Laura Repetto shares her experience teaching anatomy to a class of Yoga Works teachers:

Practicing yoga and sharing yoga with students is a regular part of my week as an instructor at the National Holistic Institute.  To me, yoga is a great way to warm the body up before performing massage.  It was with great joy that I was able to work with Yoga Works teachers in training for their anatomy portion of their certification.  These classes marked the 6^th time NHI has been selected to offer this anatomy intensive training. Richard Middaugh and I shared the 12 hours of instruction and had a lot of fun palpating muscles, analyzing movement of the body and applying the information to yoga.

Allyn Hall & Laura Repetto

At NHI, our reputation as a massage school is only as good as the quality of our teachers.  Thus, as qualified as our teaching staff is, we never rest on our laurels.  Our teachers constantly learn new material as in the recent Ayurvedic massage training led by fellow teacher Allyn Hall.

Since Ayurveda is a hot spa trend, San Francisco campus manager Tiahna Skye scheduled this training to help our teachers stay current in the field.  The treatment is similar in theory to shiatsu – it balances energy lines known as Nadis and helps to balance one’s dosha which can be thought of as one’s current constitution.  The hot oils are a blend of olive oil and sesame with fresh herbs and essential oils added to them. They are applied in strokes that trace the energy lines with a pressure and pace adapted to the individuals “dosha needs.”

Allyn Hall teaches, “Ayurveda can be translated as the ‘study of long life.’  Everyone is made up of 3 different doshas and the level of each dosha can change depending on the weather, food eaten, stress in life, etc.  An abhyanga, or application of warm oil massage, can be used as one of many ways to balance a person’s dosha combination.  The abhyanga that our teachers played with at the training is a lush combination of physical and energetic massage that leaves the client both relaxed and uplifted.”

Some trainings are so delightful, it’s hard to call it work!  That’s one of the many perks of being a massage profession.

So Laura Miner (now Laura Repetto, recently married to Roger!) and I taught 15 Yoga Teachers-in-Training a 12-hour anatomy course!  This was in conjunction with the company YogaWorks, and NHI‘s 3^rd time doing this!

It is so much fun and also very different to teach Yoga Teachers vs. Massage Therapists.  I am hoping that some of the yoga students would like to become massage therapists and vice versa!  They could do both, massage & yoga being so closely related, right?

Here are a couple of pictures, one with all of us after class (including one of our students “Deltoid Dave”).

Striking a Pose!

The other picture is of me, Melissa, with the leg muscles drawn on my own leg!  My 2 favorite leg muscles:  Peroneus Longus and Tibialis Posterior.  Look for a future blog to find out why those are my favorites.  If any of you NHI graduates are looking at this, you may remember me drawing on myself in your Kinesiology classes! 

Melissa's Artwork

For those who had Laura Miner as a teacher, I thought you’d enjoy seeing her as Laura Repetto with her new husband Roger!

Laura Repetto and Roger