The Listening Field
Ethics as a practice of attention.
The Listening Field is a continuing education program for licensed massage therapists. The courses here are built around one premise: ethical practice isn't a compliance exercise. It's a capacity — developed slowly, through attention to what actually happens in the clinical relationship.
Two Ways to Learn
All Listening Field Training courses are delivered in a text-based format and do not include video instruction. Students must be able to independently navigate online written readings, participate in text-based discussion prompts, complete written applied reflections, and take online quizzes.
All courses at Listening Field Training are self-paced and open to enrollment at any time. Most courses are delivered through Teachable LMS. The Pain-Informed Ethical Practice and Cultural Humility in Pain Care courses are the exception, offered exclusively as downloadable PDF workbooks.
After enrolling in a workbook course, you receive a PDF workbook by email and work through the material independently, without logging into any platform. When you're ready, you email your typed assignment and quiz answers directly to Melissa. She reads your work and responds personally before issuing your certificate — no automated grading, no system between you and the instructor. Just the material, your reflection, and a real reply.
All courses are designed to meet state renewal requirements, including Oregon's supervised, interactive ethics CE requirement — met through direct instructor engagement, whether through the Teachable platform or personal email review of workbook assignments. But the requirements are the floor, not the ceiling — the work asks more than that.
Course access is available for 30 days from the date of purchase. Enrollment is open to licensed massage therapists in active or inactive good-standing renewal status. Please review the Course Policies page for full access and eligibility details before enrolling.
Why These Courses Are Structured This Way
Most ethics CE is passive: you read, you test, you move on. These courses are different. They're built around real clinical situations that create genuine uncertainty — boundaries under pressure, consent that's harder to read than it looks, scope questions without clean answers, cultural context that changes how care lands.
Each course uses reflection, scenario analysis, and structured decision-making — not to hand you the right answer, but to build the habit of asking better questions. That's what supervised, interactive ethics education is for.
Accessibility and Accommodations
Listening Field Training is committed to making courses as accessible as reasonably possible for licensed massage therapists with disabilities or access needs. If you use a screen reader, work with a reader or assistant, or need materials in an alternate format or adjusted timeline, email info@listeningfieldtraining.com as early as possible so we can explore options together. While not every request can be guaranteed, each situation is reviewed individually, and we work in good faith to support access within course requirements. For full details on access, timelines, and accommodations, see the Course Policies page.
The Instructor
Melissa Haeckel, MA, LMT, LPN
Melissa has been in clinical practice for more than twenty years— as a massage therapist, a licensed practical nurse, and an educator. She holds a master's degree in Educational Leadership, Policy & Administration from Portland State University, with a focus on leadership for sustainability education, alongside graduate study in health equity and somatic education. She also holds a graduate certificate in Instructional Design, which shaped how these courses are built — as structured, scenario-based learning experiences rather than passive reading-and-testing modules.
Her early clinical work was in tribal Alaskan healthcare, where questions of access, cultural context, and the limits of Western clinical models were unavoidable. That experience shapes everything she builds, alongside her ongoing subject-matter expertise in massage therapy practice and education.
Melissa holds an Oregon LMT license (#14599) and an Alaska LMT license (#156461). The Listening Field is an NCBTMB Approved Provider (#1003059), with three courses currently holding confirmed NCBTMB course approval: The Listening Field: Ethics, Boundaries & Professional Presence, Across Difference: Cultural Competency for Massage Therapists, and Creating Safe Therapeutic Spaces: Ethics, Boundaries & Cultural Awareness for Massage Therapists.
Who Comes Here
Licensed massage therapists who want continuing education that takes the work seriously:
LMTs completing Oregon's supervised, interactive ethics CE requirement
LMTs renewing in Washington, Texas, Tennessee, Idaho, New York, and across the country
Practitioners who've been in practice long enough to know that ethics isn't simple — and who want CE that reflects that
You don't have to be in a renewal cycle to find this useful. But if you are, every course here is built to meet state requirements, with three courses currently NCBTMB-approved and additional titles under NCBTMB review.
