Career in Massage

The demand for massage, of all types, in the UK is massive. What we are utterly useless at, as an industry, is building on and taking advantage of this demand. The profession is diverse and represented by numerous PAs-and only a fraction of practitioners actually bother to join a PA. I think (I hope) it will change and I hope that bodies such as GCMT can step up a gear and represent and promote, with a single voice, the broad spectrum of massage practitioners.It could be a very powerful lobby. My small corner of the massage world (sports massage) is one of the four physical therapies who have been invited to work with athletes at the 2012 Olympics (the others are Physiotherapy, Osteopathy and Chiropractic). This is a massive accolade for massage in general and sports massage in particular. We hope to do a great job and use the Games as a springboard for the profession. Having said that our presence at the Games begs some interesting questions---Massage sits alongside the mainstream professions at the Games because of the sheer demand from the world's elite athletes--yet in the eyes of some it is a second class profession. The chances of state regulation are zip and the private health insurers, with a few exceptions, pretend we don't exist. How come?

Massage is a great profession---in all its variants---we just need to get organised 🙂

Hi Paul,
yes massage is a fantastic profession to be in, however when we have one and two day practitioner level courses, legitimised by the QCF and awarding organisations allowing them to run, is there any wonder why insurance companies and the like dont want to know us?

With all due respect to you, if you think GCMT are going to lead massage out of this pit, you are mistaken. I said this to them privately when I was part of GCMT, and I say it publicly now that I am out of it...its a dead duck. It has no leadership, no admin, no expertise, no finances, and more importantly, no will to get anything done. For years I have asked them to deal with the problem of DL massage courses, one and two day practitioner workshops, and nothing was done. Now that another of its leading PAs has left, its even more sunk. It does need to update its website to see who actually is left there (if they can get someone who knows how to update it).

Im off to London today to see what can be done about these courses that make a mockery of our profession, and guess what, I have had not one jot of support from GCMT, there is no-one there to deal with anything anymore. IMO SMA should have come to SRTC, and I hope that you still do.

GCMT was once a fantastic lead body, it was instrumental in pushing for regulation, it had a fantastic team who were really getting things done, and them..........BAM, new chair, new rules, out with the old, and in with the....no-one, nothing.

Im sorry to turn this into a rant Paul, but I spent many years working hard for GCMT, along with some great colleagues, only to watch it turn to ****.

Maybe SMA can turn them around, but I honestly doubt it, you are focused on sports massage, and I fear that unless I can get a positive result today, massage is going to go down the pan, with more and more of these 2 day practitioner level courses starting up (incidentaly, I stopped checking when I had two full A4 sheets of schools running these QCA quals, thats a heck of a lot of schools churning them out!)

The demand for massage, of all types, in the UK is massive. What we are utterly useless at, as an industry, is building on and taking advantage of this demand......Massage is a great profession---in all its variants---we just need to get organised 🙂

Totally agree with you SM, we are a badly disorganised bunch and info about careers in massage is poor. Thank goodness for Hp, at least that people can come on here and see what's going on and get some advice. I feel the demand for good quality (sensitive, thoughtful and technical) massage is there and is doesn't suffer the in-vogue-ness and whimsiness of other so-called holistic therapies.

Shame to read what ST has stated about the GCMT, prehaps they have had their time, and it's time to evolve. Anycase that's politics and I'll leave you and ST to thrash that one out, lol. The more I do massage, the more I think that it was a profession in it's own right. We should all stand up and say, "We are proud to be a Massage Therapist". Now it's time to develop our acedemic and practical skills.

Best wishes

RP