www.thebodyworker.com

Massage Continuing Education classes are usually a required part of renewing your massage license in most states.  I have been doing some work on a new Massage CE calendar for the Seattle area and started doing some research about CE classes.  It appears that Seattle is unusual in that we have literally hundreds of independent massage teachers offering their classes.  We currently have something called the CME Calendar that goes out to about 4000 massage therapists a month with listings from all of these teachers.  The thing is that it is very expensive to advertise in and it is just a few lines of info on the classes which really doesn’t say much.  You have to already really know the teacher or be interested in the information.

Teaching massage continuing education classes is a great way to make money.  In other areas, this is not really happening from what I have found out so far.  The place people usually go for massage ce is back to the massage schools (which are just taught by the regular massage school teachers for the most part who are all underpaid!) or take classes online or pay to travel to another state/area to take a class offered by a nationally known massage teacher like Upledger, Eric Dalton, Whitney Lowe and others.

If you want to start a CE Calendar in your state, you will have to first figure out how to set up and teach a class.  Here are some things to think about:

• What will you teach?  What are you an expert at?
• Do you know how to teach?  You can learn by doing but you can also get help in learning to teach.
• You will need space to hold the class.  I put on CE classes for awhile in the mid-90′s.  You can also make money sponsoring the class or at least get to take the class for free.  We did classes in the Polish Hall which was a big Polish Communities dance and meeting hall.  It had a big room with a kitchen.  We hauled tables in and out.  You just have to hunt around for community meeting places.  Try your local churches, community centers and such.
• While having your own space and having your own tables would make it easier you can just have people bring their tables until you can afford to buy tables.
• Figure out how much you are going to charge.  Figure out a way to take class registrations by mail and online.
• Create policies about due dates for registrations and cancellations and what to do if someone gets sick at the last minute and can’t make it.
• Have a feed back form for people to help you improve.   Throw out the best and the worst and read the ones in the middle for the most constructive criticism – that is from Cherie Sohnen-Moe!
• Set the hours of class time and break time.
• Give instructions for parking, getting there, what they need to bring, lunch places and networking with others in the class in a registration confirmation letter.
• Take the class from Eric Brown at bodyworkbiz.com on how to create a massage class.

I am also going to be writing an ebook on how to set up a Continuing Massage Education Calendar using WordPress like I am using for my local calendar.  The reason I am using wordpress is because it will allow teachers to also blog (write articles) about what they do and how their classes can help others.  It is the best way to promote workshops and get people interested in them.  They will be able to post pictures and videos and such to really get people involved.

Related posts:

1. Massage Continuing Education Massage Continuing Education is vital to the profession of massage. ...
2. Continuing massage education Continuing massage education is required by most state boards to...
3. Trends in Massage Education I just received an email from Massage Magazine announcing their...
4. Teaching others how to massage One of the things that is really missing in the...
5. Create Your Own Massage CE Calendar One of my latest projects has been creating a local...