Apprenticeships
For many, the field of massage therapy was their first chance to achieve something meaningful. Instead of being welcomed with open arms, they were pushed away with bitterness and sorrow. Let us work together to slice out the negativity by replacing it with joy, peace, and wonder. Together we can inspire the hearts and minds of those drawn to our beautiful calling. When we welcome a new soul into the wonderful world of massage, we encourage them to spread the light of life and to live with love.
Our industry is collectively represented by the whole of our workforce. When one massage therapist falters we all feel it. Watching fellow therapists quit their career is heartbreaking. Everyone cannot be a mentor, but we can be a community of spirits sharing our spectacular skills. Everyone has something profound to contribute and if we work together we can guide our brothers and sisters through the dark times, help them walk when it hurts, and encourage hope.
The industry is vast, complex, and difficult to navigate. Transforming the industry in its current form is impossible. Instead of wasting time and resources attempting to rebuild a broken system with band aids and duct tape, it is time to rebuild it from its roots.
This begins with the education system. Massage was once a trade passed from master to apprentice, it was a professional relationship of healing and growth. We need to escape the cold, sterile classrooms of today and return to the warm, inspiring, and discipline focused learning environments of the past. Our occupation once had a culture, over time it has been stripped away, now we need to rebuild it.
I believe reinstituting the apprentice-journeyman-master social hierarchy will help rebuild our culture, especially when it is infused with humility. It will offer a solution to the wayward wanderers who feel lost after graduating. It will promote health at all stages of a therapist’s career, by building them a foundation for success as a student, guidance as a new therapist, and a means to leave a legacy as a master.
Too much time is spent on the MBLEX and too little is invested in helping students develop their ability to provide a safe and rewarding massage. Many programs are taught by massage therapists who beat their bodies into oblivion by the meat grinder. They have never dared to achieve their dreams, ran their own business, or influenced the industry in any meaningful way. They are the blind leading the blind, teaching mythology, and misleading information, destroying each generation of therapist before their career even begins.
Students need to be taught in the space they will be working in, and when they graduate they need continued guidance to assist them in navigating their new career.
They lack practical skills essential to practicing massage and when they graduate each student is pressed to join a mega chain for “experience”. They are told that this is the best way to develop their skills and find their way. This is a lie. The mega chains are the worst way to develop massage skills, instead they reinforce the bad habits learned in school and destroy the therapist’s hopes and dreams. Once a therapist enters the mega chain workforce they are unlikely to leave to discover their own destiny. Their purpose is stripped from them as their mind becomes weary and their body weak, leading them to leave the industry.
This is solved by teaching the student as an apprentice in an actual working environment. This allows them to witness the ebb and flow of business, and train with experienced therapists who live, eat, and breathe massage. They must have someone in their professional life who has cultivated their career and have walked alongside powerful leaders of the industry.
