I’d been practicing massage therapy for 3 years before North Carolina began licensing massage therapists.
I was grandfathered in.
The state didn’t require anything beyond a business card (and maybe not even that) to practice massage therapy before the year 2000 . But in 1997 I decided to dive into a 750 hour massage therapy program in New Mexico anyway.
I didn’t have to.
But I deeply wanted to.
I wanted to learn from teachers who knew what they were doing, and had been doing it for a long time.
I wanted to be with a community of students who were as enthusiastic as I was.
This was what I valued, not what my state valued.
But all that went out the window once the state passed its licensing requirements.
Getting licensed meant I needed Continuing Ed credits. Expensive, time consuming Continuing Ed credits.
So, for the next 16 years I dismissed every single experience, class, and workshop that didn’t go toward these credits.
The clarity I once had about my personal values got lost. I was allowing the state to determine how I invested my time and money.
After 16 years of this, I realized how much I was missing out on and how hemmed in I felt.
I wasted no time. Within a year I was sitting in Mandy Aftel’s glorious apothecary in Berkeley, California learning botanical perfumery.
Her classes are not cheap. Nor do they count toward Continuing Ed credits for a North Carolina massage licence.
But they did count. To me.
Attending that botanical perfumery class allowed me to reclaim what I valued.
Sure, I’ll keep doing what’s required to keep up my massage license, but I’m done being limited to “what’s required” of me by an outside source.
I’m more interested in the standards I require for myself.
This is The Warrior archetype at work.
So, can you relate? Do you feel hemmed in by your profession’s standards? Do you limit your education and experiences to only those that a licensing board will approve?
What if you didn’t?
Could The Warrior archetype help you determine what’s truly required for your Y.O.U. credentials?
Continuing Ed in it’s most basic form is about tending, right? These classes help you tend a skill set so that it stays vibrant, thriving, and healthy.
A professional organization has great insight for to tending a skill.
But you know the best way to tend your self, that innate, ineffable skill set. Your birthright.
For me, this means taking all kinds of classes now; poetry, perfumery, yoga, and honey bee shamanism to name a few. None of which the NC board of massage therapy cares a lick about.
But I do. I see the value they add to my life.
In the end, we all tend what we value.
love & wild hydrangeas,
kv
