Holistic Health
Healing Hands School of Holistic Health
Teaching Respect, Dignity and the Healing Arts
by Nicole Pugh
In the front office of Healing Hands School of Holistic Health, there is a tree where photos of current and past students and staff are displayed. The school celebrated its fifteenth anniversary last November and the photo tree is a reminder of all the individuals, both past and present, who have come to Healing Hands to teach and learn. That tree says it all. Healing Hands is a holistic health and massage school that puts the care of its students, teachers, staff and clients at the forefront.
The school was created in April of 1993 by veteran massage therapists, holistic health practitioners and teachers Neha and Paula Curtiss. It was an answer to a demand for quality and legitimate massage therapy education that started almost twenty years ago. As recent as the early nineties, massage therapy was still considered to be either an exclusive experience limited to the wealthy, a “strange” new-age phenomenon or a part of the shady sex and adult entertainment industry.
“At the time there were several other people [in addition to us] who were working on what I now term as the Massage Therapy Movement,” explains Paula Curtiss. “Sixteen years ago, people didn’t even use the word Massage Therapy…Some of us did, obviously, but [it] wasn’t in the common vernacular.”
The Curtisses began offering a one-day massage workshop at Mira Costa College in 1992. Its popularity led to the expansion of the class into a 100-hour massage technician program, which was the first of its kind to be held in a community college in California. Its success led to similar classes at Palomar College and Irvine Valley College. At the same time, students who had come through the program at Mira Costa were asking about advanced classes. In response to all of these factors, the Curtisses opened Healing Hands and offered 500-hour and 1,000-hour programs in basic massage and other modalities. Eventually, they moved their beginning curriculum out of the community college forum but always appreciated the work that they did at Mira Costa and other public settings.
“I feel very positive about the work at the community colleges,” says Paula Curtiss. “I felt like it really trained us in dealing with the public [and in] packaging massage into a program that was accessible to the public…I also felt like at some point it became necessary for us to focus on not just beginning massage classes, but the [whole] field of massage therapy and…also some of the adjunct therapies.” Adjunct therapies are healing modalities such as aromatherapy, reiki, reflexology, and herbology that compliment traditional massage.
“[These] therapies are extremely important for people who are self-employed. A lot of people are going to come into your office and they are going to say…‘Hey, I saw this stonework or this aromatherapy thing on TV. I want to try it.’”
Healing Hands currently offers a 100-hour Massage Technician Training course, a 500-hour Massage Therapist program and a 1,000-hour Holistic Health Practitioner’s program. For the Holistic Health Practitioner coursework, students take 500 hours of basic massage therapy classes as well as 500 hours of electives, of which there are over forty to choose from. One unique specialization is geriatric massage. Many students who study this modality go on to work in resident facilities and with Hospice as well as on their own.
“In geriatric massage classes, we will discuss an age-related disorder [first in the classroom]… and then we all go to a local convalescent home,” explains Curtiss. “The instructor facilitates each student working with one or several residents. We will go to that same home every week and the students will work with the same residents for several weeks. It is a very emotionally charged class because you are dealing with age-related disorders and almost everyone at one point or another has known someone who is old…[It] is a very specific kind of [practice] that you are called to do.”
“I think that one of Healing Hands strong points is that we are always striving to teach how to treat the recipient with the utmost respect and dignity,” Curtiss says of the overall philosophy of the college. “The person who is receiving your massage is never going to be just a bunch of bones and muscles on your massage table.
We find in order to teach that kind of respect and dignity, that is the kind of respect and dignity which has to be engendered in the classroom.”
Healing Hands School of Holistic Healthhas locations in Escondido and
Laguna Hills. For more information, visit www.healinghandsschool.com.