prefer one that goes more in-depth into five, or less in-depth into ten? Or a shorter one (hence less costly) that goes less in-depth into five? What about one that includes more integration training, so that for any one case, you can more effectively blend the skills you have from different modalities? What is it you’re looking for? What do you want to do? In what settings? For whom? Do you want to provide relief to suffering people who really need it, or do you want to work in high-end spas with the rich and famous who will tip you well?Your question is so broad as to be meaningless. There’s no correct answer. It’s like asking, “what’s the best-tasting, cheapest, most nutritious food in the world, that is easily accessible anywhere?” You’re basically asking where to find a magical unicorn. The world’s cheapest food is not the most nutritious. The most nutritious for one person isn’t what another person’s body needs. (e.g. in America, “healthy” often implies “low calorie, low salt” because so many Americans are overweight and consume too much salt) And everyone has different tastes. And some foods are more affordable in one place than another.The school I trained at, Vancouver School of Bodywork and Massage, had an excellent and well-rounded certification program. But it was only a 700-hour program. Some of my fellow graduates have worked on cruise ships, become licensed in the United States, worked in resorts regionally or overseas, or started very profitable private practices. Others graduated, then flunked out of “real life” and did something else. Getting a diploma is no guarantee of success—you keep on working, compete in the marketplace, and you have to work with what life hands you. If I was prepared to stay in school longer and pay more, I could have attended one that opened me up to much more accreditation and more financial opportunity, but with less of a holistic focus. An RMT (registered massage therapy) school would have allowed me to bill insurance. Still not a “job ticket”, but a lot closer to one. The RMT school in my region that has been around longest, and probably still has the strongest brand-name recognition, is going downhill in quality and there are several rising stars that clearly surpass it now. The most admired school in the United States five years ago (Boulder College) had a way lower standard of training than the RMT schools, but closed a couple years ago due to bankruptcy anyway.The first step to getting what you want is to figure out what you want. There is no one best massage school, any more than you could say there is one best food, one best exercise program, or one best cancer treatment. It depends on the individual situation.