An Intensive 32-hour Prenatal Massage Course

Are you expecting…… pregnant, laboring or postpartum clients? Well then, this is the course where you will:

  • Grow confident and competent in prenatal, labor and postpartum MT!
  • Distinguish yourself as a maternity specialist!
  • Open your heart and your practice to nurturing the births of mothers and their babies!
  • Establish a profitable and gratifying clientele focus, for a lifetime

Most of us enter therapeutic massage and bodywork with a purpose; we want to help relieve suffering, maximize health, and promote peace. There’s no better time to start that healing effect than during gestation…as an expectant woman and her baby make their first bonds…while she brings her infant from inside into her arms… as she explores what being THIS baby’s mama means…during the new family’s creation. Supportive touch correlates with less violent and more peaceful societies. Now that’s a purpose to be passionate about!

This is THE education that you need to live your passion for  nurturing a more peaceful world.

  • Evidence-based knowledge not mythology
  • Intensive practice of specific perinatal techniques used clinically for over 30 years
  • Skills to meet women’s physical and emotional childbearing needs
  • Understanding of all phases of maternity MT care: pregnancy, labor and postpartum, normal and not-so-perfect pregnancies
  • Positioning, techniques and powerful, subtle touch that are superbly applicable to many other specialty client populations
  • Guidance in career- protective body mechanics and techniques
  • Purpose, focus & financial infusion into your work
  • Inclusion into a distinguished community of high caliber MT professionals
  • The in-person training that many employers require and that you need to apply for certification
  1. Detailed physiology, anatomy & functional body use
  2. How to enhance the maternity experience and healthy outcomes
  3. The value of autonomic sedation for childbearing and how to promote it
  4. Techniques to alleviate most  prenatal, labor & postpartum complaints
  5. Attitudes and information that encourage normalcy, well-being and women – centered care
  6. Assessment & adaptations for medically complicated and high risk pregnancies
  7. Skills to increase clients’ kinesthetic awareness and readiness for birthing and mothering
  8. Massage therapy to facilitate relaxation, pain reduction and progress during labor
  9. Ways to restore and rebalance a postpartum woman’s abdomen, movement and emotions
  10. Techniques that reduce strain of childcare activities
  11. Relevant research, ethics, and collaboration for integration into perinatal healthcare and other work environments
  • We are learner-friendly, award winning & experienced educators
  • And we like to have fun while focusing on learning
  • We don’t just lecture; we are committed to YOU actually embodying the work
  • We respect your investment of time and resources to be with us
  • That means we are on time, organized, efficient, and on-topic…well, almost always
  • You get an education woven with the wisdom of over 40 years of MT experience
  • It’s the best way to embody hands on skills
  • See it, hear it, do it = visual, auditory & kinesthetic learning
  • Most MTs learn by doing and feeling- you’ve got to be in the same room for that!
  • Individualized feedback and assistance as you practice
  • Immediate application of techniques in a supervised practicum
  • Explorations of complex theory and research in lively discussions and practical scenarios
  • Cross fertilization through classmate trades and interaction

Prerequisites

500+ hours of massage therapy training

Other perinatal professionals are admitted with instructor approval.

A Profitable, Practical Specialization

We also become MTs to earn an income that supports us and our families. Here are some reasons why specializing in pre- and perinatal massage therapy can increase your bottom-line.

  • With over 4.5 million women getting pregnant every year (that’s in the U.S.), there’s always a supply of new clients needing your care.
  • Women’s perinatal healthcare providers are increasingly recommending prenatal and postpartum massage therapy to reduce stress and discomfort and promote baby’s development.
  • One of the fastest growing segments of hospital utilization of MT is on antepartum, labor and postpartum floors.
  • Wedding showers, baby showers, new mother gifts, and more…it’s a lucrative gift market for maternity massage therapists.
  • Parents want the best for their babies. Physicians and midwives only refer when they are confident of safety and effectiveness. A true specialist has the knowledge and skills needed. Our optional certification proves it further.
  • You will get and keep the jobs. Why? Because employers need the security of fully trained therapists, capable of sound clinical reasoning, to serve their clients and protect themselves from liability. Many businesses require this level of training, even this specific course.
  • Close bonds developed during pregnancy create life-long clients. Often we care for women’s partners, other family members, and sometimes those babies become pregnant clients as adults. Now that’s client retention and renewal!

CE Verification

Those therapists who complete all 32 workshop hours with active participation receive a certificate of completion verifying 32 CE hours. With the knowledge you have gained, you will be well prepared to work safely and effectively throughout the childbearing year and with normal to high-risk pregnancies. You and/or your employer may want your knowledge and skills assessed through our certification program. Here’s where you’ll find those details.

Required Textbook must be purchased in addition to tuition. Pre- & Perinatal Massage Therapy – A Comprehensive Guide to Prenatal, Labor, and Postpartum Practice, Third Edition.
Get a new book directly from Carole here.

Terms of Enrollment & Cost

Tuition ranges from $595-$795 depending on enrollment date and sponsoring entity. $100 of any deposit or full tuition paid is non-refundable. For special cases, you may apply to Body Therapy Education for a payment plan, but only when there is no other sponsoring organization.

Enrollment in this workshop constitutes agreement to the following terms. PLEASE CALL or e-mail us if there are any questions or concerns before you register.

1: Prerequisite preparations
Read and study Pre- & Perinatal Massage Therapy, 3rd Edition – Carole Osborne, Michele Holland and David M. Lobenstine . After reading each chapter, complete the review questions at the end. Those answers are found using the QR code associated with that chapter.

  • Focus on chapters 1-7, especially the technique manuals indicated by the teal-edged pages.
  • Read an additional comprehensive pregnancy book such as: Pregnancy, Childbirth and the Newborn – Penny Simkin, Janet Whalley, & Ann Keppler or Essential Exercises for the Childbearing Year – Elizabeth Noble or Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth– Ina May Gaskin.
  • Review the anatomy of pelvic and abdominal structures.

2: Practicum

If you live within one hour of the workshop location you are responsible for locating and scheduling a pregnant person to receive a massage on the fourth workshop morning. If this is impossible, contact the sponsoring organization directly to make alternative arrangements. If you live more than one hour from the workshop location, the sponsoring organization will locate a pregnant volunteer for you, if possible. (During coronavirus pandemic, no pregnant people will be invited into our practicums.)

3. Participation

In order to complete the workshop and earn CE credits, you are required to:

  • actively engage in all aspects of the workshop: lecture, demonstration, and both give and receive the work demonstrated.
  • attend all 32 hours. Make-up work on the content and hours missed, up to 8 hours, is offered, with instructor discretion. Larger absences will require a retake of the entire workshop.
  • comply with all COVID-19 protections in place for that workshop date and location.

Certification Requirements

See information on our Certification Page

Ongoing Development in Prenatal, Labor and Postpartum Massage Therapy

What’s next after this workshop? There’s always more to learn in maternity massage therapy, and we enjoy sharing our ongoing studies with you.

Here’s our suggested progression for expanding and deepening your perinatal skills:

  1. After attending your 32- hours hands-on training, complete your certification process. This will solidify your learning, confirming for you and your clients your knowledge and skill base.
  2. Participate in Advanced Perinatal Massage Therapy seminars when they are offered every few years.
  3. Attend a Technique Refinement workshop to review and expand your hands-on skills.
  4. Enroll in an online or in-person Mentoring for Mastery group, or schedule one or more individual supervision and mentoring sessions with Carole.
  5. Continue exploring and incorporating the many online resources associated with your textbook.
  6. Pursue education and/or certification as a doula, childbirth educator, lactation consultant, prenatal yoga instructor or other perinatal professional.
  7. Attend a maternity massage course or read materials of another highly regarded instructors. Because I am either a former partner or instructor of  Kate Jordan, Allison Hines, Cindy McNeely, Kala Spangler and Leslie Stager, I am most familiar with their offerings. I highly recommend checking them out.
View Upcoming Course Schedule

Carole’s knowledge of and passion for this important work shine through in her teaching style. This, coupled with her genuine wish for each student to grasp the material and succeed, sets her workshop apart. I completed the course feeling confident about my new skills. I was recently hired at a Women’s Wellness Center and credit a large part of my success to the knowledge I gained and experience I had in her workshop.

Twelve years since I first took Carole’s Pre- and Perinatal workshop. So much of what Carole taught in that intense week I wove into the foundation of my massage practice and use still today. Much time has passed, and many massages given. I am ready to delve deeper. Looking forward to taking this invaluable training a second time.

This is by far the best organized and professionally done workshop I’ve taken. Lots of great, relevant information presented clearly by very competent instructors.

You are truly an amazing teacher and human being. One week later and my massage practice has already been changed significantly because of your generous sharing of knowledge, skills, vision and values.

Thank you so much for creating and teaching Pre- & Perinatal Massage. Your course is extremely thorough, and I left with a new confidence in an area I was previously uncertain. Your relaxed teaching style combined with your wealth of knowledge and ability to answer questions beyond the scope of the textbook is invaluable.

When my employer suggested that I take this course, even though I had taken it 7 years earlier, I was concerned that I’d be bored. Boy, was I wrong! It was updated to reflect new research and techniques that I find myself using daily.