It is often argued that the quality of Massage Training may be compromised without a standardized blueprint, but it should be considered that variety in curriculum increases competition and avoids monopolization and price-fixing. As it is, the curriculum of many Massage schools is often filled with subjects that you may not wish to do, or that do not have much relevance to your delivering an excellent professional massage. Many hours are often allotted to said content, which means that you are either going into too much detail, or you are re-learning information (that you should have a basic knowledge of from your former education and/or life experience).

In Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, the average length of time required to complete a Massage course from a government accredited school is between 6 months and 2 years. Across different states in the USA, course lengths vary from 50 hours through to 1000 hours; yet in parts of California, a 50-hour course legally qualifies a Therapist. In Canada, a mandatory 3000 hours is the requirement in British Columbia, or a minimum of 2 years full time training.

The unfortunate irony for these accredited schools is that they seldom agree among themselves, or as an international body as to how many hours is the magic number to reach proficiency. Thus we find different regulated Massage training programmes world-wide, each propagating their version as the definitive standard for Massage Therapy. They use terminology such as recognized, government approved and/or endorsed by the government to insinuate that the training is somehow superior or required to succeed as a Therapist. However, as the facts reveal, between countries, even between states, there are huge discrepancies in standards.

Rinalda Therapeutic Kneads recognizes the right of the prospective student to decide which Massage Therapy programme best suits him/her and unbiased advice is offered as many who inquire about Massage Training are sometimes confused about their options due to propaganda. With a little research it is soon realized that there is significant financial gain for schools that are attempting to control Massage Training by promoting programmes that are unnecessarily long, in order to justify pushing the fees higher. Hence the objective here is simply to:

**conduct feasible qualification courses and workshops that provide students with the requisite knowledge to competently practice on members of the public as Professional Therapists.

**ensure that having completed the programme, students are eligible to join an Association; among other things, this will set a professional industry standard to guide them by acting as a medium for the most recent information relevant to the industry.