Massage Therapy School

for Male Massage Therapists

Massage therapy school is where it all begins. After seeing all the massage school ads promising you that you’ll make $40…… $50…… up to $60 per hour, you decided to take the plunge and enroll. The $5,000-$10,000 for school tuition seems paltry compared to the potential for income you'll have after you graduate. Besides, you say, it will be a quality education.

Some massage therapy schools are great. Others are fair. And a few shouldn’t even be accredited. All were probably started with the best of intentions. Most of the better ones probably focus on techniques and academic education pertaining to the human body. A few take things a bit further , and might include a good course of study in business practices.

Unfortunately, there are only a very few of the massage schools out there that address the issues of being a man in a female-dominated industry. Only the fewest schools will approach how difficult it is for a male massage therapist to compete for massage therapy jobs or clients against female therapists. And even if those few schools do, I’ve not heard of one school that offers solutions for male therapists to effectively out-compete their female massage therapist counterparts. And why should they? Females massage therapy students outnumber male students 5-to-1.

I’ve heard of a number of massage schools who have taught effective safety plans for what to do if a male client attempts to solicit or coerce a sexual service from a female therapist, yet I’ve never heard of a massage school teaching an equally effective plan for a male massage therapist to file a sexual discrimination lawsuit when denied employment based on his gender.

Likewise, massage therapy schools don’t teach much about making therapeutic relationships. And of the ones that do, the therapeutic relationship is often taught based on a female paradigm. Male massage therapists need to be taught about making therapeutic relationships based on the unique qualities of a male paradigm. Client-provider relationships are crucial for the benefit of the client’s outcome. Such a relationship formed by a male therapist can miss the mark if he's not been taught to properly address the unique characteristics which a male therapist brings to the table.

Massage therapy schools teach a massage therapy student what he or she needs to know about how to do massage. Where they often miss the mark is on how to teach the male massage student what he really needs to know to be a prosperous male massage therapist.

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