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.

     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.

     For those interested in good health, fitness, meditation, or nutrition, they find that when they add breathwork to their practice, it transforms the results they are already getting in other areas. 
      Anyone can register for Releasing 2017 – Creating 2018, an introduction to transformational breathwork workshop, happening December 31st.  This is an opportunity for participants to discover breathwork and bid farewell to this year as they create their intention for life in 2018.

     Recent graduates of The Healing Arts Center often hear HAC president, Dave Kenyon, make references to Buddhism.  A long-time Tibetan Buddhist, Kenyon integrates Buddhist thinking into virtually everything he does, works on or talks about.  "I have been fortunate, to have received rather extensive training from very accomplished Buddhist teachers during much of my adult life", says Kenyon. "To me, Buddhism makes perfect sense largely because you can test it in your life experience without having to take anything on faith - I am, after all, a natural skeptic."
     Kenyon is an attorney by training and says that he used Buddhist principles even during the first twenty years of his career when he was a litigator.  "It was often challenging to zealously advocate for a client and still keep the moral precepts while working your way toward inner calm, but then again, all life is challenging in this way and everyone has to make their way through Samsara ("the ocean of suffering") one way or another regardless of their career path. But there is a way to be effective and compassionate in nearly every occupation, if you take the time to reflect on it and figure it out."