Thai Massage Certification Program Overview
Thai Healing Massage Academy offers two types of certificates for our online Thai Massage courses. Both can be conveniently completed right from your home, and from anywhere in the world:
1. International Certificate
Valid for : Students from all countries including the US
2. Continuing Education Certificate
Valid for: US therapists who need CEUs to maintain their licence.
These two certificates are meant for different purposes and are explained in detail below.
1. The International Certificate
Thai Healing Massage Academy’s certificate verifies that you took the online course and fulfilled all requirements to demonstrate active participation. This massage certificate is available to all students worldwide, if they fulfill the requirements to qualify for the certificate.
International Certification is available for the following courses (click on course title for more information):
Where is our International Certificate valid?
We often receive inquiries from students asking if our certificates are recognized in their country towards obtaining a massage license. We cannot answer this question.
Thai Healing Massage Academy has online students in many countries around the world. Laws and regulations are different in all of them, ranging from no rules to very strict rules. In addition, rules can differ within the same country.
For example in the US all 50 states have their own rules.
Some countries have different rules for Thai Massage than for other types of massage.
It also depends on what exactly you are planning to do with your Thai Massage.
There are so many factors that there is no way for us to give you a correct and up to date answer. It is not possible for us to keep up with changing massage laws in other countries, and we do not want to be in a position to give inaccurate advice about legal issues.
We recommend that you contact the relevant authorities in your country and inquire from them, or contact a local massage school in your area and ask them what the rules are in regards to massage licenses.
The only answer we can give is that the acceptance of our certificate for licensing purposes depends on your local authorities.
CLICK HERE to see a sample of Thai Healing Massage Academy's international certificate
COST: The International Certificate is provided free of charge. However qualifying is required.
2. Continuing Education Certificate
This massage certificate is only applicable to licensed massage therapists from the USA who need continuing education credits (CEUs) to keep their licence or professional memberhips up to date.
Shama Kern, the director and principal instructor of Thai Healing Massage Academy, is approved by the National Certification Board for Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork (NCBTMB) as a Continuing Education Approved Provider (provider number 451985-12).
You can get continuing education hours for our longer courses (with a video run time of at least 4 hours, qualifying for a minimum of 8 CE hours).
PLEASE NOTE: As of June 2017 the NCBTMB has made it a requirement to specify the course type on all certificates. In our case this means that the CE certificate will list the course as an “online/home study course”. Please do not ask us to change or omit this since this would be illegal for us to do.
CLICK HERE to see a sample of Thai Healing Massage Academy's CE certificate.
Where are our CE certificates valid?
CE hours can be used either for licence renewal in your state or for membership renewal in professional massage organizations like NCBTMB, AMTA or ABMP.
NCBTMB CE hours are accepted nationally. However all 50 states have different regulatory agencies and different laws regarding massage therapy.
If you want to be sure about the licence renewal requirements in your state, you should contact the agency in your state which regulates massage licensing and inquire if they accept interactive online home study training courses with NCBTMB CE hours for the renewal of your massage licence.
The elements of Thai Healing Massage Academy's training programs:
Our certification program is a structured and interactive online training with full instructor support, a feedback and progress reporting mechanism, testing requirements, the ability to communicate with other students, and verifiable course participation via our online forum posting.
Not all CEUs are the same:
States may distinguish between different categories of CEUs: live in person training, online training, and home study.
Online courses may be accepted as live training if they include an interactive feature which allows students to communicate with their instructor. This depends on the definition of the rules in each state.
Thai Healing Massage Academy cannot be up to date on the licence renewal rules in all 50 states. The individual states decide what their specific requirements for CEUs are, and for accurate information you should contact the relevant authorities.
New York state therapists: Please note that our CEUs will only be valid for membership renewals of professional associations like AMTA, ABMP or NCBTMB. They cannot be used for the renewal of your massage licence.
Florida state therapists: Our CE certificates are valid for the general hours of the renewal requirements for your massage licence. However after receiving the CE certificate you need to self-report the CEUs to CEBROKER (http://cebroker.com) to be sure that they are in the system.
CEUs are available for the following courses (1 CE hour = 1 CEU):
(click on course title for more information)
COST: There is a processing fee of $10 for the Continuing Education certificate.
Requirements for obtaining a certificate
1. Forum participation
Since this is an online training course, we cannot physically see if you are actually practicing the material. However we can see if you actively participate in the forum of Thai Healing Massage Academy’s website.
If you regularly post your questions, progress reports and your experience with the training material in the forum, we accept this as evidence that you are practicing and learning the course material.
The forum posting is the only requirement to qualify for the International Certificate.
2. Test questions (only applicable to CE certificate)
Students who are enrolled in the “Continuing Education Certificate” program need to answer 5 test questions per CE unit, as required by the NCBTMB, in addition to the forum posting.
Registration for certification
Specific details about Thai Healing Massage Academy’s certification programs are available in the course manuals and on our website once students are enrolled in a course.
When you purchase a course which is eligible for certification, you will have access to the registration page from within your membership portal.
>> You can find more information about our certificates in this article. <<