Posts from — April 2010

Melissa Wheeler addresses her peers at All-Staff Day.

The American Massage Therapy Association has awarded the 2010 Jerome Perlinski Teacher of the Year Award to Melissa Wheeler, a longtime National Holistic Institute teacher and current teacher trainer.

To the many teachers, staff, and students Melissa has touched in her 19 years at NHI, no one deserves it more.  One of the highlights of this year’s NHI All-Staff Day was Melissa’s address to her peers and receiving of a scrapbook created by co-worker Sharlene Philip, containing numerous memories, congratulations, and accolades.  While Melissa remains as humble as always about this rare honor, here are words of praise from others:

“It has been my pleasure to work with Melissa, whose input always puts the teacher first [Read more →]

Melanie Burns & Joe Bob Smith (2nd & 3rd from left) join the Food Bank's Michael Flood, Flori Schutzer & Jeanna Kindle.

During the Thanksgiving and Christmas Seasons, several National Holistic Institute campuses run food drives, offering discounted massages for donated food.  It thrills us to see the number of people coming in for massages, dropping off bags of food to help those in need.  But, once it gets picked up, we never knew exactly what happened to all that food…until now.

This past year, the Encino Campus doubled its previous donation by turning in over 1,200 pounds of food!  As a thank you, we were invited to the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank headquarters to see where all the contributions actually go. 

On a recent spring day, campus manager Joe Bob Smith and teacher Melanie Burns trekked just south of downtown Los Angeles to Food Bank central.  Upon entering the building, we [Read more →]

Cynthia Ribeiro performs a demonstration.

National Holistic Institute has officially (and proudly) launched the largest program expansion in recent history: a 400-hour Advanced Neuromuscular Massage Therapist course.

To spearhead this Herculean effort, NHI partnered with American Massage Therapy Association Vice-President and nationally renowned teacher Cynthia Ribeiro.  She worked hand-in-hand with our own Curriculum Coordinator Jim O’Hara to structure the five 80-hour modules that make up the course.  Teaching alongside Cynthia are NHI’s own Esko Homsi and Advanced Program Manager Al Carbonetti.  Special activities include cadaver lab classes, anatomical modeling, and integral anatomy work.  Click Here for the course flyer.

As a national leader, NHI has always strived to set the standard of professionalism and excellence in the massage therapy field.  “Today NHI took a step towards [Read more →]