Why You Should Consider a Career in Massage Therapy

About four years ago, I began thinking about going to massage school. The idea occurred to me after living in China for a year and seeing how prevalent massage is in Eastern cultures. While I had always thought of massage as a luxury, I was surprised to see how Asian cultures saw it as a way of life and an important component of maintaining one's health.

After doing some research on the Internet I located four massage schools in my city. The first one I looked at was the Lauterstein-Conway Massage School in Austin. (www.tlcschools.com). The school was offering an informational meeting where people could see the school, meet one of the founders and learn about the program. I signed up and found the meeting to be very informative. Because of the cost of the program, (about $3,000), I was hesitant to sign up. Over the course of the next year, I attended two more informational sessions and each time learned a little more about the school and became even more convinced that this was something I would enjoy.

After a year of debate, I finally enrolled in the 300-hour program which is required to be a licensed massage therapist in Texas. I began in September 2005. The classes worked well with my full-time work schedule (I was working as a newspaper reporter). We had class from 6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m. Monday nights and from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday (and also all day Sunday about once a month). The school offered a payment program that required me to pay about $700 up front but then allowed me to make the remaining payments over the course of six months.

I expected my classmates to be a bunch of new-agey, aura reading hippies, and was surprised to find that they were not. Much like me, they were women who had very normal corporate day jobs as lawyers, accountants and engineers and were looking for something that was, well, the opposite of corporate. My class was small with only 12 people and while there were men who attended the Lauterstein-Conway school, my class was made up solely of women.

For the next six months, I spent my Saturdays learning about massage and I loved every minute of it. The best part about massage school is getting massages! The instructor would generally open each class discussing what part of the body we would be learning. She would usually do a demonstration on somebody in the class while the rest of us watched. We would then pair off and practice on each other. The pace of the class was perfect, slow enough that I had time to learn each routine thoroughly, but not too fast so that I got bored. The classes also emphasized proper body mechanics to help the therapist prevent burn-out and injury.

I struggled more with the anatomy classes which consisted of a three hour lecture on Monday evenings. I had hardly any previous exposure to anatomy and learning the names of all the different muscles proved quite challenging. But exercises such as building muscles out of clay and coloring in my anatomy coloring book made it a little easier.

After completing the six-months of classes, we were required to do an "internship" in order to graduate. The school operated a clinic which allowed people from the community to get a massage at a reduced price of $35/hour. Each student was required to do 40 massages in the clinic and we were not paid or tipped. This was a valuable experience that allowed me to practice interviewing clients, work on a variety of people and evaluate feedback. I completed my internship requirements in May 2006 and graduated from the school in June.

After graduating from the program, I was required to take the state exam conducted by the Texas Department of State Health Services. For the state exam, I had to do a short massage demonstration and take a written exam which took about two hours. I received my state license in September.

In the year since I acquired my massage therapy license, I have already made back the money that I put into massage school, and I haven't even been doing it full-time. Currently, I have a job as an on-call massage therapist during the weekend at the Driskill Hotel which is one of the oldest and nicest hotels in Austin. I will do anywhere from one to four massages on the weekend. This allows me to work full-time in my regular job and also do massage on the weekends.

Massage therapy is fast-growing field that allows therapists the flexibility to set their own hours and travel, as well as help others physically and emotionally. It is a very rewarding profession that benefits both the therapist and the client.