Dan Magro of Current TV’s Dan About Town recently visited the National Holistic Institute Encino Campus to find out what it takes to become a massage therapist.

After getting basic chair massage tips from yours truly, Dan joined a class where he received muscular realignment work from student Amber Mathieu and instructor Jan Takeshita.  By the end of his stay, Dan began to realize just how much training goes into making a professional massage treatment so therapeutic.

In 5^th Place with a combined 8%…the disparate team of Liat & Jenelle…

Enough voters mistook Leisha & Craig’s pumpkin for an Obama look-alike giving them 4^th Place with 10%…

The talents of John & Jen overcame the subject matter (yes, that’s my face on a pumpkin) to achieve 18% and 3^rd Place…

Jan & pinch-hitter Joe Bob drove Nancy’s idea home with 30% and a very close 2^nd Place…

And in 1^st Place…

(drum roll, please…)

With the help of props…

(drum roll, continues…)

And electric lighting…

(drum roll, a little more intense…)

Denise and Vanessa claim a 1^st Place victory with 33%!!

Congratulations to everyone!!

On Friday, one of our teachers, Jan Takeshita, made her final visit with a group of students to BodyWorlds 3 at the California Science Center before it closed this weekend.  Here are her thoughts.

I’m aiming to set an NHI record for the most visits to BodyWorlds 3!  Last Friday, I attended this amazing exhibit for the third time when I took a few students from Group 56, my mentor group, and one escapee from Group 51.  We all had a great time exploring with the occasional “Oooh” and “Aaah” and comments like “Hey…there’s the sternocleidomastoid!”  I never tired of the students’ request, “Hey Jan, what’s that?!”

Personally, it’s like watching a well-crafted mystery movie.  I learn something new each time I go.  Viewing the bodies and seeing the muscles we work on was the most intriguing the first time.  Seeing an actual hip or knee replacement was amazing!  My second visit (with all the NHI teachers) was a review of the posing bodies.  Also, I paid more attention to the organs.  Viewing the organs with various pathologies was sobering (cirrhosis of the liver, smoker’s lung, cancerous breast, hardening of the arteries).  This time I paid special attention to the nervous system.

The body is so fascinating and, while it’s complex enough to always be somewhat mysterious, it has become less and less mystifying each time I go.

Some Group 56 students at BodyWorlds 3.

Lastly, I feel compelled to comment about the concern that many of these bodies might have been from individuals who didn’t give consent to be plastinated.  I, too, have read these news reports.  Speaking only for myself, I visited the exhibit on all occasions with a tuned sensitivity to the energy that might come from a lost spirit.  I have never “felt” that something was amiss.  Whoever these people were, they have given me and many others the amazing gift of insight and information…and I thank them all.

When I last blogged about BodyWorlds, I mentioned a related, if unflattering, German movie called Anatomie.  Well, it so happens that Monday I saw yet another movie featuring the actual BodyWorlds exhibit – Casino Royale, the latest James Bond movie.  It doesn’t have much to do with the plot (what plot?), but it looks good while Bond runs through.  Talk about product placement.