Wednesday, May 27, 2009

What You Need To Know About Massage Therapy Certification

By Bart Icles

Massage therapy is a very lucrative career. Working an average of 15 hours a week would make a licensed massage therapist earn an average of about US $35,000. This allows a massage therapist to have another full-time job without sacrificing much of his or her free time that can be allotted for family time, leisure time, or just simply alone time. Because of this, a lot of people are aspiring to have a massage therapy certification.

Before becoming a massage therapist, you need to, of course, earn your massage therapy degree. After that, you need to pass massage therapy licensure examinations to, finally, earn your much sought-for license or certification. There are several things that you need to know in order to be able to secure your massage therapy certification. They are the following:

1. Not all states regulate massage therapy. Only 37 states do plus Washington, D.C. It does not mean, however, that massage therapists in the states with no regulatory boards are not regulated, though. There are cities and towns and counties that also have regulatory boards for massage therapy certification.

2. The primary massage therapy certification exams are the NCETB (National Certification Examination for Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork), the NCETM (National Certification Examination for Therapeutic Massage (NCETM), and the NCE (National Certification Exam). Usually, it is the state boards that dictate which massage therapy certification exam an aspiring massage therapist should be taking. All three ask questions about the body systems (anatomy, physiology, etc.), about pathology, therapeutic massage assessment and application, and the professional standards, ethics, and other practices of massage therapy. The exams are multiple-choice in nature.

3. To qualify for a massage therapy certification exam, the aspiring massage therapist should have received 500 hours of credited classes and should have graduated from a duly accredited massage therapy school.

4. If you want to practice in a different state than the one the you got your license in, chances are, you would need to go back to a massage school duly accredited by the state that you are moving into and take a supplemental program to be able to standardize everything. Most of the time, though, certified massage therapists are "grandfathered" when they transfer to a different state, provided that they are practicing for a certain number of years and can present pertinent documents supporting it. All massage therapist practitioners should be able to comply with all the requirements of the existing laws that bind them.

A massage therapy certification can be a very easy thing to obtain. As long as you are determined and have your heart set on being a massage therapy practitioner, everything is possible.

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