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Massage as a second career: More Vicars student success stories

This 3-part blog series is all about the advantages and challenges of starting a massage therapy career later in life. We’ll find out why it’s such an attractive career for people in their forties, fifties, and beyond, and the special skills that mature students bring to the classroom. Today, we’re sharing more stories from Vicars graduates who came to massage therapy as a second career. 

Hazel Bell

Twenty years ago, Hazel Bell made a phone call that changed her life.

Working at the time as a clinical assistant in a medical office, she had seen an ad in the paper for Vicars School of Massage Therapy in Edmonton. “The ad said: ‘How would you like to be a massage therapist?’ so I called,” she says.

Hazel enrolled at Vicars at the age of 45—a member of one of the school’s very first classes. Two other people in the class, including her sister, were around her age. She attended school one day a week while continuing to work full time.

“My children were older so I could take the time for myself,” she says. “It was challenging, but I was very focused on succeeding and eventually having my own massage therapy business.”

Hazel went on to become sole proprietor of Body Craft in Sherwood Park. She’s seen massage therapy change over the years, particularly the greater awareness therapists have of treatment for specific conditions. She also sees a more robust psychosocial environment for students, something that Vicars puts a lot of emphasis on.

While listening to clients is paramount in any successful registered massage therapist’s practice, Hazel adds a twist.

“Learning to listen with your hands is key,” she says. “My clients say I communicate with my hands.”

Now in her mid-60s, Hazel has no plans to retire any time soon. She’s prepared to reduce her hours eventually, but she loves being an RMT too much to consider stopping entirely.

“Massage therapy changed my life. It gave me a career, a business, and an income,” she says. “It’s been a fabulous experience.”

Rhonda Watson

Hazel was a mentor to Rhonda Watson when Rhonda was a Vicars student in 2016-2017. Rhonda owns Radiate Wellness in Edmonton and returned to Vicars last year as an admissions advisor.

Before she was an RMT, Rhonda was a successful business analyst. The stable 9-to-5 schedule worked well for her while her children were in school, but once they were grown, she was ready for a new start. She was interested in health and wellness, and wanted to help others. Massage therapy was the perfect fit.

“I was really anxious, wondering if my study skills were still going to be there and if I could retain information,” Rhonda says. “It’s amazing but you really don’t lose those skills.”

Rhonda treated school like a job: she set herself a study schedule and went into “the office” every day. She was motivated to succeed despite the challenging workload, and she revelled in the culture at Vicars.

“It was a very supportive environment, from the staff to my fellow classmates,” Rhonda says. “If you’re running into difficulty, there are people there to help you. They really do set you up for success.”

Now that she’s an admissions advisor at the school, Rhonda fields a lot of questions from prospective students that feel familiar to her.

“The most frequent questions I get from callers are ‘Is it too late for me?’ and ‘Am I too old?’,” she says. “I tell them my story and how concerned I was before school started that I would be the oldest person in the room. In the end, there were lots of people in their thirties and forties—and up—in the class and that was fantastic.”

When she’s talking to people considering a career in massage, Rhonda has three key points she always makes. The first is about lingering perceptions about massage therapy.

“You don’t have to be strong and muscle-bound to go into massage therapy,” she says. “Instead, it’s all about the science of body mechanics and the right way and wrong way to perform massage.”

A related message is about self-care, something Rhonda is passionate about. “Although massage is about correct techniques and practicing safely and effectively, it is a physical occupation,” she says. “You need to understand your capacity, and what your limits are so you can pace yourself and not be exhausted at the end of the day.”

“Massage therapy is something you can do well into your older years, like Hazel [Bell] is doing,” she says as a final message. “You may not know what your career is going to look like going into school and you don’t have to have all the answers right away because if you keep your skills current, the training is something you will have for the rest of your life.”

Karen Jukes

The physical aspect of massage therapy, along with encouragement from two mentors, is what compelled Smithers, B.C. resident Karen Jukes to enrol in Vicars’ blended learning program on the Calgary campus. Even as a child, Karen had been interested in massage therapy, but her love of the outdoors led her into a degree in forestry. When she had children, she needed to find work with more regular hours that was closer to home. She started at a physiotherapy clinic, first at the front desk and then progressing to becoming a physiotherapist aide, where she was taught a few simple massage techniques. She loved her job but wasn’t willing to go back and do a four-year physiotherapy degree at her stage of life. One of her bosses suggested becoming a registered massage therapist instead.

Karen enrolled at Vicars in 2017, graduating in 2019. Her previous experience with distance education—she did her forestry degree by correspondence—meant that she had the self-motivation and discipline necessary to succeed while working part-time. “When you’re working and you have a family, time management is the priority,” she says. “My kids are into a lot of activities so when things got really hectic, my husband could step in to manage their schedules.”

Karen also found support from a woman she met on a hike who owns Invermere Massage Therapy Clinic. She mentored Karen, eventually offering her a position at the clinic after Karen graduated and where she works now.

Karen’s motivation for her second career was that she wanted to help people and she wanted to be physical because she didn’t like sitting in offices. “Massage therapy gives me the opportunity to be in movement throughout the day as I’m helping people,” she says. “I’ve been working at the clinic for three years now and just love my job. I couldn’t be more thankful.”

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Massage as a second career: Vicars student success stories

This 3-part blog series is all about the advantages and challenges of starting a massage therapy career later in life. We’ll find out why it’s such an attractive career for people in their forties, fifties, and beyond and the special skills that mature students bring to the classroom. Today, we’re sharing the stories of some special Vicars graduates and current students who came to massage therapy as a second career. 

Elliot Lloyd

Elliott Lloyd treats a client at an outreach event during his second year as a Vicars student.

The link between a healthy body and a healthy mind is what drew Elliot Lloyd to pursue a career in massage therapy. He’d always been into sports, even signing up for an Ironman triathlon in his late forties. It was while training for that grueling race that he began getting massages, finding them an essential part of his regime.

After retiring from 30 years in policing, followed by a couple of related security and investigations jobs, Elliot realized he didn’t want to investigate anything anymore—he wanted to help people the way that his RMTs had helped him when he was training.

He graduated from Vicars in October—one of four people in their 50s in his class.

“I joined the police young, at 19, and while we had learning and courses in the police force, going back to school at 51 was hard work,” says Elliot. “But I’ve really enjoyed it.”

For him, the key to successful learning is staying organized to deal with the course load and to keep the stress levels down. And his life and career have given him plenty of practice in that department.

“After the stress of policing, I find working one on one with somebody to help them relax or resolve a therapeutic issue—in a nice quiet room with music in the background—is almost as therapeutic for me as it is for them,” Elliot says.

Elliot has found that his life experience in policing, particularly in communicating with people, translates directly into massage therapy.

“I feel that when I’m dealing with someone in a student clinic, I’m probably more comfortable than someone who is maybe 19 or 20,” he says. “Having a lot of experience in listening and figuring out how people tick is really is the key to massage therapy.”

Sheryl Moroziuk

The idea of being a mature student gave Sheryl Moroziuk a lot to think about.

Sheryl had left her engineering job to care for her children when they were young. Once they’d reached school age, she didn’t want to go back to her old job. She was 37 years old, restless, and wanted a career where she could make more of an immediate difference in people’s lives. An earlier interest in physical training and body building led her to consider massage therapy, and to attend an open house at Vicars’ Calgary campus in 2017. She was intrigued—but the doubts lingered.

“I had a lot of concerns ranging from potentially being the oldest in the class to the transition in my own identity where I might be working on former colleagues or neighbours,” Sheryl says.

Nonetheless, she enrolled and was relieved to discover that many of her classmates were around her age. And once she got back into the rhythm of school, Sheryl found her age was not a hindrance but a strength.

“As a mature student, I had my priorities in order,” she says. “With kids and a family, you don’t have a lot of time to waste.”

A few months after she graduated in 2019, Sheryl was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Rather than letting it be a setback, she decided to view it as another opportunity to turn her own life experiences into professional strengths.

“When you’ve experienced the limited range of motion and lack of mobility that older clients go through, it makes you more empathetic,” she says. “You do more thorough assessments of clients and you have a lot of wisdom to incorporate into your practice.”

Sheryl has a mobile service with a full client base, and fills in for other therapists in a few clinics in her area. She loves the flexibility and freedom to choose her own schedule.

“I’d worked at a lot of different jobs, hoping to contribute and have a purpose,” says Sheryl. “Massage therapy has been the longest running interest of mine and it’s still going strong.”

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Mature students equal mature therapists: Why older massage students thrive at Vicars School

This 3-part blog series is all about the advantages and challenges of starting a massage therapy career later in life. We’ll find out why it’s such an attractive career for people in their forties, fifties, and beyond and the special skills that mature students bring to the classroom. We’ll also feature the stories of some special Vicars graduates and current students who came to massage therapy as a second career. 

Linda McGeachy knows what it takes to be a successful massage therapist. After all, she’s been an RMT for almost 30 years, a massage therapy educator for 25, and is currently the curriculum director at Vicars School.

“You have to like people a lot, and be able to listen well in order to decide what’s going to work best for that person,” she says. “You need to be empathetic, but also maintain the proper boundaries that are going to keep you effective. It’s about being open, well-rounded, and curious.”

It may come as a surprise to some people that her list didn’t include “young and well-muscled.” One of the most common misconceptions about massage therapy is that it’s a young person’s career.

But nothing could be further from the truth: it’s possible to be an effective and successful RMT no matter how old you are or when you start your career. We have more than 20 years’ worth of graduates to prove it!

In fact, starting a massage therapy career a little bit later in life can actually be an advantage.

“When you go back to school later in life, you know what you want and you’re not afraid to work for it. You are often more focused on your goals than you were when you were younger,” says the school’s founder Maryhelen Vicars. “You know yourself better, and that makes you a better student and a better massage therapist.”

Maryhelen speaks from experience: she went back to school at age 48 to train for a new career as an RMT. She had spent 25 years as a journalist, writer, and editor. She had extensive experience developing educational materials for adults, but she hadn’t been a student herself since her early 20s.

When she had the opportunity to create a new type of massage school a couple of years later, she had the needs of mature learners solidly in mind. Students would be treated like adults, and always with respect, she declared. The first consideration in any decision made by the school about curriculum or policy would be how it would affect the students.

Those promises still stand and are at the core of how the school operates today, she says. The result is a combination of a comprehensive, treatment-focused massage curriculum and a blended-learning schedule that allows students to balance school with their other responsibilities. Because mature students always have other responsibilities.

The guiding principles may have stayed the same for more than 20 years, but the curriculum and how it is delivered has definitely evolved. Linda works hard to make sure that Vicars is at the cutting edge of massage therapy education, from incorporating the latest research to using the best online learning tools. Don’t just take our word for it: Vicars is accredited by the CMTCA and an MTAA Approved Program).

The program attracts students at all stages of life but is especially popular with students in their mid-30s and beyond: people who are ready to leave their old career and make a new start, parents who can finally go back to school now that their children are old enough, and even retirees who want a flexible part-time vocation after decades of working 9-5.

Because they’re a part of a program that’s set up for their success, mature students at Vicars can let their strengths shine through.

“Mature students have experience managing family and career responsibilities,” Linda explains. “That’s very important for good time management.”

Mature students can also bring their broad life experience to bear when it comes to short- and long-term treatment planning.

“Each client has a different story and so many things can affect their wellbeing,” Linda says. “When the therapist can understand a person’s life situation because of their own experience, that puts the therapist in a better place.

She uses the example of chronic pain management, an area of growing interest in an aging population. In pain management, the emphasis is on techniques to stimulate the nervous system’s pathways, rather than those used to manipulate muscles. Different approaches are also required to understand chronic pain clients.

“The term ‘biopsychosocial’ is used to describe hearing and treating the whole person, rather than just focusing on specific injuries or complaints in isolation,” she says. “Older therapists with their life experience and, in some cases even their own chronic pain, can understand a person’s life situation better than a younger person who might be just starting to understand that.”

Take the next step on your career journey by signing up for an online or in-person open house event!

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Crossing the Mountains for Massage School: Why BC students keep choosing Vicars

Did you know that over the past four years, one in every four students enrolled at Vicars School commuted each month from their homes and jobs in BC to Calgary or Edmonton for their massage therapy training?

Vicars offers an exceptional education that prepares graduates for all aspects of a successful massage therapy career, from anatomy to treatment planning to business skills. And regular readers will know that Vicars School is accredited by the same body that accredits massage schools provinces that regulate massage and massage education.

But BC has several excellent accredited massage programs, too. So what’s so special about Vicars that inspires so many students to choose us, despite the time, inconvenience, and cost of travelling to Alberta each month?

We chatted with recent Vicars grads Ainslie Conway and Andrew Wautier to uncover why they chose Vicars.

Ainslie Conway knew that she wanted to be a registered massage therapist (RMT). She also knew that she wanted to keep living in beautiful Whistler, BC while she went back to school.

The one thing that she wasn’t sure about was whether she’d be able to find a school that would give her both the high-quality education and the flexible student experience she was looking for.

In addition to raising two young children, Ainslie and her husband own Back In Action Physiotherapy clinic in Whistler. She wanted to find a massage therapy program that would give her the most thorough training possible, given the sacrifices in time, livelihood, and family attention that going back to school would require. She also wanted to make sure her training would match the quality of the other services delivered at the clinic.

“We have high-level athletes among our clientele, and we have the Canadian Snowboard physiotherapy team and the Canadian ski cross physiotherapist lead working with us,” Ainslie says. “Expectations are high.”

And then—as if her standards weren’t high enough already—life threw another challenge her way. The COVID pandemic erupted just as Ainslie was researching massage therapy programs.

“I found that none of the colleges I talked to in British Columbia had a solid plan about how to train or offer clinical hours during COVID, while Vicars School had been offering blended-learning programs for decades and had a plan in place,” she says.

She had already hired several Vicars graduates at the physiotherapy clinic, and had been impressed by their performance, work ethic, and ability. Vicars School’s much lower tuition cost was also a factor in her decision.

The Vicars program is a full-time blended-learning experience, consisting of four in-person classroom days per month and on-campus student clinics. Between classes, students work from home, using high-quality online learning and study-at-home materials. About 30 hours per week is required in independent study.

The unique combination of a blended learning schedule and an education that meets the national curriculum standards means that Vicars attracts students from all over western Canada, the Territories, and beyond. The vast majority of them—25% of the all Vicars students in the last four years alone—are from BC.

Because she lives in Whistler, Ainslie found the time restraint of flying into and staying in Calgary every month about the same as if she had attended a Monday-Friday program in Vancouver.

“I would have been driving five hours a day, every day to go to school in Vancouver,” she says. “And I would also have had to go into the student clinic on weekends.”

To get the most out of her visits to Alberta, Ainslie tacked on a couple of extra days to her stay in Calgary each month to earn her clinical hours at the Vicars student clinic. She was able to keep her travel costs down by teaming up with her fellow out-of-towners—including three other students from Whistler, who became her car-pool buddies to and from the airport.

Including Ainslie, there were nine students in that monthly class who travelled from outside Alberta for school: seven from BC, and two from Saskatchewan. Once pandemic restrictions were eased, the nine of them shared a house when they were in Calgary. Beyond just saving them money on accommodation, having the house (complete with kitchen and laundry room) meant they could travel with only carry-on luggage, eat better and more cheaply, and have a support system while away from home.

Back at home, Ainslie’s husband took on more of the household responsibilities, and her mother pitched in with childcare when needed. While the blended learning pathway was not easy for her and her family, Ainslie says the positives very much outweighed the negatives.

“It was great for the family because the kids saw what it was like to learn as an adult,” she says. “They were even involved in my studying, with colouring and drawing diagrams.”

Ainslie also found it led to better communication with her husband, both personally and professionally.

“He has three physiotherapy degrees and has worked for three Olympics, so he’s very experienced and was a great resource,” Ainslie says. “But massage is a different perspective, and I was able to identify when I needed his knowledge and when I didn’t.”

Ainslie was able to work part-time in her first year of study by allocating 40 hours a week to her schoolwork and filling in at Back In Action around her studies.

“In my second year, I definitely had to reduce my work hours. There’s a lot to learn and a lot of practice time required, and I wanted to ensure I could dedicate the time to be the best that I could be.”

Reality check: she remembers that to balance the full-time commitment of blended learning, she had to take some me-time when she returned from Calgary each month.

“It’s a very heavy content load and by Sunday my brain would be exhausted from trying to absorb everything. I found it important to take the Monday off when I got home, just to process it all and regroup.”

Ainslie graduated from Vicars in June 2022. Before she could practice professionally in BC, however, she needed to pass the board exams in a regulated province. Like many Vicars graduates, she chose to write her exams with the College of Massage Therapists of Newfoundland and Labrador. She was successful, and is in the process of transferring her registration to BC so she can get to work as RMT at the Back in Action Clinic.

Like Ainslie, Andrew Wautier travelled from BC to Alberta each month to train at Vicars. Andrew flew from Prince George and graduated from the Edmonton campus in 2022.

As a certified athletic therapist who works in disability management for the Prince George health authority, Andrew wanted to offer more one-on-one treatment to his clients to improve their outcomes. The problem was that his services were is not currently covered by benefits programs.

“As an RMT in a clinic setting, my clients would have their massage therapy covered through benefits and insurance programs,” Andrew explains.

Andrew looked into options for massage therapy training in BC, but with a full-time job and a young family, the requirement to attend daily classes for two years was just not possible. A friend told him about Vicars School of Massage Therapy’s blended learning program, and he enrolled in early 2020.

He flew into Edmonton once a month, staying with his sister and tacking an extra day onto each stay to fulfill his clinic requirements. In the two-year period, he only had one flight delay that set him back a day and one month where he missed an entire trip because COVID. Once he completes his BC registration, he’ll begin seeing clients at his home studio.

“The blended learning program is great for adult learners who have to keep full-time jobs and have families, and who know what their time is worth,” Andrew says. “Vicars did a fantastic job of that in terms of balancing people’s time.”

No matter where you live in Canada, a diploma from Vicars School will set you up for success. Our graduates are trained to the same level as therapists in regulated provinces, and are in high demand from employers and clients everywhere they go. Take the next step on your career journey by signing up for an online or in-person open house event!

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Faster, Higher, Stronger, Healthier: The importance of Sports Massage Therapy!

What is sports massage and how is it different from the type of massage therapy that most people are familiar with? Can someone who isn’t a professional athlete benefit from a sports massage? How does a massage therapist become a sports massage specialist?

To answer those questions, we spoke with three registered massage therapists (RMTs), all of whom teach at Vicars School of Massage Therapy, and who have made sports massage an important part of their practice.

Tonia Vipler teaches at our Calgary campus. She has always been interested in body mechanics and athletic recovery—she’s a life-long athlete and trained as a kinesiologist before becoming an RMT—so incorporating sports massage into her practice was a natural fit. She has noticed that the general public (and even some athletes) are often uncertain of just what sports massage. So she explains it to her clients as a massage treatment that is specifically focused on the muscles and muscle areas that are most commonly used by athletes in their sport.

Earlier in her massage career, Tonia worked both as a massage therapist and personal trainer, with clients overlapping between the two disciplines. That’s when her work in sports massage started. Nowadays, her practice is with ‘everyday athletes,’ such as people who are training for a marathon, Iron Man, or cycling trip.

A big part of Tonia’s practice is educating clients about their bodies, and why it’s important to incorporate massage into their training schedule. Rather than coming to her for the first time when they are injured, Tonia wants to make people aware that massage is a tool that can be incorporated into their athletic schedule from the start, in the same way they would optimize their diet and sleep to maximize performance and prevent injury.

“I like to remind people who aren’t professional athletes that sports massage could be part of their journey to prevent any injuries,” she says. She also offers mobile massage and finds her clientele is shifting to include more families with younger athletes. “Right now, I work with younger kids, teaching them that massage is a really good tool for their athletic journey throughout their lives.”

Tonia describes the techniques used in sports massage as the same techniques that students learn at Vicars School of Massage Therapy. The key is how, and when, techniques are used. Sports massage often requires more dynamic movement in the massage than a relaxation massage, using more vigorous muscle stripping, stretching, and myofascial techniques.

Edmonton instructor Kerri Wagensveld agrees.

“The techniques I use are not specific to sports massage,” she says. “For example, compressions, which I use as an opening technique to help relax my client and prepare their muscles for deeper work, is a very foundational technique that we teach our first-year students.”

Kerri has always been interested in sports massage. After she graduated from Vicars, she was mentored by sports massage specialist Kip Petch at St. Albert’s Active Life Centre. She still works there, as well as at Active Physioworks Magrath in South Edmonton, where her clientele includes many types of athletes, among them ultramarathoners like herself. She is a member of the Canadian Sports Massage Therapist Association (CSMTA), a nationally recognized organization that offers courses and conferences for ongoing learning in the specialty. Joining the CSMTA requires RMT certification, a Standard First Aid certificate with CPR, completion of the CSMTA Advanced Sport Massage Course, among other requirements. Members of CSMTA are often selected to be part of the core medical team serving athletes at major sporting events such as the Olympics.

For Kerri, a huge part of practicing sports massage is understanding that it’s not only about the needs of the physical body.

“It’s knowing how to respond to an athlete to help them prepare mentally and being part of their team in preparation for their performance,” she says.

While most Kerri’s practice is in the clinic, she loves being out in the sports field whenever she can. But that’s not for everyone: “At a sporting event, you’re constantly dealing with dirt and sweat, depending on the sport you’re working with,” she says. “It can be a messy, stinky situation so you have to be OK working with that and being prepared to do a lot of cleaning of both you, your environment, and your equipment.”

At Vicars, we try to introduce our students to as many different facets of the massage therapy profession. That includes organizing outreach opportunities at sporting events.

Instructor Marci Terpsma has been the main organizer of our Edmonton outreach program for many years.

“We take the students off campus to 10K and 5K runs and ultramarathons to expose them to different aspects of our job,” she says. “When they’re on the field they have to think critically and quickly and take what they learned in class and put that knowledge into practice in the moment.”

That quick decision-making is more important, in Marci’s experience, than the potential physical mismatch between an RMT and an athlete. “You can be the tiniest of therapists dealing with the strongest of men and it’s all about the RMT assessing what needs to be done and just doing it,” she says. Sports massage often concentrates on a target muscle group. “If it’s a softball player, I’m more focused on shoulders and arms and if it’s a hockey player, then the legs,” she says. “And if it’s a pre-event massage it’s very focused on a specific area for 10 to 15 minutes.”

Marci runs REVIVE Health & Wellness Studio in Beaumont, where 15 of the 16 RMTs are Vicars graduates. Outside of the clinic, she works with higher level athletes on sports teams, including a competitive girls’ softball team who travel to competitions around Canada. Most of her work is maintaining the athletes’ bodies, preparing them pre-event to increase flexibility and range of motion, and working with injuries and recovery. Echoing Tonia and Kerri, Marci says the same principles of massage are involved whether she’s giving a relaxation or deep tissue massage.

As the age of competitive athletes is getting younger, Marci is finding that the parents of these athletes are much more educated about the benefits of massage to their children’s athletic goals and overall health, than parents were a decade ago. As sports massage therapy carves out a place for itself alongside other components of an athlete’s program, Marci finds herself in a fortunate position.

“I am always right up there with my knowledge thanks to our curriculum at Vicars,” she says. “What I learn is exactly what I am teaching students.” She’s the go-to person at her clinic for questions about particular approaches or treatment modality for clients because of her up-to-date knowledge.

While research on sports massage and its physiological benefits lags far behind the field’s burgeoning popularity, all three RMTs passionately endorse its benefits to athletic wellbeing that they have observed and experienced. And their passion directly benefits Vicars students.

“The quality of education at Vicars is second to none, largely because the instructors are passionate about what they do,” says Marci. “That’s easy to convey to students and that leads to a level of education where we expect the best from students.”

Does helping marathon runners, volleyball teams, or rock climbers achieve their goals sound like your dream career? Contact our friendly admissions team by calling us toll-free at 1-866-491-0574, or sign up for a virtual open house! And if you’re an athlete looking to stay healthy and improve your recovery, you can book an appointment at our student clinic.

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Pediatric massage—The benefits of massage for older children

This is the third post in our series about pediatric massage. So far in the series, we’ve looked at research in the field of infant massage and talked to an RMT who teaches infant and child massage to her clients. Today, we’re reviewing the research into the effects of massage therapy on older children.

When Edmonton-based teacher Carla C. began going to a registered massage therapist (RMT) in 2021, she took her four-year-old son, Lincoln, with her. For the first few visits, Lincoln played quietly in a corner of the room or nestled himself between his mother’s legs while she was being massaged. On one visit, Lincoln announced that he too wanted a massage.

Carla supported his decision. Lincoln had been born with serious health conditions, necessitating open heart surgery when he was only a few weeks old. While Carla had given Lincoln massages since his birth, stroking his arms and legs and back, she had avoided the scar on his chest. She thought touching it would be too much of a reminder for both of them of those fraught early years.

The RMT guided Lincoln through all aspects of the massage treatment that day, which given his age and size was only about 15 minutes long. She asked him if it was OK for her to touch his legs and arms and talked to him about the sensations he was feeling. When she came to his chest, she explained how important it was to massage his scar. “Treat it like a twisty little snake,” she said, “and roll it between your fingers to smooth it out and make it softer and less sticky.”

Carla realized that by encouraging Lincoln to massage his scar, the RMT was also giving him an important message: that the scar was his, part of his body, an important part of his story, and not something to be ignored or feared.

Carla and Lincoln both started regularly massaging his scar.  Several months later, Carla says that it is noticeably more pliable and has less profile on his chest.

The benefits of pediatric massage are backed by research

Stories like Carla and Lincoln’s show the wholistic effects of massage in young people, encompassing mind and body. This is something that pioneering touch therapy researcher and psychologist Dr. Tiffany Field has spent her career investigating. Dr. Field is internationally renowned for her the quality of her research on the effects of massage on infants. (Her research has shown that massage therapy led to faster weight gain and discharge from hospital for infants born prematurely, and that for full-term babies the benefits include relieving jaundice, better sleep, reduced stress in parents, and strengthening infant-parent bonding. Read all about it in the first post in our series).

Dr. Field conducted a comprehensive review of research that has been done on the effects of massage therapy in older children (between a year of age and adolescence), and in children with psychological and mental health conditions. The results make a very strong case for pediatric massage therapy.

Children with autism spectrum or attention deficit hyperactivity disorders were reported to have greater attentiveness, fewer sleep problems, and decreased hyperactivity after a month of regular short massages.

Preschoolers to adolescents with psychological difficulties including aggression, anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) showed improvements in their symptoms and a decrease in the levels of stress hormones in their bodies. As an example, child survivors of Hurricane Andrew who were experiencing severe PTSD showed much lower PTSD symptoms after a month of daily massage treatments. Studies on children with anorexia and bulimia experienced increases in dopamine and improved management of their eating disorders.

In children with symptoms resulting from a number of physical conditions, massage therapy—often delivered by parents—resulted in reductions of gastrointestinal problems from diarrhea or constipation; spasticity from cerebral palsy and hypotonicity (flaccidity) from Down’s Syndrome; and increased motor development in children with motor development delays. Children with painful diseases, with conditions such as burns, or who had undergone painful procedures, experienced pain relief, better sleep, and reduced anxiety after massage therapy.

Why is massage therapy so good for children and teens?

The common thread running through the majority of the assessed studies is the calming effect resulting from reduction of stress hormones and increased production of “happy” hormones such as dopamine, purported to be results of massage therapy. Dr. Field and other researchers have identified the possible bodily mechanisms that are “translating” massage into these physiological and other effects. Earlier in this series, we outlined some of the potential mechanisms activated by massage in preterm infants: the vagus nerve, responsible for controlling stress hormone release, activates the gastric system, which enables digestion.

Additional mechanisms were seen in the studies on older children. Dr. Field has proposed that the reason massage therapy has such an effective role in pain management is that it engages the body’s touch receptors. These nerves are longer and more insulated than pain receptors—but once activated, their signals reach the brain faster and can “drown out” the messages being sent by the pain receptors.

In the broader context of the nervous system, Dr. Field posits that massage potentially has an effect on the parasympathetic nervous system, responsible for the “rest and digest” functions in the body including heartbeat, vagus nerve activity, and digestion. When activated by moderate-pressure massage, the parasympathetic nervous system “overrides” the sympathetic (fight or flight) nervous system, decreasing the release of stress hormones such as cortisol and increasing the release of immune fighter cells and anti-pain chemicals such as serotonin.

When parents are involved in massaging their children, they also benefit. Several studies by Dr. Field and others investigated the effects of parent-given infant and child massage on child-parent attachment and attunement, the receptiveness between caregiver and child. Parents reported less stress, improved wellbeing, a greater sense of competency with their parenting skills, and for those with moderate mental health issues, reduced symptoms of depression.

This effect doesn’t seem to be restricted to direct parent-child relationships : grandparents and other trusted caregivers can benefit as well. In a study published in the Journal of Applied Gerontology, older adults were given massages for a month and then gave massages to infants over a month. Measurement of cortisol from saliva samples showed they were calmer and more relaxed after massaging the infants.

All of the studies were conducted over short term periods, and Dr. Field and other researchers stress the need for further high-quality, longer-term research in order to produce evidence that can be used by decision-makers on funding and policy changes. While research is vital to ensure pediatric massage is accepted as a valid clinical tool, its popularity continues to grow.

And as Carla says, “It’s important that as my son grows, he sees massage therapy as another important therapy with a trusted professional alongside the other therapies he receives.”

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Adding Infant Massage To Your RMT Practice: In conversation with a Vicars grad

This is the second instalment in a series about pediatric massage: massage therapy for children ranging from infants to adolescents. Check out the first post to learn about massage therapy for infants, including its potential benefits for both parents and child and the science that assesses those benefits. Today’s post is a conversation with an experienced Vicars graduate who has incorporated infant massage into her practice.

Shannon Collum, RMT, is a Vicars graduate who lives and works in Duncan, BC. She owns Maple Bay Massage Therapy there. As part of her general therapeutic practice, Shannon also has training in infant massage education, and offers one-on-one and group sessions with parents and their babies.

Shannon Collum, RMT

I recently talked to Shannon about this part of her practice.

Robin: Can you give me a brief overview of your experience with infant massage?

Shannon:

Early in my career, I found I was working with a lot of pregnant clients. It just happened by word of mouth—I think it helped that a lot of my friends were at the right age to start having babies!

As I went on, I realized I wanted to offer even more services in this area. We had learned the fundamentals of infant massage in school, but I knew there was more to learn.

I found a continuing education course for RMTs on infant massage and at the same time I trained as a doula, learning how to give support to mothers during and after childbirth. I was fascinated by it and knew there were at least some of my clients who would be interested.

I’ve been a massage therapist for more than 18 years now. Teaching infant massage has been a bigger part of my practice at some points than others. But it’s something I enjoy and that I’m glad I can offer to my clients.

There are so many different continuing education options out there for massage therapists—so many different directions and areas of practice for people to choose from. Would you recommend taking infant massage, and pregnancy massage?

When new grads ask me for continuing ed recommendations, I always say that it depends on what resonates with you. What are you interested in? Because if you’re not really engaged with whatever it is, you’re not going to make a success of it.

For me, I’ve always had a connection with babies and children—it’s always been a part of my life. If an RMT feels the same way, furthering your education by taking ongoing training in pregnancy massage and training new parents may be a good choice for you.

And you have to be practical too, of course. Think about the focus of your practice, where you work, and your current and potential clientele. If you’re based in more a retirement community this will obviously be less of a focus in your practice!

How do you introduce the idea of infant massage to pregnant clients?

I have it listed on my website as something I have experience in, and so some of my clients bring it up to me themselves or even find me that way. But usually it will organically come up in a conversation with them about what they’re experiencing, their hopes or even what they’re nervous about.

The last time it came up was I was working on a woman who was quite far along in her pregnancy. I was performing abdominal massage, and I was explaining to her how we do the strokes in a specific direction around the abdomen to promote digestion. I explained that this is also what we do with babies, and she says, “Wait, we can do massage on babies?!?!”

Do you find that do you usually get that surprised reaction? In your experience, do parents know that this is an option?

Some do, some don’t. And some are confused—some think that I do the massage; that they bring the baby into the clinic. But I explain that it involves teaching the parents what to do and how to do it in a way that is comfortable, safe, and joyful. And for most people, I find, that’s a lot more appealing.

So how do these sessions work?

I like to set up a class, either one-on-one or in a group setting, outside the clinic. It’s usually a set of four short sessions. That way, baby isn’t overwhelmed by a new environment and the parents are able to practice with the child between sessions. My goal with these sessions is for the babies and the parents to feel relaxed and have fun together, and for the parents to leave feeling confident and excited about having learned a new way to connect with their baby.

I normally don’t teach the classes for babies younger than two months. Before that, massage can be overwhelming and too stimulating. Babies still don’t understand the world, and they are getting bombarded with new information every second, so we wait until they’re a little more settled.

Earlier, you were telling me about a recent client you had for infant massage that was a bit of an exception to this rule. Can you share that story?

Of course. That experience was exceptional in a few ways: it was only one session, it was at my clinic, her baby was a newborn, and we fit it in after I had just given the mother a full massage!

This woman was living and working in a very small community up north on Vancouver Island. Because of the remoteness and lack of medical care, her employer transferred her down here to Duncan for a month or so before her due date, and for a couple of weeks to recover postpartum. She booked a few prenatal massages for herself while she was in town. Because I saw her regularly for a few weeks, we developed a rapport and had lots of conversations about her pregnancy and upcoming baby, and we ended up talking about infant massage in a general sort of way.

Not long after she gave birth, she came in for a last massage before heading home. She then revealed that the doctor had told them their baby had significant torticollis and she wondered if I could help. They weren’t going to be in town long enough for that, and baby needed some specific help as soon as possible, so we arranged for baby and dad to arrive at the end of her next appointment. I ended up working with them for about 15 minutes in the treatment room, laying baby on the warm massage table in front of us. I demonstrated a few techniques specifically for that issue and had them try them out and walked them through a few other things. I was able to start the process of improving his positioning and they felt more confident taking him back up north without an RMT nearby. Everybody was happy.

What sticks out to me about this story is that this was a therapeutic massage, essentially. I usually think of infant massage as being about helping the baby sleep better, helping with bonding, helping with digestion…

But when you think about it, babies have just gone through a quite physically demanding experience! Especially in that case, as he was very newly born. But even after that, they’re constantly building muscles that have never been used before.

But you’re right, a lot of times people don’t realize that something like torticollis can happen to babies. Extreme versions don’t happen a lot. Usually, it’s mild and corrects itself over time. But in this case, it was extreme, and he wasn’t able to keep his head straight.

The infant massage outcome that is probably most well known is how it strengthens bonding between parents and baby, helps babies sleep, and can help with things like colic and digestive issues. What people don’t always think about is that it can help alleviate postnatal depression for both parents. It seems most effective when massage is built into their daily routine. For infants, massage sessions should be short but frequent; a little quiet time after baby’s bath is great.

But there can be more direct physical benefits, too. I remind parents that birth is hard for babies too. As newborns, they’re not moving much and they’re often end up facing in one direction for long periods in car seats, carriers, and strollers. It’s a tough life!

And, of course, as babies get bigger they turn into active children, and children’s bodies are going through a lot, too. Starting massage at a young age can really help as they age and start getting growing pains and other bumps and bruises. Because they’re starting life with more body awareness, they’re more likely to be able to communicate about what is happening in their bodies when they need help.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share your experience with infant massage! Is there anything else you’d like to add?

I almost forgot to mention, although it is really important to me, is that learning how to give a massage to your baby or child can actually help them start to understand bodily autonomy, consent, and the concept of healthy touch. Those are big concepts, but understanding them starts with day-to-day routines like this.

One of the things that we teach parents is to make sure that they’re only massaging when baby consents. This is more nebulous when they’re very young and you’re just starting out, but you start to learn your baby’s body language. You can tell when they’re up for it and when they’re not. And when they’re not, you just hang out with them so they’re still getting one-on-one time and see that their refusal doesn’t equal rejection from their loved one.

It’s showing kids, from a young age, that they have a say in what happens to their body. And that’s a really huge thing, in my opinion.

Still to come in our blog series: Research on the effects of massage on conditions in older children and the benefits of massage in strengthening the parent-child relationship beyond infancy.

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Happy baby getting an infant massage
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Massage Therapy for Infants: A growing specialty

This is the first in a series about pediatric massage: massage therapy for children ranging from infants to adolescents. In this first post, you’ll learn about massage therapy for infants, including its potential benefits for both parents and child and the science that assesses those benefits.

Pediatric massage has been practised around the world for millennia and is foundational to child-rearing in many cultures.

In Europe, Canada, and elsewhere in North America, pediatric massage is rapidly gaining popularity. Because of the vulnerability of children (age, physical sensitivity, immature language skills), professionals and parents must ensure massage therapy will help, not harm. Massage therapy research provides non-biased evidence that can be used by parents, massage therapists, and within healthcare facilities.

Of course, like any research into any complementary and alternative medicine, massage research is a challenge: funding is scarce, and it is hard to get definitive results in a study where double-blind studies are impossible.

One of the leading researchers in the field of touch therapy is psychologist Tiffany Field. Dr. Field has led ground-breaking clinical research over the past four decades that gives a greater understanding of the effects of pediatric massage. She is an award-winning professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine where she founded the Touch Research Institute. One of her goals to provide a scientific rationale and understanding of pediatric massage therapy to inform practice and policy.

“Touch is critical for children’s growth, development, and health,” writes Dr. Tiffany Field of the University of Miami’s Touch Research Institute.

In her graduate training, Dr. Field worked on a neonatal intensive care unit looking for ways to improve weight gain in premature infants (preemies), so that they could be released from hospital sooner. The preemies were on feeding tubes and Field found that when they were given nipples to suck on, they gained weight. She proposed that if mouth stimulation could benefit the babies, then whole body stimulation—massage—would also benefit.

Happy baby getting an infant massage

Infant massage therapy helps parents and baby bond, and offers many physical benefits to the baby

She was proven right: massaged preemies thrived when regular massage was added to their care. They showed significant weight gain and were able to go home to their families several days earlier than non-massaged preemies. When her own daughter was born prematurely, Dr. Field used her in her massage therapy research. Since then, investigating the potential of touch to improve health became the foundation for Dr. Field’s career.

In 1986, she and her research colleagues developed a moderate pressure massage protocol for their research studies on hospitalized preemies that has been used globally. Dr. Field’s pioneering work in hundreds of studies resulted in her authorship of dozens of books and hundreds of peer-reviewed scientific papers.

A scientist looks at infant massage therapy

One of Dr. Field’s seminal papers was a review in 2019 of all academic pediatric massage therapy studies published between 2008 and 2018 that investigated the effects of massage on various pediatric health conditions. In addition to faster weight gain and shorter hospital stays, premature infant massage therapy resulted in reduction of infection, better pain tolerance and immune function, better developmental scores for babies born of mothers with HIV or cocaine addiction, and reduction of parental stress.

Getting to the “how it works”

Dr. Field’s review also considered the bodily mechanism—how it works—that are thought to lead to the physiological responses to massage therapy. For example, the mechanisms behind premature babies’ weight gain after massage therapy are thought to be increased gastric motility (movement of food through the gut) and stimulation of the vagus nerve, which regulates bodily functions such as heart rate, breathing, and stress hormones.

Massage also leads to increases in levels of insulin, which helps regulate blood sugar, and increases in natural killer cell activity, an important defence against infection in an infant’s immature immune system. But Dr. Field says that validating how and which bodily mechanisms are activated by massage requires additional research.

Massage therapy effects on full-term newborns were also included in Dr. Field’s review, with reported results similar to those found when the small subjects had been born prematurely. In both groups, results included decreases in bilirubin (jaundice) levels, sleep disturbances, irritability, colic, crying, and facilitation of infant development and reduction of stress in parents.

Parental stress and anxiety interfere with the attachment that is vital between parents and their infants. Maternal infant bonding increases self-confidence in mothers and positive mental health in later life for infants. A 2019 UK literature review by community practitioners, spanning 36 years of publications, showed that in some of the studies, massage therapy performed by mothers on their babies showed improved maternal infant bonding, with higher levels of improvement for mothers who experienced moderate mental health issues.

Another systematic review of five years of massage therapy studies, representing more than 1400 participating newborns (under the age of one year), was undertaken by Swedish researchers and published in Maternal, New-Born and Child Health in 2022. While the review focused on health benefits to infants attributed to massage, it highlighted the effect of parent-given massage in significantly reducing post-partum depression experienced by both parents.

Other research, including a study published in 2011 in Journal of Perinatal Education, found that during the early postpartum period, infant massage conducted by fathers “significantly decreased paternal stress” and increased bonding with their babies. As with most massage therapy research, the caveats apply: more research is needed to fully understand and verify the mechanisms behind massage therapy’s effects.

Growing popularity of pediatric massage therapy

Evidence produced by researchers like Dr. Field is helping to establish the legitimacy of pediatric massage therapy in clinical settings such as neonatal intensive care wards. Outside hospital settings, the popularity of pediatric massage therapy is growing because of its observable emotional, social, and health benefits for the children, but also for the caregivers or parents who give the therapy.

Pediatric massage therapy training

Graduates of Vicars School of Massage Therapy receive an introduction to pediatric massage as part of the curriculum. All Vicars graduates can conduct safe, nurturing massages on people of any age, including infants and children, but some go on to enroll in continuing education to obtain a post-grad professional certificate in infant massage.

For full-term babies or premature infants who are home from hospital, infant massage is generally performed at home as an enjoyable and health-promoting part of baby’s care.

RMTs with infant-massage training  often conduct workshops or give individual training to new parents to help them learn an effective and safe massage routine. Many communities offer parent-child massage workshops and courses as well.

If you cannot find a class near you, there are excellent online resources to guide you in delivering a simple, short and playful massage to your child. These videos are a great place to start:

Still to come in our blog series: Research on the effects of massage on conditions in older children, the benefits of massage in strengthening the parent-child relationship beyond infancy, and a conversation with a Vicars grad about why she loves providing infant massage training in her practice.

Kathleen Thurber is a health and science writer. She lives in Edmonton.

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a career in massage therapy
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The Secret to a Long Massage Therapy Career? Your own body mechanics

When you’re a massage therapist, getting injured on the job hurts more than just your body. Taking time off to recover from an injury means loss of income, and even potential loss of clients.

The best way for an RMT to deal with workplace injury is to ensure that it doesn’t happen in the first place. And that means a focus on body mechanics—the right way to move—so that soft tissue and joints stay injury free.

The path to a long injury-free massage career

In 2001, Vicars School of Massage Therapy was founded, there was a prevalent myth that massage was a very short career.

“The idea was that injury was inevitable, but we knew that was just not true,” says founder Maryhelen Vicars. “There was lots of evidence that students who had early and consistent training in correct body mechanics and self-care had a huge advantage in staying safe and pain free.

“From the first, our program was modelled after the curriculum in Ontario, one of the first provinces to regulate massage therapy education. For decades, massage schools in regulated provinces have incorporated safety and injury prevention in their practical training.”

So the Vicars curriculum did the same.

“From the first day of instruction, students learn body mechanics in our core science courses of anatomy and physiology,” says Curriculum Director Linda McGeachy. “And they put that knowledge into practice in class. During hands-on instruction and practice, students are monitored by instructors not just for technique, but for attention to their own body mechanics.”

At Vicars School, body mechanics is a structured part of the curriculum, and includes techniques for core stability, keeping joints in straight alignment and applying pressure appropriately. “There isn’t just one way of doing anything,” says McGeachy. “Instructors correct for stance, posture and pressure, and they also encourage students to listen to their own bodies.”

Different body shapes and sizes mean that students need to be able to adapt a theoretical “perfect form” into positions that work for their own bodies.

Preventing overuse

The most common injuries directly result from overuse and such injuries are the most preventable, says McGeachy. “Hands, elbows and shoulders are subject to overuse if we don’t use our bodies properly,” she says. “In addition to listening to their bodies, RMTs need to ensure they don’t overuse their bodies by booking too many clients in a day, especially when they first start their careers.”

Awareness of strengths, coordination and mobility are vital, as is the need to adjust techniques depending on the client. She also points out that new information resulting from research and outcomes-based approaches to attitudes about what massage should be, are informing awareness of injury prevention.

With practical experience comes knowledge about not overloading muscles and joints and using “relative rest”—a recovery technique that protects and rests the injured area while continuing to be active with other parts of your body.

Less is more

We’ve all seen memes of massage therapists reducing their clients to tears and whimpers. But that is as outdated as the idea of “no pain, no gain” in gyms and sports fields.

One of the most important changes, says McGeachy, is that the concept of a heavy, load-bearing workout on tissue as the only way to get results has lost its credence. “It’s more about understanding how to work on tissue rather than simply pushing down hard on it,” she says. “Understanding physiology and what tissue is, means that we don’t have to create pain in order to get results.”

Quite the opposite, in fact. Current knowledge about massage’s benefits reinforces a pain-management approach to therapeutic massage.

RMTs are educated about repetitive strain injury and overuse and they in turn educate their clients. Key to that education, says McGeachy, is movement. “If you are planning to do a physical activity, then do the movements of it as a warm-up.” She points out that any exercise will carry restrictions for someone, depending on their body. “It’s not that the exercise—whether it’s yoga or tennis or gardening—is harmful; it’s that you have to be aware of your body and when something hurts, move away from that position,” she says.

Using brain power for body power

Using a research-based curriculum, instructors at Vicars School encourage students to build on their understanding of body mechanics and principles with critical thinking skills. “This means students have confidence acting on their own understanding of when something doesn’t feel good, and how to adjust their technique by using a different position that feels better,” says McGeachy. “From our school perspective, even if a student’s body mechanics aren’t ‘textbook’, the important thing is that they are learning to prevent injuring themselves.”

Piloting a new movement course

Building on the importance of movement as foundational for injury prevention and career health, the Vicars School curriculum will be piloting a new course in September, based on a resource called Trail Guide to Movement.

“We already have rich material on movement, including orthopedic assessment courses and gait analysis,” says Linda McGeachy. “But this will really augment our existing curriculum and delve into movement as core in keeping a health body and promoting longevity in our careers.”

written by Kathleen Thurber

Start your long and successful massage therapy career at Vicars School! We have campuses in Calgary and Edmonton and schedules that are designed to work with your lifestyle. For more information and to speak with our friendly admissions team, call us toll-free 1-866-491-0574 or sign up for an online open house!

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Is Massage Therapy a Good Career for Men?

If you do a quick online search for registered massage therapists in your area, there’s a good chance that most of the names that come up will be female RMTs. And if you’re a man interested in a massage career, you might end up wondering: Is there room in this profession for me?

The short answer is: Yes!

The long answer is: Yes, as long as you’re not afraid to work hard, blaze your own trail, and stomp on a few outdated stereotypes while you’re at it.

Why aren’t there more male RMTs?

Male and male-identifying RMTs are practicing in every area of the profession, in every type of clinic environment—and they’re thriving.

But they’re still a minority. In Canada, about 15 percent of practicing MTs are men. Here at MH Vicars School of Massage Therapy, the number is about the same: 17 percent of students in our last two graduating classes were men. For men who want to become massage therapists, that gender imbalance can seem pretty intimidating.

Why are there not more men in the profession? It’s complicated.The most obvious reason, of course, is that it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. Most people have met more female RMTs than male ones, so if you ask them to picture an RMT in their head, they’ll probably picture a woman. This makes it harder for men to picture themselves as massage therapists.

Unfortunately, there are also plenty of myths and misconceptions about massage out there that actively discourage men from pursuing a career in this field.

Articles about opportunities for men in the massage business can make for discouraging reading. It’s still sadly common for commentators in industry magazines (most of which are American) to talk about hard it is for male grads to get clients.

But in our experience—and in the experience of our male graduates and faculty members—the reality is much more positive.

What’s it actually like for male massage therapists?

Mark Smith has a massage practice in Northwest Calgary and teaches first- and second-year at Vicars. He’s always excited to see male students in his classes, and to pass on the lessons he’s learned.

He’s upbeat about the career opportunities for male therapists, while acknowledging the challenges that male therapists sometimes face.

“What I tell the men in my classes is ‘Be patient’.”

When Mark first graduated from massage school, he worked in a spa in Whistler, BC.

“In a spa environment, it is a lot harder to be consistently booked. I would have maybe two or three massages a day while the women were fully booked.”

But his persistence—and his talent—paid off. Every appointment he had was an opportunity to demonstrate his skill, his education, and his professionalism. His clients would not only re-book, but they’d tell their friends. After a few months of proving himself and word-of-mouth promotion, he had built up a comfortable practice.

Mark later moved to Vancouver, where he worked in clinics that had more of a focus on rehab and sports medicine. He found this type of clinic to be a much more receptive environment, and he was able to build up his client list in no time.

Things went faster because he had fewer stereotypes and preconceptions to overcome. But at the end of the day the source of Mark’s success in Vancouver was the same as it had been in Whistler: He is a well-trained and effective therapist. He conveys by his actions and attitude that he is focused on making each massage a positive and safe experience for all his clients.

Will I have hard time getting a job as a male massage therapist?

Edmonton instructor Janine Borger has taught at Vicars for 20 years, and owned a busy massage clinic in Lacombe from 1997 to 2012. While she didn’t have very many men on her team, she says that it was only because there weren’t as many male therapists out there. There were fewer men graduating from massage schools back then, and even fewer of them wanted to work in small-town Alberta.

But Janine says things have changed a lot. Now there are many men who work as RMTs in Lacombe, including a man with a busy practice in a local spa where therapeutic massage co-exists with manicures, pedicures, and facials.

Janine has also watched as the numbers of men in her classes has steadily increased over the years.

“One class I had last year was actually half men and half women!”

She believes that the massage business is starting to be seen as a more valid occupation for men.

Public perception of massage has changed over the years, away from the sense that massage is just a relaxing indulgence. Thanks to an increase in standards of education for massage therapists (even in non-regulated provinces), massage therapy now has the recognition that it deserves as a valuable health care profession.

Things have changed so much that when David Galarza enrolled at Vicars, it didn’t even occur to him that he might face obstacles as a man in a female-dominated profession.

He had always loved giving massages, he says, and was completely focused on turning his passion into a career.

By the time he graduated 2019, he was prepared.

“It has been challenging, but not that bad. It is harder at first, getting new clients. There is [still] a stigma.”

David thinks he was lucky that his first job was in a busy clinic that happened to be owned by a man, so the clients were accustomed to a male RMT. A lot of the clients he saw there, and continues to work with, are living with chronic pain. He has positive results and is well accepted by these clients.

But his practice is not limited to athletes and rehabilitation. He has since opened an esthetics and wellness clinic, D&M Treatment, in partnership with an esthetician specializing in permanent makeup applications. He and another Vicars grad, Laura Dunlop, practice massage therapy as part of that “beauty-oriented” business. David also sees clients in his home studio, and has a mobile practice, taking his equipment to workplaces and family homes.

This has allowed him to work with young children and teens as well as their parents and given him experience in pre- and post-natal massage, both areas of practice that are included in the Vicars program .

What advice would David give to other men considering or starting out in a massage career? The same advice he would give to any new graduate:

“Be friendly and be kind. Stay professional and communicate well. Stay engaged with your client throughout a treatment. There is always an education component: walk them through the whole process of where your hands will be and why.”

What does the future look like for men in massage therapy?

Male and female students learn together at MH Vicars School of Massage Therapy

Vicars curriculum director Linda McGeachy says the greatest hope for growth in the numbers of successful and effective male massage therapists lies with the many men who are demonstrating that it can be done.

She points to colleagues who have earned the trust and long-term loyalty of their clients by the way they practice and the way they communicate. At MH Vicars School, we are proud that this group includes our own instructors, supervisors, and two decades’ worth of graduates.

If you want to help people get well and stay well, be your own boss, and never be tied down to a desk, massage therapy could be the career for you—no matter your gender. To learn more about this fast-growing career, contact our friendly admissions team by calling us toll-free at 1-866-491-0574, or sign up for a virtual open house!

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