Pittsburgh School of Massage Therapy

For many years I have enjoyed wonderful massages and friendships at PSMT. Bob the owner and Tom and the clinic directors made the clinic massages enjoyable and the experience for years was great. Recently it has changed drastically. The student clinics were great but it became impossible to get an appointment with the funky software they had. When I wrote to the new director Eli that they were sending invites but nothing was available for months The director was rude and very unprofessional. And had zero customer service!! Absolute worst! so I now have a massage envy membership.
Feb 5th, 2024

Oct 31st, 2023

May 18th, 2023

Very professional. Have been many times and each therapist, though slightly different are attentive to wants and needs of the client. Very relaxing environment.
Dec 24th, 2022

I attended and completed massage school here over the 2023, and to sum it up, you get out relative to what you put in. Like most things in life, it seems. As well, it is helpful if you have a high tolerance for disorganization and the ability to ignore outright silly things. There are a few instructors that have made my education here worthwhile. Unfortunately, in my experience (and I believe the majority of my classmates would agree), most of the instructors do not run the classrooms as mindfully as they could. For example, so much of our class time had been wasted while teachers tried to figure out what to do; a number of teachers were assigned to teach our class with very little notice to prepare (like, a week? Less?); we had a guest teacher lead an accidentally surprise group discussion about trauma (on the last day of our first semester, nobody informed us it was on the itinerary thus the surprise and it was not received well); on occasions, different teachers authoritatively would share outright conflicting information; some teachers showed us wildly improper body mechanics (like teaching a student who is a barista + the whole class how to best pour a full gallon of milk: hold it in front of you, arm straight and parallel to the ground, and then twist your wrist - demonstrated with an empty pitcher as my suggestion to fill it was ignored); incredibly outdated materials (Ill include a picture of undoubtedly the most awful example that unfortunately anyone who took somatic psychology here will recognize); and several times I have had particular teachers approach me from behind and touch me. To be clear, the intentions were helpful. I just would have thought that people trained in the art of professional therapeutic touch would be more careful about not sneaking up behind someone and violating their personal space, particularly while they are immersed in an activity and not paying attention. One beginning class I was in was told that we were somewhat guinea pigs for a new general curriculum, but over the course of my time there, I have ended up skeptical that the school is moving towards something better than what I experienced. I hope I am wrong. There have been some staff changes that were handled somewhat publicly, arguably inappropriately, and the owner of the school has large parts of his personal life seemingly enmeshed with the business. There are many different teachers on staff; most are generally incredibly kind and caring people and are able to impart some degree of knowledge to willing students. There are very few that I think have no business teaching, but overall, I am left doubtful if the teachers there get the support that is needed from the faculty. Is it the facultys job to support teachers? I dont know. As for the faculty, in my experience, they are also kind and caring people. Im just one student; I dont know where the breakdown in the chain is, but it seems like there is one somewhere because, to me, it feels like the students of our class ended up getting the short end of the chain. I started off this review by saying that you get out what you put in, and Ill end with that. If you are the type of person to engage with the material seriously, you can get a decent education here. If you want to apply the minimum effort and just manage to get by, Ive seen that done as well. At the end of the day, its a place in Pittsburgh that I paid $12.8K, showed up to for a bunch of hours, and have now walked away with a diploma and a license soon to be in my hands. Not the worst place, but definitely not the best it could be. I met some truly awesome people and mentors here, and while I dont regret going (whats done is done; I grew and learned things I certainly needed to, but they werent the things I intended to learn like about massage), I wish I was better mentally prepared for what going to this school was going to entail for me. I also wish more people wrote honest and reasonable in-depth reviews of institutions, so here we are at the conclusion of my best attempt at one. Good luck.
Jan 31st, 2024