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
