Massage Apprenticeship Programs
I started my first website www.thebodyworker.com after gathering information to start an apprenticeship program for a friend of mine who didn’t want to go through the standard massage school routine. Here in WA State it is allowed under our licensing.
Keith Grant speaks highly of the idea of apprenticeship programs in his white paper on the Issues of Massage Governance saying :
“actual practice requires very limited memorization of facts. The massage
practitioner must have the deeper understanding required to find information as needed and
then to be able to use it to make therapy decisions in the face of ambiguity. Research indicates
that the environment that seems best able to foster the understanding leading to usability has
much in common with traditional apprenticeships [19, 20].”A recent posting on the Body_Work Yahoo Group informed me that apprenticeship programs are alive and well in Australia.
Becoming a massage therapist is such a mix of learning anatomy and science and learning to apply this to a wide variety of conditions and working with clients as people which brings a whole other challenge in creating professional boundaries. This can’t really be done in any training program no matter how many hours one puts into it. It is really just like any other profession - like going to law school doesn’t make you a lawyer or accounting school doesn’t make your an accountant or even having a child doesn’t make you a parent. It is more about the process and the process continues until you stop acting in whatever roles you have chosen or in death.
So I am in the process of researching apprenticeship programs and how to set them up and what would it take for licensed states and even unlicensed states to accept apprenticeship training for licensing requirements. I would love to hear others thoughts and experiences on this.
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