Stress. That vague constricting feeling, the weight that drags on you. It shows up as tight shoulders, low energy, clenched jaws. You have your ways to cope with stress, from talking with a friend, helping someone out, getting a big hug, exercising, or a hot bath. What would probably make a huge difference in your wellbeing is deep breathing.

Breathing is the key to regulating the nervous system, to relieve stress, promote relaxation, and more. Transformational Breathwork is a practice of guided, conscious breath that allows the body to reset from fight-flight-freeze mode, stimulating the vagus nerve, and starting a ripple effect to help every system in the body perform optimally.

    Maybe you've heard the buzz... for a limited time, The Healing Arts Center's clinic is asking for volunteers to receive energy medicine sessions in our Master Track Clinic at no cost. Students of the Energy Medicine Master Track are gaining their clinical experience as part of their training to become Energy Medicine practitioners.
    Led by headmaster and owner of HAC, Tom Tessereau, the Master Track spans 5 months and consists of 100 hours of training in Reiki and Pranic Healing. Clinic practice allows students to interact with new people and put into real practice all that they have learned so far in their training.

     Over the past year, Lama Lobsang Palden has delivered a series of workshops that teach participants elements of various Tibetan breath yogas.  Included in his workshop series has been an introduction to "Tummo", the yoga of generating internal heat made famous by the Mahasiddha Naropa in the 10th Century.  Tsa Lung is the name for a variety of practices that teach practitioners how to develop vital energy (lung), or prana, in the energy channels (tsa) of the body.  

   For years, The Healing Arts Center has taught its massage therapy students basic transformational breathwork.  Two years ago, the school started teaching this breath practice to the public by offering its Introduction to Transformational Breathwork workshop three times a year.  HAC has been steadily building up a body of people who are trained to practice this intensive healing practice.  Some students have found that transformational breathwork has allowed them to completely recover from depression, panic attack disorder and other debilitating conditions often associated with past trauma.   It is not unusual for a breathwork client to say that a single session of transformational breathwork can do what years of talk therapy cannot.
     In the past century, several modern western traditions of breathwork have emerged:

• Dr. ​Stanislav Grof's Holotropic Breathwork
• Judith Kravitz's Transformational Breath
• Leonard Orr's Rebirthing Therapy

While the HAC basic breath training is inspired by all three of these schools of thought, its basic program is primarily based on the Kravitz and Transformational Breath model.

    Massage Therapy offers many benefits for cancer patients.  It can greatly reduce the stress and anxiety that often arises from having cancer and can reduce or eliminate the pain of chemotherapy and radiation therapy.   Student therapists who participate in the clinic are among HAC's best, in fact, being chosen to participate in the HAC Free Cancer Clinic is considered honors status at graduation.  Being of service is part of the HAC mission and our students and graduates deliver care through Reiki and light-touch massage to clients who truly can use healing touch.  HAC has developed considerable expertise in restoring quality of life to cancer patients.

     Students in Cancer Clinic Training listen to Connie Smith share about her experience with breast cancer and how receiving massage and Reiki in the clinic provided her relief, calm, and a sense of well-being.

     Ms. Smith has been coming to the Healing Arts Center’s cancer clinic since she started receiving treatment for breast cancer in 2016.  She shared with the students in the Cancer Clinic Training about how restorative it was to come to the clinic and feel cared for and nurtured in contrast to her experience of beginning cancer treatment at the hospital.  Connie provides a personal perspective in the training for students to understand what cancer clients are going through and the difference that the Cancer Clinic makes. Contributing to the student’s training is only one of the ways in which Connie has demonstrated her commitment to the clinic.  She has become a very energetic advocate for Cancer Clinic because of the unique care that it provides for people dealing with the effects of cancer treatment, chemo, radiation, surgery.

     Last year, HAC launched a revolution in wellness care by training twenty-four new certified breathworkers in its first-ever Master Track Program.  Breathwork has become a staple wellness modality at The Healing Arts Center in both its workshop programming and professional clinic offerings.  HAC considers transformational breathwork to be one of the most powerful and accessible healing modalities available anywhere.  This is because of the ability of breathwork to completely release the psychological effects of suppressed emotional obscurations such as trauma, sometimes in a single breath session.
HAC has been advocating that massage therapists should consider diversifying their therapeutic training to include modalities that can be delivered in a group setting.  Direct one-on-one therapies have a strictly limited earning potential whereas modalities that can be delivered in a one-to-many classroom distribution can greatly enhance the earning potential of a massage therapy, yoga or other holistic practice.

     2017 is in the past (whew) and it is time to hit the reset button to launch 2018.  The Winter Session starts on January 8th which means that our "healers in progress" will be returning and approximately twenty-five new students will be joining this very special community.   The administrative team has been in the office all this week preparing to make 2018 the best year at HAC ever.