In the winters you can find me teaching in Kauai at:
The Pacific Center of Awareness and Bodywork
Our Affective Bodywork program combines advanced manual therapies with mindfulness, communication skills, interoceptive awareness tools, and Presence of Being that can be applied professionally during therapy sessions with clients and personally throughout one's life. • Begins January 8, 2018.
Awareness-Oriented Massage Therapy:
Interoceptive Bodywork with a
Biopsychosocial & Neurocentric Approach
This highly experiential, professional skills and personal development training can greatly enhance your effectiveness with clients and your relationship with life.
January 8 – June 29, 2018
776 hours. Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays 8:15 AM to 5:15 PM
(plus Friday mornings from January through mid-April, clinical internship, and lots of practice outside of class)
Princeville, Hawaii
We call this form Affective Bodywork because we work with the connections between body, mind, heart, and spirit in a dynamic, and often profound, way. This integration of Bodywork Therapies with Psycho-Therapeutic skills and Spiritual Awareness practices can help bring about a reduction of symptoms and increased levels of well-being for the client as well as the therapist. Affective Bodywork (AB) often goes way beyond this, helping people re-connect with what really matters in life.
At the core of our Being we can experience our essential qualities — Joy, Love, and Presenceful Peace. Through the use of therapeutic touch, heartful language skills, and the presence of the therapist and client, we can foster relaxation, healing, and discover pathways into our deepest core. As we come to know our Self more fully, living from this knowing naturally occurs more easily and happily.
Classes are a blend of Personal Growth Opportunities, Discussions, Experiential A&P, Technique and Session Demonstrations, and both Giving and Receiving of Connective Bodywork sessions.
There is balanced time for personal inquiry and discovery, individually, in groups, and in paired exercises with Awareness practices, Counseling skills practices, and Bodywork.
Upon completion of this program you will be eligible to sit for licensing in Hawaii and 47 other states. You will have the skill and knowledge to help people in an enjoyable, beneficial, and professional way.
The 776-hour program includes:
- Massage Theory: 100 hours
- Massage Practice: 476 hours
- Business and Ethics: 76 hours (including 30 hours of Ethics, 4 hours of CPR, and 4 hours of First Aid*)
- Massage Practice: 400 hours
- Human Sciences: 200 hours
- Anatomy & Physiology: 100 hours
- Kinesiology: 50 hours
- Pathology: 50 hours
*Individuals who opt out of CPR & First Aid complete the program with 8 fewer hours.
Individuals who take the Lomilomi, Thai, and CPR/First Aid courses can attain 816 hours.
We present this work of Affective Bodywork in three ways.
Non-symptom specific to help support general balance, openness, and easefulness in the body. As you experience novel sensory inputs and come into greater awareness of those somatic inputs, you may feel an increase in a general sense of well being and functionality.
- Symptom-specific applications and approaches for injuries, rehabilitation, pain reduction, and increased function.
- Accessing Consciousness. The body is a direct path to what we hold as true and a wonderful vehicle to help release any unnecessary holdings. As the mind and heart clear the body heals more easily, and often the reverse is true as well. The 10 session process is a complete modality in itself and a fantastic teaching system to further your effectiveness beyond most touch therapies.
- Accessing Consciousness. The body is a direct path to what we hold as true and a wonderful vehicle to help release any unnecessary holdings. As the mind and heart clear the body heals more easily, and often the reverse is true as well. The 10 session process is a complete modality in itself and a fantastic teaching system to further your effectiveness beyond most touch therapies.
Some additional words on our approach to BodyMindHeart work:
Affective Bodywork (AB) works with the the connections within the BodyMindHeartSpirit in a dynamic and often profound way. AB integrates many Massage Therapy modalities with Spiritual Awareness Practices, Psycho-Therapeutic Communication skills, and Presence Centered Hypnotherapy practices. This program has been designed for the professional development of physical and psychologically-oriented therapists, as well as personal healing, rediscovery, and celebration.
While AB is a high level Massage Therapy Licensing Training it is also a Life Enhancement program. So many people could be more at peace and happier with themselves and their life situation. Some of what can change has to do with healing and some with learning and more skillful choices, and some with simply coming to be with things as they are. From the perspective of the big picture, AB is an Integrated Program aimed at reducing suffering on the Planet, increasing Peace, and helping to bring about a more joyous experience of Life.
Some of the specific Modalities and Therapeutic Approaches You Will Learn:
- Relaxation & Stress Reduction Therapies: Full Body Relaxing Spa-Style Massage Therapy from Swedish, Lomilomi, and other modalities.
- Neuro-Muscular Therapy (NMT)
- Regional approaches integrating Connective Tissue Therapies, Trigger Point Therapies, and other modalities.
- Interoceptive Structural Integration
- Human Sciences: Experiential Anatomy, Physiology, Kinesiology, & Pathology
- Successful Harmonious Business Practices
- Movement Awareness Pathways are presented for both yourself and to be able to provide clients with appropriate ‘Self Care Practices’ for healing and high level living. We draw from many traditions and approaches including: Yoga, Corrective Exercises, Dance Therapy, and Rehabilitation methods.
- Presence Centered Awareness Therapies & Communication skills for Bodyworkers based on: Hakomi & Gestalt therapies, Somatic Experiencing, Interpersonal Neurobiology, Psychosynthesis, NLP, Hypnotherapy, Sensory Awareness, Breath Oriented Therapies, Guided Expansive Awareness Practices, Eastern & Western Transpersonal & meditative Awareness practices, Personal-Interpersonal & Transpersonal processes, Vipassana, and Advaita Inquiry… These are all utilized to help relieve suffering, reduce emotional pain, limitations, & beliefs, and to open to the immediate experience of greater freedom now in the experiential recognition of the presence of awareness.
- Critical Thinking and Clinical Reasoning
- Student Clinic
- Community Service Massage Events
- Enjoying the Celebration of Life