Why a Career in Massage Therapy? My Reasons for Pursuing This Path

So, why did I decide to pursue a career in massage therapy? It’s not something I’ve grown up wanting to do. In fact, ever since childhood, I’ve always felt that writing and teaching were my true vocation, and I’ve wanted to be a professional writer since I was twelve.

In order to explain how I ended up where I am now, I should first give you some more background information about myself. I grew up in southwestern Ohio and first came to Boston in the fall of 1994 to study at Boston College. At BC, I majored in English and philosophy and was a member of the Arts and Sciences Honors Program. I also studied abroad at Oxford University during my junior year, and, while in England, I became pregnant. As a result, I ended up back in Ohio and failed to graduate on time with the rest of my class. Back in my hometown, I supported myself and my daughter by working in the Accounts Payable department of a local manufacturing company, and during this time I also suffered from severe depression.

Eventually, my daughter and I moved to Amsterdam, The Netherlands, where we lived as expatriates for a year and a half (as for why we moved to Amsterdam, that’s a long story in and of itself!). After the relationship I was in ended, we returned to Ohio and lived with my parents. Since I had always dreamed of returning to Boston, I finally returned in the summer of 2004, and my daughter and I officially took up Boston residency that September.

Although I had hoped to resume my studies at Boston College as soon as possible after returning to Boston, I wasn’t able to return to school right away, mainly for economic reasons. After doing some temp work, I eventually secured a position at a local liberal religious non-profit organization, a job which I’ve held for the past three years.

I should also note that, after moving back to Boston, the migraine and tension headaches which have plagued me since puberty have increased in frequency. No doubt this is mostly due to the stress of being a single parent in a city with an extremely high cost of living, but other factors (i.e., hormones) also play a role. Sick of spending so much money on prescription medications and wanting to find natural forms of pain relief, I started exploring alternative medicine and began going to Pathways to Wellness, a wonderful acupuncture clinic in Boston’s South End. (If anyone reading this is looking for an acupuncturist in the Boston area, I can’t recommend Pathways enough, and Jeff in particular; also, since they offer a sliding fee scale and provide inexpensive group treatments starting at only $20, Pathways is surprisingly affordable for people like me who are on a limited budget.)

Acupuncture definitely helped reduce the frequency and severity of my headaches, but it didn’t eliminate them completely. During a visit with my doctor, she noticed how tense I was and suggested massage therapy as something I might want to try and referred me to a local physical therapist. I also sought out a local massage therapist and had my first professional massage.

As a result of these experiences, I realized how beneficial massage therapy and complementary medicine in general could be, and it dawned on me that massage therapy was a career I could pursue that would allow me to help others, while also providing the freedom and flexibility that my current 9-5 job lacked. By becoming a massage therapist, I could work on my own terms and, instead of indirectly helping others through working in an office, I could actively help people in, literally, a hands-on role.

After researching various schools and attending a one-day introductory workshop at Cortiva (I’ll write more on why I chose Cortiva in my next post), I decided to go ahead and enroll. However, it was also at this time that it finally became possible for me to return to Boston College, and, since it was coming upon the ten-year anniversary of when I should have originally graduated, I knew that I couldn’t put off returning to BC any longer. After discussing my plans with my supervisor, I was given permission to reduce my hours to part-time in order to return to school.

I knew that attending BC and Cortiva simultaneously would be impossible, so I opted to return to BC and postpone massage school. Looking back on it, this was definitely the right decision for me to make. I took classes at BC part-time in the fall and full-time this past spring, and I finally graduated this past May. Now that I have my bachelor’s degree, I started seriously thinking again about Cortiva and recently contacted their admissions department to find out when classes would be offered again.

I also found out several months ago that I’m being let go from my job, so the timing is perfect. I only have two weeks left with my current employer, and classes at Cortiva start on July 15th. When I originally considered attending Cortiva, I was interested in the part-time program, but now, since my circumstances have changed, I’ve decided to take classes at Cortiva full-time, during the day on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays. This means that I’ll still have evenings and weekends free to spend with my daughter and boyfriend and to pursue other interests and activities.

As for writing and teaching, enrolling in massage school doesn’t meant that I’ve abandoned these career plans, quite the contrary. Now that I have my bachelor’s degree, I intend to take classes at the graduate level, with my ultimate goal obtaining a Ph.D. Having heard all of the horror stories about pursuing an academic career in the humanities and knowing how poorly paid adjunct professors are, being a licensed massage therapist will help me earn money while in grad school and, later, will allow me to supplement the meager income I receive from teaching.

However, a career in massage therapy is not simply a means to an end for me, rather, it’s also an end in itself. As an INFP, also known as the “Healer” or “Idealist,” massage therapy is a career that seems naturally suited to me, and I could easily see myself doing energy work, life coaching, workshops and retreats, etc. in addition to massage.

Also, massage therapy seems like an ideal complement to my work as a writer and a teacher, since both are ways to touch, nurture, and heal people, in body and/or spirit. In fact, I want to become a massage therapist for many of the same reasons why I want to become a writer, precisely because I want to help make a difference in the world and help people be whole. Just as I believe in the transformative and healing power of art, I also believe in the transformative and healing power of touch; both can be powerful agents of change and can help people achieve deeper levels of physical/psychospiritual health and wellness and realize their full potential.

For massage therapy students and practicing massage and bodywork professionals reading this blog, why did you decide to pursue a career in massage therapy? Please feel free to post your stories and comments here!

---

Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Why Cortiva? Choosing Where to Study
• Just What the Doctor Ordered: A Massage
• Post-Op Rx: Get a Massage