Vision Magazine interview with Neha

BACK TO HOME PAGE Healing Hands A Conversation with Neha Curtiss by Shannon Nies Healing Hands School of Holistic Health is much more than your typical massage school. With courses ranging from Thai Massage and Geriatric Massage, to Aromatherapy and Holistic Nutrition, Healing Hands offers programs for students looking to expand their knowledge of healing modalities and attain a well-rounded approach to holistic health. To learn more about this unique school, I spoke with Neha Curtiss, licensed Holistic Health Practitioner and Founding Co-Director of Healing Hands. Vision Magazine: What led you to create Healing Hands School of Holistic Health? / Neha Curtiss: I got some bodywork when I went to a meditation ashram in Oregon and it changed my life. I found that it was a life-changing experience. (And this was in the 80s.) So my wife [Paula] and I decided to live out into the wilds of Northern Washington and led a very off-the-grid life for quite a few years. I thought, well if I ever wanted to go back to the world, that massage and bodywork is something that I would love to do. So I moved back down to San Diego and got my HHP at the Institute of Psycho-Structural Balancing. And I started my own business. What’s even better than doing massage and bodywork is teaching it. I love to teach, so I got a chance to teach with Barry Green at Body Mind College in 1990, and I taught with him for a few years. And then Paula and I started classes…that was in 1992. And [we] found that after a year of teaching Massage Tech, or circulatory massage, we had students that wanted to learn more. So we started teaching more advanced classes. Then we had teachers and friends who were in the teaching field and had great things to teach—and students who wanted to learn—so we rented a building here in Escondido. Really, it was a matter of what, would I want to do with my life, what would inspire me? I said, well, I’ve been looking for love, for enjoyment, for energy. And I realized that the revelation I had with the bodywork was that there’s love all around us all the time. It’s just the blocks that keep us from experiencing that love. There are blocks that we can work on removing so that we can fully experience all the love and beauty that surrounds us. So once I learned that, I figured out that massage and bodywork is a tool to work on that. What do I want to do [with my life]? Well, what could be more beautiful than to work on that for myself and other people—work on removing those blocks that keep them from fully enjoying and experiencing the beauty of life around them? But then there finally was something better; what was better was teaching people how to do that. And then I found something that was even better than teaching people how to do that: starting the school where we could have teachers come and learn to teach people to do that and really start a whole community of healers. We started a whole community of healers through Healing Hands. That’s really why I got into this, because I can’t imagine anything more fulfilling than being a part of a healing community that makes health not just a static thing that is where you’re not sick, but that health is the holistic concept of health, which is that vitality that can be enhanced through various means. We teach nutrition and herbs as well, though our main focus is massage and bodywork. That’s the tools we use to help open people up to the joy and the love that surround them. VM: What makes Healing Hands different from other massage and holistic health training schools? NC: We’re not “Healing Hands School of Massage”; we’re “Healing Hands School of Holistic Health.” That’s because of that concept of health that is something that can be enhanced, that it can enhance the enjoyment of your life. So we teach a variety of modalities to open up people to healing. We’ve managed to attract some of the very, very best teachers that I’ve ever seen, certainly. We’ve had teachers that have been working with us for over 15 years. We have quite a few teachers that come from all over the world. We have teachers that come from Costa Rica. We have teachers that come down from Oregon and from Arizona. And they all come to teach their specialty. We don’t have just one program where you just get into the program and you take everything in that program. There’s a lot of places to take massage. And therefore, we offer several thousand hours of massage and bodywork as opposed to just one program. When you take our thousand hours, you can take a variety of classes. One thing that I noticed is some of the teachers would come up to me and say, “Why do you have such great students? When I come to your classes at Healing Hands, it seems like the students really soak up the knowledge.” Well, I thought a lot about it, and I realized that it’s because of the flexibility of our school, that we allow people to take the classes that they want to take that allow them to be in only the classes that they want to be in. And when you’re in a class that you really want to be in, you’re excited about that, then you want to learn the knowledge, you want to learn everything you possibly can. And the teacher gets excited about that and wants to teach everything they possibly can. So it creates this real energetic relationship. And I think we’ve been really blessed to attract those teachers that love what they do, and they teach their specialties. And we have students who are taking the classes that they really want to take because we offer so many. VM: About how many classes are you currently offering? NC: We offer dozens of classes, ranging from an 8-hour class to 100-hour classes. Our massage therapy program is made up of circulatory massage, anatomy, sports massage, deep tissue, Shiatsu, and Tui Na. We do that so you can get a balance of the Eastern modalities and the Western ones. The rest of our program, 1000-hour program, is made up of dozens of classes, from neuromuscular, myofascial, structural integration, chair massage, geriatric massage, craniosacral work. So we offer dozens of classes, and our students get to choose which ones they want to take. There’s the person that wants to do sports massage, and we work on some of the elite athletes in the world. One of our teachers is working on an Olympic hopeful. And we certainly work with the Rock ‘n’ Roll Marathon and so forth; we’ve worked with their elite runners. That person might be bored to death going into a facility of elderly people or hospice care, and yet somebody who loves working with people who are in the transition of dying, and then loves working with that population—they’ll want to work at massage events. And somebody else might want to specialize in chair massage and go into businesses and do neck and shoulder massage. Somebody else might want to specialize in emotional work and work with people in conjunction with the therapist, and so forth. There’s a lot of places that you can take massage, and that’s why we have such a varied program, because it’s not a cookie-cutter program. We have a very eclectic sampling of massage modalities that you can get into. So that’s what helps to make us different. VM: What are your hopes for the future of Healing Hands? NC: Well, I guess to continue doing what we’re doing, which is to continue to create a healing environment for students to come and learn in a way that it’s not just static book-learning, but an experiential experience—but in a practical way where they can get hands-on work and explore a lot of the different modalities that are offered. We consider ourselves not a school of massage, but a university of holistic health. We offer so many different modalities to choose from that many of our students keep coming back after they’ve graduated to take new classes, because we like to be on the forefront of what’s out there. And we’re always looking for new teachers to teach the latest modality, and yet we have teachers that have been here, like I said, for 20 years, for over 15 years. So we have a good mix of very experienced teachers that have been at Healing Hands for a long time, but we also have teachers coming from other places to teach as well. So, in the future of Healing Hands and our school, we just look to continue to educate the community. Massage is a growing field, it’s still growing, and as many massage therapists as there are out there now. There were a lot less 20 years ago, but that’s because less people were interested in getting massage. It used to be that massage was just either a luxury that people couldn’t afford or was considered sexual. But now, massage therapists have come into the common vernacular. It’s quite common to go to a massage therapist, and then seeing now more as a part of keeping healthy, as a part of increasing your vitality and making you live not only longer, but better, giving you a better life. People see that now, so they go to get their regular massages. And it’s not considered a luxury anymore; it’s considered a responsible part of maintaining and increasing your health. So that’s where I see the future. I see the future as continuing that, because as many people get massage now as didn’t get them 20 years ago. You still know your uncle and your friend and all these people that have never gotten a massage. So there’s a lot of potential out there for growth, because if you look at the reality… I mean, I love Western medicine. I’ve never been one to discredit Western medicine, I’ve never been one to denigrate it. If I’m hit by a car, you can put away your feathers and your crystals—get me to a hospital. I’m not against Western medicine at all. But in the long run, what do they specialize in is drugs and surgery. Other than drugs and surgery, I think they might do a little physical manipulation, but that’s their forte. I tell my students, “If you want to see a miracle, go to a hospital. You want to see people performing miracles every day, go to your local hospital. They are performing miracles every day, with all kinds of combinations of drugs and surgery, keeping people alive and healthier.” But what do we get to do as massage therapists? Everything else. When you get a massage therapy license, you get a license to do physical healing, to work with people. That’s a huge thing. And we take healing traditions from around the world in our school. We have Ayurvedic from India, we have Tui Na from China, we have Shiatsu from Japan, we have Lomi Lomi from Hawaii, we have Thai massage from Thailand. We’ve got healing traditions from around the world that we draw on—ancient healing traditions that are thousands of years old that we draw on—that are not drugs and surgery, but are simple physical and energetic manipulations. So we have a lot to draw on, and I find that the future is also the past. We grow into the future, but we take from the past. And that is the ancient traditions of healing that in our Western society some of us have lost, but now are resurfacing through massage and bodywork. VM: Our theme for July is “No Time Like the Present.” What does that mean to you, and how does it affect your day-to-day life? NC: Well, “no time like the present” can be seen as a very inspirational statement. You can have a lot of ideas about what you want to accomplish or what you want to do in the future, and you can have a lot of beautiful memories and nostalgia about the past, but in the end, the only moment you really have is now. That’s the only time that you actually have, is the present. You can’t really make changes in the future, you can’t really make changes in the past; you can only change the present. So if you have a dream or a thought of something you would like to see happen or something you would like to manifest, then now is the time, because, again, it’s the only time we have. As far as my day-to-day, I take that as, you might have regrets of the past, you might have dreams of the future, but the only real time you have that’s not in your mind is right now. I think that massage and bodywork has a beautiful way of bringing you to the present moment. You may have trauma from the past. We have a clinic and we have a community service program that works with emotionally traumatized people, both with the Wounded Warrior program in Camp Pendleton, and with hospice care. What is health to somebody who is dying? Health is right now, right here. It’s being in the present moment and being able to experience the bliss and joy of this moment right now. So massage has a way of being able to communicate, physically, spiritually, and emotionally—bringing those three elements together into the present moment and help someone to become aware of how precious the present moment is. VM: In your opinion, how can one person use this idea of “no time like the present” to better their community and the world? NC: Well, that kind of ties into what I was just saying. We use massage and bodywork to bring that to the community. We go into the hospices, we go into the elderly care facilities, and what I tell my students is, you can go to the ravaged Africa, you can go to India, you can go to some of the poorest places and impoverished places in the world where people are in desperate need, and you won’t find anybody in more need than in the building that you pass by every day on the street corner. And that’s helping elderly people that are in desperate need of your touch, and your care, and your comfort. We go into those facilities and work with those people and help bring them an awareness that there’s nothing better than to be alive. To learn more about Healing Hands School of Holistic Health, visit their Web site, www.healinghandsschool.com, or e-mail them at contactus@healinghandsschool.com. You can reach their Escondido location at 760.746.9364 or 800.355.6463, and their Laguna Hills location at 949.305.2722.