I am thinking about starting school for massage therapy can anyone give me advice?

[Texasgirl]

I want to know how to get started after I'm outta school and if this is a good career?

 

[jannsody]

The job is supposed to be quite physical in nature as some clients would like a massage up to an hour. A lot of standing, learning forward in various planes is involved. If still interested in the field, please consider the more affordable county vo-tech school or community college as opposed to those private $$ tech schools as long as it's accredited within the industry. That way, at least, one may not be left in so much debt upon completing the program To have one's own business, one must do a lot of marketing of one's services which may include give a free (or very affordable) lecture about the health benefits and such to try to increase one's clientele.

Please steer clear of those online, for-profit schools such as penn foster, sanford brown, ITT tech, ashworth, university of phoenix, kaplan, walden, strayer, devry, everest and others as they are merely out to 'make a profit' (and course credits may not transfer): http://www.ripoffreport.com and can type into seach.

For US colleges: http://www.utexas.edu/world/univ

For general career info: http://www.bls.gov/oco and can search 'massage therapists' or such.

 

[Sabeena]

For 95% of all people who try massage it isn't a good career at all. Most quit in 3 years due to low pay, physical injury and burnout. Most practitioners are self-employed. 50% of your income is eaten up by expenses, and you have to work an additional 1/2 hour unpaid cleaning, doing laundry, billing, traveling, etc for every hour of paid massage. Others are employees and earn $15-$25 an hour. You can only do up to 25 massages a week because it's so physically demanding which means you'll make around $20,000 a year. Then there's the sexual harassment you have to deal with on a constant basis. Personally I didn't enjoy it one bit, and I even made good money.