How to Find a Massage Therapist

Is Your Massage Therapist Legit?

Anyone can stand up a nice-looking website with enough willpower or cash so searching the internet is a good start, but you need to take another step to ensure the person you’re thinking about booking with is who they say they are and has the necessary training and qualifications. So let’s talk a little bit about how to verify that you’ve found a licensed and properly trained massage therapist.

If you live in the State of Alabama, like I do, it’s pretty easy to find out if the therapist you’re thinking about booking an appointment with is properly trained. The state board of massage therapy does that for you. All you have to do is go to the Alabama Board of Massage Therapy’s website and do a Licensee Search for the massage therapist in question. If the name shows up there, you know that the state has done the legwork for you, assuring that the therapist has completed the minimum educational requirements, has passed the National Certification Board of Therapeutic Massage and Bodywork (NCBTMB) or the Massage & Bodywork Licensing Examination (MBLEx) for massage therapy and jumped through all the appropriate legal hoops to be legally offering massage therapy to the public.

What if you’re not in Alabama?

Going back to Google and performing a quick search on text for “massage therapy board Oregon” pops up the massage board for the state of Oregon. I just picked Oregon randomly because I have a dear friend who lives there and I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately.

Getting back to the subject at hand, Oregon is apparently a licensing state and they have a License Verification option. Oooh… I like the information they list on therapists, especially the part where “there has been no discipline on this license”. That’s a good piece of information to know when trying to choose a new massage therapist. I wish Alabama had that little bit of technological information included in their licensee search.

What States License Massage Therapists?

Sounds like a simple question, but as with everything where politics are involved, it’s not. There are states that have a massage board that regulates the massage therapy business and licenses therapists. There are states that have no massage board, but local municipalities regulate massage therapy businesses. There are states where you don’t have to be certified, but you must be registered and vice versa.

It’s a complicated question because we’re not regulated at a federal level. And I’m not suggesting that we should it’s just important to know that this is why it’s so hard to identify a lawfully compliant therapist from one who is not. After a little noodling around online, I found this website that has compiled a list of massage license requirements by state. I can’t vouch for the correctness of all of the information here, but it will give you something to start with if you can’t find what you’re looking for with a search engine.

What if My State Doesn’t License Massage Therapists?

If the state doesn’t have any type of licensure requirements you still have a couple of options in locating a suitable therapist. The American Massage Therapy Association (AMTA) offers a Find a Massage Therapist locator service. All therapists listed in this service are insured members of AMTA who meet minimum educational requirements and must agree to abide by a Code of Ethics. Good stuff, folks, I would go to anyone who I found using this service.

The Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals (ABMP) organization offers a similar locator service to AMTA. I have never been a member of ABMP so I can’t say a whole lot about their organization except that they also insure their members who meet minimum educational requirements and also agree to the ABMP Code of Ethics.

And finally the National Certification Board of Therapeutic Massage and Bodyworks offers a locator service for those of us who are Board Certified through their organization. This is a good service, but not all states require NCBTMB or MBLEx exam passage to license the massage therapist and the test is expensive so most folks don’t take it unless it’s required.

And when all else fails, it never hurts to ask your friends and co-workers if they know someone good. Usually this is the best way to find a great therapist.

Now, get out there on the information superhighway, find a massage therapist, make an appointment and go. You could use a massage today, I promise.

♥