Massage Therapy - Facts about massage therapy as a career

Massage therapy can take place in many different settings. Some massage therapists work out of their home, some out of an office, and others prefer to work on-site, traveling to their client’s location in order to offer them some form of relief. Statistics have shown that approximately forty four percent of all licensed massage therapists work on-site at their client’s location. By comparison, thirty nine percent of licensed therapists work in their own office. Also, twenty two percent of therapists reported that they work in a salon or spa, twenty one percent reported that they worked in a health care clinic, seventeen percent reported that they worked in an office with other massage therapists, and nine percent stated that they performed massage therapy in a health club setting.

Massage therapy is a flexible type of occupation that one can take on either part-time or full-time. A survey conducted in 2005 by the American Massage Therapy Association showed that approximately thirty eight percent of all working massage therapists worked full time (considered at least seventeen hours of actual massage per week) and sixty two percent of massage therapists worked merely part time.

If you’re thinking about a massage therapist career, you will definitely have plenty of options when it comes to choosing a school at which to begin your training. There are currently over 1,000 different massage therapy schools in the United States alone!

In order to successfully become a professional massage therapist, there are three separate steps that you will need to undergo. First off, you will have to choose a massage school and become accepted to it. Massage therapy schools usually tend to require a high school degree in order to enroll. After that, you will need to become nationally certified as a massage therapist, and then you will need to obtain a license or meet another type of requirement through the state in which you plan on practicing massage. Only then will you be fully prepared for beginning a career as a massage therapist.

People of all ages are trained as massage therapists. More than fifty percent of the members of the American Massage Therapy Association are between the ages of thirty five and fifty four, with a median age of forty four.