Wednesday, April 23, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Share your Experience of Healing Hands
Please share your feelings and stories of your massage training with other therapists and eager learners.
Hello Healers
First, please review our Spring class offerings. Shana Lipner will teach 2 Herbal Healing segments, Cynthia will offer Hot Stone Massage and Chris Harmon will teach Thai Massage. Denise Fultz’ course in Geriatric Massage will bring students to work with our elderly population in a nursing facility. In Apri,l we once again have the sublime opportunity to gather in an undeveloped canyon to retreat from modern conveniences and heal together under ancient oaks beside the giggling creak. We are proud to offer such a variety of modalities and grateful to our healing community for continued contributions of knowledge and expertise.
Secondly, we celebrate our most recent Holistic Health Practitioner graduates! Congratulations Karen Gamal, Lisa Pattison, Heather VanRoekel, Micheala Craig, and Kathryn Burns. It has been a pleasure to learn and laugh with you. We thank you for choosing Healing Hands for your earnest focus on the skills of the healing arts. May your path be full of health, happiness and growth.
And thirdly, let us recognize two very important members of the Healing Hands staff. From our faculty of gifted and dedicated healers, Danielle Frager Weaver has been chosen as our Teacher of the Year. Danielle has been part of the Massage Technician teaching staff since 2002. Danielle’s clear style of communication is the perfect compliment for the beginning Massage Technician student. Her strength of spirit and her commitment to the profession of Massage Therapy are an inspiration for the new student. Congratulations Danielle! Thank you for your continued commitment to the healing arts. May your strength of spirit bring you many more years of heartfelt, compassionate guidance to many more Healing Hands students.
We also recognize one of the most beloved members of the Healing Hands staff. Spring of 1998 marks the 10 year anniversary of Annie Heffner joining the office staff. When she came to inquire about a receptionist position, Paula was 9 months pregnant. In these past 10 years, we have seen Annie interact with literally thousands of students, teachers, staff, vendors, administrators, helpers, and allies. Annie’s kindheartedness is a deep and abiding bedrock always treating people with kindness, dignity and respect. Her steadfast love of humanity is the paradigm structure for which all healing work is the underlying fabric. We are honored to have been able to bask in Annie’s goodness for these 10 years, and look forward to a rich future of right livelihood in an environment of mutual cooperation and peaceful diligence.
When Martin Luther King described the use of non-violent resistance for social change, he taught that the first step to action was an internal change within the resistor; for the resistor to be effective he had to change self-pity to self respect. In order to appeal to the humanity in the oppressor, he must feel his own dignity. When Rosa Parks was asked why she refused to move to the back of the bus, she said:” It was a matter of dignity.”
The office staff is often asked to explain how Healing Hands is different from other massage schools One of our main focus points is to teach that the recipient of the bodywork session must always be treated with the utmost of respect and dignity; that the recipient is never just a pile of muscles and bones on your massage table, they bring to your table everything, truly everything, that has ever happened to them; the sum total their life is on your table, under your hands. In order to teach this kind of reverence, our faculty and staff must constantly engender respect and dignity in our deliberations with each other, with our students, and with the healing community. Danielle’s clear communication in the classroom and the kindness in Annie’s voice exemplify the kind of respect that Martin Luther King described when he said:
“We have a glorious opportunity to inject a new love into the veins of our civilization. The end is the creation of a beloved community. It is this love which will bring about miracles in the hearts of man.”
In Peace,
Paula, Neha, and all of us Healing Hand