Welcome to the Art of Conscious Touch

Don't miss the next 100 hour 11 day intensive workshop August 29th to September 12th 2010 in BALI, Indonesia. Please email if you are interested in attending Nicolay Kreidler: info@learn-massage.com and click here BALI, Indonesia for more information.

Learn Massage

Touching from the Heart offers massage therapy education. Massage licensing can be obtained following additional studies and practice based on licensing requirements that vary from State to State. Certain workshops offer Continuing Education CEU hours and all massage workshops include yoga and movement to enhance the experience. Massage and healing touch has become the most sought after modality within the context of complementary alternative medicine. We offer the massage training that will qualify you to approach this rewarding field with the necessary confidence and insight. We provide massage therapy certification to participants. While we are not a residential massage school, we do offer an approved alternative workshop based approach to learning massage therapy.

Next Workshop: 11-Day, 100 hour Massage Certification Intensive Training January 15th to 28th in beautiful BALI, Indonesia .

The Touching from the Heart approach

Touching from the Heart was born out of a personal journey of transformation and the deep desire to share this process with others. Rather than imposing technique, we believe in uncovering human potential. While learning a skill, deeper insights are uncovered that inspire the work revealing a deep connection to self and other. If you find yourself on this page, chances are you are looking for precisely that - a meaningful experience that will change your life. More about our approach.

Photo: "Students in class at Kalani Honua Oceanside Retreat Center, Hawaii"

Program Overview and Summaries:

Touching from the Heart - The 100 hour Massage Intensive

The 100 hour massage intensives offer a transformational approach to massage training as well as massage therapy certification that can be used for massage licensing. In the course of 100 hours, a massage routine is taught that is a combination of the most effective strokes from modalities such as Swedish massage, acupressure, Lomi Lomi, Reflexology, Healing Touch, Trager and many more combined into a graceful flow. Yoga and movement are included to balance and enhance the curriculum. Supported by a process of self-inquiry and breathwork (and enhanced through Watsu - aquatic bodywork training at certain locations), the work is naturally anchored in the Heart and informed by presence. This massage training workshop is suited for anyone who would like massage therapy education, whether as a career, as a life-skill or simply to share with friends, family and community. Accomplished and recently trained massage therapists have experienced this workshop as an excellent opportunity to revitalize and jumpstart their practice. For program details click here.

Touching from the Heart - Massage Clinic

This module offers the opportunity to practice the Touching from the Heart flow directly after an 11 Day Massage Workshop. Students who have completed 11 Day Massage Workshops provide full hour sessions under supervision over the course of 2 days. This is especially valuable for those who are not returning to or directly starting their practice and enables them to deeply anchor a personal routine. Techniques and practices are reviewed before and after sessions.

Touching from the Heart - 5 Day Advanced Bodywork Training

Taking massage and bodywork to the next level, this massage training approaches advanced therapy in three dimensions. Advanced massage and aquatic bodywork techniques are introduced, body centered communication and methods of deep rapport are practiced and self-inquiry is taken to a deeper level. Based on the experience that you can only take those you work as deep as you have taken yourself, elements such as breathwork, meditation, hypnotherapy and NLP are combined with advanced massage and aquatic bodywork skills to facilitate a deepening both on the level of self knowing as well as skills. Continuing education CEU offered.

This training is suitable for experienced bodyworkers and graduates of the 11- Day Touching from the Heart Workshop. For more information click here.

Touching from the Heart - 6 Day Body - Mind - Spirit Intensive

The Touching from the Heart Body - Mind - Spirit Intensive explores deeply the realm of self inquiry in conjunction with touching another being from a place of conscious awareness. This Intensive offers a purification process during which we investigate the realm of relationship to self and other through Movement, Yoga, Breath, Watsu, Dance, Listening, Healing Touch, Voice and Communication. Elements of this transformational workshop are woven together to provide a web of understanding that can serve as a foundation for our way of relating to the world. The skills learned in this workshop can be applied to any work in the healing profession. The workshop is suited for all therapists in the healing professions as well as bodyworkers. The touch is light and energetic.

This intensive is can be taken as an additional element to any of the Touching from the Heart Workshops or Training. For more information click here.

 

Touching from the Heart - 15 Day Massage Workshop Facilitator Retreat

Learn how to teach the Touching from the Heart 11 Day Massage Workshop. This workshop on massage therapy education will provide you with the guidelines, tools, collateral and experience you need to teach 11 Day Massage Massage Training Workshops to others. Prerequisite: Touching from the Heart Massage Workshop, minimum of one audition, one participation as an assistant and practice as a therapist. Includes Watsu and Yoga. Please contact Nicolay Kreidler: info@learn-massage.com for more information.

Massage Licensing

You can find out more on massage licensing, obtaining a massage license and continuing education CEU by visiting our Certification page.

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Your History of Touch

We all have an intimate relationship with touch going all the way back to the beginning of our individual existence. Some might even add that their relationship with physical intimacy started even earlier. Whatever you believe, it is certain that our sense of touch and our associated mind-set is ancient, complex, and we are usually deeply entangled with our feelings around touch in our social structures - areas laden with open and concealed messages.

Human babies have been observed to have enormous difficulty surviving if they do not possess a sense of touch, even if they retain sight and hearing. Babies who can perceive through touch, even without sight and hearing, fare much better. Touch can be considered a basic sense in that nearly all life forms have a response to being touched, while only a subset have sight and hearing

For most of us one of our first instructions in our lives were "Don't Touch!"then "Look But Don't Touch!" and later... "Don't Touch Anything!".

The president of the National Education Association said in a recent show: "Our slogan is teach, don't touch". One teacher involved said: "In my classroom, we hug with our eyes."

Granted, these restrictions might have been expressed with the best intention to protect us but very soon they were applied to everything within reach whether appropriate or not. It seems that "Don't Touch" is part of many a parent/child dialog that can be observed in public.

Add the times we were touched without consent and when touch was hurtful, touch was connected to guilt, embarrassment or fear. Observe our social judgment around touch and how people react. We have a serious agenda with touch and touching. Touching has in many instances become a taboo.

In a time where the the body has become objectified with many detrimental results to mind, body and spirit health, touch has become an action laden with emotions that prevent us from accessing our true nature. We certainly have a history with touch that is far from open and easy-going.

And yet we know that we need touch to thrive and exist.

The Art of Touch

Massage techniques that have been absorbed on a cellular level become a meditation similar to yoga or chi gong. Skillfully applied and sourced from the present moment, they have a profound affect on giver and receiver. The perception of separation disappears and an invitation arises to sink into a place of well being. How is this possible?

Not only are we genetically hardwired to respond to situations that were essential to the survival of our ancestors but throughout our lifetime we learn to protect ourselves in threatening situations. We develop physical and emotional responses that help us not only to protect ourselves from and during injury and trauma but also to get what we need. By the time we are adults we have charted most responses. Whenever we re-experience anything that triggers an emotion that reminds of a past experience our physical and emotional body responds. Sometimes we do not even know what triggered these automated responses.

This relationship works in both directions. Consciously placing the body in certain positions or working on a particular area can on the other hand, evoke memories of past injury and trauma. In a safe therapeutic environment the body can discharge and release undesired energy or holding patterns in it's natural attempt to realign itself with it's original healthy state. This phenomenon is used in certain body-centered therapies such as Bio-Energetics.

When we experience physical, emotional and mental limitations we are often re-experiencing a conditioned reaction to trauma we experienced in the past. Sometimes we never stopped reacting and the protective patterns have become so deeply engrained that they have become our "normal" experience. Our subconscious "thinks" the situation persists.

Our body is not as permanent as it seems. Not only are we made of more than 50% water - with few exceptions (i.e. cardiac muscle cells) the approximately 200 different cell types that make up our bodies renew themselves at different rates (your stomach lining and the molecules in your brain cells renew themselves in hours or days; other kinds of cells are replaced more slowly) but about every seven years you are made almost entirely of new materials.

When we let go of conscious and unconscious thoughts by bringing our awareness to the moment we begin to release holding patterns that no longer serve us. Moment to moment healing can occur and as we directly experience what it feels like to be in an "original" state, we can begin to permanently let go of pain and dis-ease.