Widening Job Market for Massage Therapists
Once the province of Eastern medicine, massage therapy is finding its ways into the West in ways that might startle ancient practitioners who thought America would never change. In Louisville, for example, massage therapy aids doctors in their treatment of children fighting cancer. On the other extreme, residents in Cleveland are signing up for classes to learn to soothe their pets through a certified canine massage therapy practitioner.
Traditionally, massage therapists considered a narrow job market that included combined practice with chiropractors and acupuncturists. Or, they took their tables into spas, hotels, cruise ships, private massage clinics, resorts, and private gyms. During the dot-com era, the job market expanded to include seated massage for the army of coders and programmers that worked late into the night.
More recently, the jobs take massage therapists into alcohol and drug detoxification centers, hospice, osteoarthritis and chronic pain clinics, and pet arthritis treatment clinics. In the early 1990s, equine massage schools ramped up their training and, in a recent move, have added companion dog massage courses.
Travelers at the busy Sea-Tac Airport can table their woes for 15-30 and 60-minute massage breaks in chairs and tables, while other massage practitioners work crowded shopping malls scurrying with Christmas-stressed shoppers. Golf courses and tennis training facilities are offering preventative as well as corrective massage therapy for elbow and muscle injuries common to those activities.
What's new about today's massage job market is that the work is wherever you choose to carve a niche, dive in, and start offering much needed relief.
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