How to Become a Massage Therapist in Colorado

You’re drawn to the world of massage, and you realize you can make it a career. What’s next? How do you become a Massage Therapist and in the state of Colorado? This article outlines the steps to take and factors to consider in your massage journey.

1. Why Choose Massage Therapy?
2. Choose a Massage School.
2. Graduate from Massage School.
3. Take and pass the MBLEx Exam.
4. Obtain Professional Liability Insurance.
5. Apply for licensure with the DORA.
6. Massage Therapist Jobs

Not too hard, right? Let’s break down these steps into more detail.

Why Choose Massage Therapy?

Working as a massage therapist allows you to work with clients from varying backgrounds and struggles. From patients with depression to patients with cancer, massage therapy helps relieve your clients from the pain they are in. Massage therapy can also be an additional licensure you add to your offerings – if you’re an esthetician, personal trainer, a stretch therapist, a yoga instructor,an herbalist, a nutritionist, or a counselor (to name a few), adding massage therapy to your current services can open up more healing opportunities for your clients, can expand your educational awareness to more training and understanding, and can also increase your earning potential. With room for continual growth and great earning potential, massage therapy is a career path that speaks for itself.

Becoming a massage therapist can be an incredibly rewarding career, giving you the opportunity to create a space of healing for your clients and for yourself. Giving massages is very relaxing for the therapist as well, being in a calm and peaceful environment away from a computer screen and focused on your body mechanics and breathing is a welcome change for many people looking to move away from stressful jobs.

Knowing your goals or even writing a mission statement will give you a clear path to what you wish to accomplish as you embark on your new career.

Choose a Massage School

The first part of your career as a massage therapist is to decide which massage school you will attend in Colorado. One of the steps for licensure in Colorado is to graduate from an approved school in the state of Colorado. “Approved” means that school is approved by the Division of Private Occupational Schools (DPOS) in Colorado. The DPOS is a state government organization that oversees all occupational (trade) schools in Colorado. 

Colorado currently requires a massage program to be 650-hours in length, at a minimum. Check out our 650-Hour Massage Therapy program in Denver, Colorado.

It’s important to research the school you’re interested in before enrolling. Read their Google reviews. Peruse their website. Schedule a meeting with Admissions. Ask about their curriculum and everything that is being taught. How is the schedule? Is it Hybrid learning or all in-person? Does the schedule work for you? Find out about Tuition and understand what you would owe each month or if you need to pay upfront. Make sure the school is approved by the DPOS. Make sure it’s 650 hours in length. Ask yourself if you can envision yourself being there. 

Before you start, make sure to prepare yourself for school, especially if you’re working while in school, or if you haven’t attended school in a while. Have a support network in place – family, friends, a therapist – someone that knows you’re starting on a new educational and career path and someone that can be there as a support for you. 

See if your school offers ways to support you as well – to help you structure your schedule and be successful to complete the program. As the old saying goes, “How do you eat an elephant?”, well… “One bite at a time.” It takes consistent, regular dedication to studying massage therapy to succeed in school and a little work each day will help you reach graduation successfully. 

Massage curriculum includes a good portion of science classes – Anatomy, Physiology, Pathology, and Kinesiology. Massage has become more medical since 2000 and more medically recognized as well, and with that medical connection, schools are required to teach the sciences and the application of the sciences as they connect with massage. This is a wonderful shift but it’s important to realize this before embarking on a massage educational journey. You will need to be prepared to study and understand the scientific and medical aspects of massage.

Graduate from Massage School

Typically, completing a 650-hour program can take up to 6 – 12 months, depending on full time or part time options. Our program is a hybrid program and offers schedule flexibility, where you could graduate in a range from 4 – 18 months.

Our 650-hour program includes everything you need to be successful in the massage therapy career path, including integrative coursework on anatomy, application techniques, and business. This program sets students up with the skills to confidently approach the licensure process. Students are well-prepared to start their own massage therapy business or get started working in spas, wellness centers, or even medical clinics.

You need to graduate from your approved massage school, and once you do that, make sure to obtain a Certificate and Transcript from your school. The certificate is nice to have to frame for your office and to have on file for employers, and the transcript is essential for licensure with the state (with DORA). Make sure to save digital copies of both your Certificate and Transcript and ensure you have back-up copies of those.

Take and Pass the MBLEx Exam

After graduating, you need to sit for the massage national exam, the MBLEx. MBLEx stands for the Massage and Bodywork Licensing Examination. You need to take this exam and pass it to get licensed in Colorado. This exam is administered by the Federation of State Massage Therapy Boards (FSMTB). It’s a 2-hour test on a computer taken at a Pearson Vue center. There are 100 items on the test, and they are all multiple choice.
Take time after graduation to focus your attention on studying for this exam.
You’ll know immediately if you’ve passed or failed the exam. If you fail, you can reschedule to take it again. If you pass, you will go onto the next step – applying for licensure with the state.

Obtain Professional Liability Insurance

Colorado requires each massage therapist to have professional liability insurance – this is insurance for potential claims by clients. If you hurt a client during a massage, you have professional liability insurance to protect you legally and fiscally from claims and lawsuits by clients. Examples of this could be using hot stones incorrectly and burning the client’s skin, and that client must seek medical attention to help heal their skin from that burn – the health fees, loss of work, and emotional distress all play into a claim of that nature.

Your school should help prepare you for any potential contraindications and how to work safely and effectively with clients, but situations can still arise, so the state of Colorado requires that you have insurance to protect you from these potential liabilities. 

There are several organizations that offer this sort of insurance for massage therapists. ABMP is a national organization that stands for Associated Bodywork and Massage Professionals. They are based in Golden, Colorado and offer affordable and comprehensive professional liability insurance for massage therapists. We’ve worked with ABMP for 15 years as a school and highly recommend them as a resource for massage therapists. We have massage school liability insurance through them, and our students have student liability insurance with them as well. They make it easy to upgrade to a professional level upon graduation. 

Another popular organization is AMTA, which stands for American Massage Therapy Association, and they are based in Evanston, Illinois. They have similar offerings to ABMP and have professional liability insurance for massage therapists as well. 

Apply for Licensure with DORA

DORA is not Dora the Explorer ☺ DORA stands for Department of Regulatory Agencies, which is the Colorado Division of Professions and Occupations. This government organization licenses over 50 different professionals in the state of Colorado, ensuring high standards and regulations. They oversee massage therapists, and in order to practice massage legally in the state of Colorado, you must apply directly with DORA for licensure.

Here’s a checklist from DORA of their application requirements. To summarize the list: 

  1. Graduated from an approved massage school.
  2. Passed the MBLEx exam.
  3. Fingerprint and background check.
  4. Application fee payment.
  5. Have professional liability insurance.
  6. Answer general and criminal history questions.

Once all parts of your application are submitted to DORA, you have an account on their portal and will be notified of your licensure via email. The timing can vary with DORA, but typically it’s 2 – 4 weeks to be notified of your official license. You’ll receive a digital wallet card of your massage license that shows your license number, the issue date, and the expiration date.

Make sure to put your licensure expiration date on your calendar with an alert a month before the expiration date for you to go online to renew it. DORA opens renewal for licenses a month before the expiration date. You don’t want your license to expire as it will be more costly to renew it & if you let the renewal lapse for too long, you will need to redo all the requirements, including attending massage school and passing the MBLEx national exam again.

Massage Therapist Jobs

Once you have your massage license, you can start massaging professionally. If you attended a massage school that has internship opportunities, then you’ll have a greater chance of getting a massage job offer ready for you upon licensure. Read more about our Internship Partnership program, where you can intern as a massage student for school hours at a massage business. Along with potentially having an immediate job upon graduation, our internship program gives students the professional development skills, customer service skills, intaking skills, and real-world skills needed to be successful as a massage therapist.

No matter where you decide to work after you complete your program, you need to remember that ultimately you will be running your own small business. It’s important to bring a high level of quality and attention to each client that you see.  To maintain and get new clients, you must become adept at honing marketing and networking efforts.

It would be helpful to begin practicing in a medical setting, salon, or spa to gain more exposure as a skilled massage therapist.

Earning potential can vary based on where you work. As a massage therapist, you generally will not work 40 hours a week, as this can be quite physically taxing.  You will find that you have the freedom and flexibility to create your own schedule. Most full-time massage therapists work about 25 – 30 hours a week. The average annual pay of Colorado massage therapists, according to ZipRecruiter, in 2025 is $75,372.

Denver, and all of Colorado, currently faces a shortage of massage therapists, so this is a good time to become a massage therapist in Colorado as the demand is high for massage therapists, and you can expect higher pay because of that shortage.

This article was written by our founder and owner, Hillary Hilliard. She has been a Massage Therapist since 2004 and an Herbalist since 2010. She teaches classes for all of our programs: Herbalism Roots, the Denver Integrative Massage School, and the School of Botanical & Medical Aesthetics. Hillary loves being connected with all aspects of her schools, and she’s very grateful for these opportunities to share her passion and love for the healing arts and the beauty arts with as many people as possible.

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