Massage School for High School Students

Many high school students are now considering careers in massage but it really isn't a career for high school students.  The average age of all massage therapists is 45.  Massage schools are geared towards teaching adults with life experience and usually some business, customer service or marketing backgrounds.

Massage is more than it appears in commercials and advertisements. You will be massaging people who are in pain, people who are very stressed out from work and relationships and it takes a certain amount of maturity to create a therapeutic relationship with a client.

A therapeutic relationship is created when a person (client) calls the massage therapist for an appointment thinking that the massage will help relieve their pain or other health condition.  The client thinks of the massage therapist as being more powerful which creates a imbalance in power in the relationship.  Healing actually happens as a result of this power imbalance but it requires that the massage therapist have strong and clear boundaries.  High school student are not usually equipped to deal with such situations.

Massage also has a way of bringing up old emotional issues.  People can end up in tears in the middle of sessions.  They can re-experience rage and anger from past experiences particularly people with a history of abuse.  While it doesn't always happen, the massage therapist must be able to deal with appropriately or further pain can be inflicted.

Massage school is usually only a year program or less and is not able to provide training in this side of doing massage.  There are some 2 year massage programs and a very few 4 year programs in Canada which would be much better suited for high school students who want to go to massage school right out of high school.

To find out more about careers in massage see my Ebook - The Massage Therapy Career Guide