Massage Therapy Program

What is A Massage Therapy Program Degree?

Massage Therapy is the manual manipulation of soft tissue in the body to help people in lots of way:  to relax, to get rid of sore muscles from exercise, to heal injuries, and to help with stress and anxiety. There are many approaches but most are either rehabilitative massage, where a clinical approach is used for deep massage in targeted parts of the body, or relaxation massage sometimes called Swedish Massage, which has a lighter touch mainly aimed at relaxation and stress reduction.  To be successful in the field, you’ll need to learn all the strategies for both clinical and relaxation massage, be able to show compassion for your clients, and be able to communicate with other health providers to give the client the appropriate types of therapy.

Massage Therapy Training programs will last anywhere from 300 to about 1000 hours of training.  If you want to be employed in a clinical setting like a chiropractic office or hospital, you’d better plan on spending about two years in training.  You’ll want to pick an accredited program, because it may be required in your area in order to get licensed.  Courses you will take will include topics like anatomy and physiology, health values of massage, hygiene, pathology, theories of massage, plus all the techniques courses in massage.  You’ll have lots of practice in the various massage strategies during your training; you’ll need to log-in many hours of practice under the supervision of a licensed therapist.