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The World Massage Conference being held November 12-17,2009 is poised to be the largest event in the history of massage with over 10,000 massage therapists from around the world already registered.

The World Massage Conference is a “virtual conference” which you can attend from the comfort of your home or office. It brings together more than 70 international massage therapy educators and experts who will be doing live presentations over the Internet for the six day event. Talks will cover the latest developments in massage techniques, research, treatment, educator skills, business and self care.

Speakers include: Sandy Fritz, Paul St John, Judith Aston, Thomas Myers, Ruth Werner, Linda Tellington-Jones, Leon Chaitow, Cherie Sohnen-Moe, Gil Hedley, Tiffany Field, Ralph Stephens, Steve Capellini, David Kent, James Waslaski, Eric Brown and dozens more renowned massage experts.

Registration fees start at $59 and give participants access to all presentations. “Accessibility has been a driving principle in the development of the conference,” emphasizes Eric Brown, who has been largely responsible for the technology behind the event. “Anyone can afford to attend. And from a technology perspective, even people with slow dial up connections can listen to the sessions without any problems.”

“It’s truly a green conference,” explains Melanie Hayden, another of the organizers. “There’s no travel involved. Participants just log into the website at the time of a live presentation to listen to some of the top minds in the massage industry. And everything is recorded and archived so if you can’t attend live, it’s not a problem. Just listen in when it’s convenient.”

For a limited time, you can register for Full Access at half price, only $99, by referring a friend to the site.

Full Access registration includes access to all live broadcasts. Participants can ask speakers questions online before and during the presentations. If participants can’t attend the sessions live, recordings will be available for replay. Broadcasts can also be downloaded to your computer, burned to CD or put on your MP3 player for listening on the go. Transcripts of selected presentations will be available and most presentations are eligible for continuing education credits.

An exciting element of this year’s show is the Virtual Lounge where you can meet and interact with your colleagues, meet new friends and learn from the experiences of fellow massage therapists from around the globe. You’ll be able to discuss various issues through online forums, chat in real time, discuss presentations as they are in progress, IM or email individual participants, share pictures, videos, and more!

For more information about the conference

Continuing massage education is required by most state boards to renew a professional massage license.  A specific number of hours and kinds of classes are often required.  There is also a specific time frame in which you have to take the classes to fulfill the requirements.  How these hours are determined I am not sure.  It seems arbitrarily – someone on the board just gets the idea that they need more.

Taking classes is also another thing.  There are people who take many classes and love taking classes and plan to take the classes that are of interest to them.  Then there are those who wait until a month before their license renewal is up and then try to find classes to take within that time period.  They really don’t care what it is.   Then there are those who don’t take classes and make up their own classes or have friends vouch for them and create fictitious classes.   Yes I have actually seen that happen.

Then what about year long training programs that people take or even four year training programs or like I did when I took Zentherapy training – going for about 100 hours of classes a year for 5 years.   What did that count for?  It just fulfilled my CE’s for a while but I don’t get any recognition from my state board that I did that.

There is also no system set up to find reputable massage continuing education providers.  There are a few online directories and here in WA we have something that is called the Continuing massage education calendar that is sent out once a month with a list of the ongoing classes.  It is very expensive to advertise in for teachers and is not an exclusive list of classes in the area.

How do you choose a CE class that will help you in some way in building your business or working more efficiently with clients?   What do you look for in a class?   Something that is cheap? On a specific day or time?  How do you choose a technique to learn and practice?

Then there is the part that just taking a weekend workshop in something makes people think that they are an expert in something or that you can give yourself a specific title.   Does taking a weekend workshop in deep tissue, Hellerwork, cranio-sacral therapy or lymphatic drainage qualify you to call yourself a Hellerworker, deep tissue therapist or other specialist?  Hardly, but many do start adding listings to their business cards.

What do we need in a continuing education class?  How can we find reputable teachers and classes with teachers that know how to teach?  Many have never taught before.  There is an art to teaching that can be learned but you also have to start somewhere with teaching.

While the NCB has a process of certifying massage teachers but this is all that the require of applicants (pdf):

To become an NCBTMB Approved Provider we ask that you read each item below. If you are unable
to meet these prerequisites, please do not submit at this time. For a detailed explanation about each
prerequisite requirement, please refer to the Reference Guide.
You must be an established provider (individual or organization) that has taught at least one
course once in the last three years.*
Your course(s) must be appropriate to the field of massage and bodywork and exceed a basic
500-hour core massage therapy and bodywork curriculum per NCBTMB criteria.
Your course(s) may not be longer than fifty (50) hours in length; if so, we ask that the course be
offered in segments, e.g., Section 1 of 2, Section 2 of 2, etc.
*Membership, association, or accreditation organizations sponsoring one-time course offerings
for monthly membership meetings, annual conferences or symposiums are exempt from “the
teaching a course once in the last three years” rule. Content must meet our criteria for
continuing education.
* If you are another type of organization, i.e., school, institute, etc. – a non-membership,
association or accreditation body, you may also use this format when sponsoring a conference
or symposium.

They only have 1400 CE providers in the whole US.   That’s about how many massage schools there are.  I would think that there would be tens of thousands of approved CE providers but then there is the whole politics and supporting the NCB or not.

What is the future of Massage CE?  Are CE’s even useful? Are they even needed really?   If people want to take classes and learn from them that is one thing but if people are just taking them to get their credits and forget the classes or they don’t care about the information or classes what does that mean for the profession?