Central School of Massage

And how many, how many students have passed through your, I was gonna say your hands, your care, i- in, in that period, would you say?

In all, I would say well over 1,200 people.

Wow.

Wow, 1,200.

So I mean, massage a- as an industry, I guess is, is, is quite a buoyant industry?

It's booming.

You know, I've been a therapist for, uh, 20 years, and it's grown over that time, and I think a lot of that growth, particularly in the last few years, has been from the current Generation Z, Gen Z.

They place a lot of importance on their health, and they are very, very pro having massage and looking after themselves, and that's kind of helped grow the business.

So it is definitely growing and, you know, still very much growing.

So, so the sort of people that come along to learn massage skills, um, w- give us a few examples of the, the types of people that will come along.

I'd say principally it's people who like people, and I think often a lot of women are attracted to doing massage.

There's no question it's more female dominated than male dominated.

Um, a lot of 30 plus.

Mm.

You know, I do get some young people, but often the sort of teenagers, early 20s, they tend to go to the colleges, and they might be doing something more like spa type massage or beauty, those sort of things.

Massage is very much something that I think a lot of people come to when they've been doing something else-

Mm

... and they're looking for a change, and they kinda think, "I wanna do something where I can help people, where I'm always working with people." And so if you didn't like people, this is not the job for you [laughs] at all.

So, so it's mostly people that are looking at it as a, as a potential, uh, self-employment opportunity in the main, would you say?

Yeah.

Often it might be supplementary income to what they already do, uh, whether that's looking after children or, you know, they might have a job that they don't particularly like too much.

I mean, you mentioned, Catherine, that the, the, the majority of people that come to learn are female.

They're women.

They're, they're not men.

I mean, in terms of gender, are there advantages to particular genders in terms of your ability to practice?