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A Personal Welcome from Dana
When I moved from Boston to California to study massage
back in 1988, my intention was to learn a trade that would give me more
independence to pursue my acting career.
This calculated choice to escape the temp agency, turned into a profound
discovery of my capacities as a healer.
Sometimes we stumble into good wells.
When I was a boy, my Dad, who was interested in Carl Jung
s psychological theories would often assert, Dana, you re a feeling type . Some people sense the world primarily
through their eyes, or get the sound of things, but I always tended to feel things. So I was always tuned to my inner life
and a deep curiosity about people and their journeys. And I was always physical. Climbing trees or rocks, long hikes in the woods behind our
pond, playing baseball or dancing
in college, it s always been there.
So when I came to Oakland and the National Holistic
Institute (NHI) and began to study massage therapy, a lot of natural and some
latent qualities began to grow.
For example, performing a massage properly is not about having strong
thumbs and hands (though that will happen with this work), it s about touching
with your hands but moving with the strength and the ballast of your legs and
hips behind you. I feel satisfied
when my muscles and body are in motion so I loved this!
I also found that my natural curiosity and empathy for
people and their journeys had a place to sit in the massage session. If you uncover and unlock the energies
that are stored in the muscles, you tend to open up people s lives. They talk to you. And they will share the deepest
things. While never pretending to
be a therapist, I found that a capacity to empathize and deeply listen to the
anxiety or tears or whatever was coming forth was an invaluable asset. The tears don t need to come, but if
they do, I find that the client is able to release and purge on a far deeper
level. And I welcome and honor
that.
While listening with compassion was something I
understood long before I became a massage therapist, what took some cultivation
was how to listen with my hands. That's how we really feel what is going on in the body and it
guides us in knowing what to do and which techniques to use. You pay attention to the texture and
temperature of the muscle, how the client is breathing and finally how I am
feeling. By the later I mean that
sometimes I will feel a wave of sadness or a swell of energy coming off the
body. That's when I know I am in
the presence of something rich and deep in the client and I feel my
concentration going deeper. This
is what makes each session so unique because everyone has such a different
emotional and physical landscape. Tuning into their map leads you to wonderful
places.
Massage Training
At NHI, I
immersed myself in a comprehensive 500 hour massage program that covered deep tissue, Swedish, shiatsu,
lymphatic drainage and sports massage.
I initially found myself drawn to the deeper work and for two years was
a member of the Bay Area Sports massage team.
L.A L.A!
After moving my practice to Los Angeles in 1991, I worked
in health clubs, yoga studios and chiropractic offices. Today I am very pleased to share my
space with a wonderful acupuncturist and chiropractor, Allison
Howard L.Ac. and Jeff Parent, D.C., respectively. It is a joy to share space with these
excellent healers.
BioSync Training
After 10 years of massage practice, I felt the itch to
take my work to a higher level. I
had found that what gave me the most professional satisfaction was helping
people resolve chronic pain issues.
A massage client recommended a therapeutic treatment called BioSync that
he claimed had a profound effect on his body. I was intrigued and agreed to go with him and observe
a session with the founder of BioSync, Mark Lamm. I was deeply impressed by Mark's unique approach to
unwinding connective tissue. Mark
explained that this work is more than manipulating tissue, for the tissue
itself is a storehouse of emotional memories. As you unwind and heal the tissue, you are actually helping
to transmute the emotional
trauma. I felt so much more
open and lighter after my treatment.
But I also felt that Mark had accessed a deeper-psycho spiritual place
that was hard to describe, but felt very real.
The other thing that struck me about BioSync were the
dynamic positions he put his clients into to access the body. The positions resembled yoga asanas.
As a yoga practitioner myself, the idea of gently stretching and opening
the body while it's being unwound
made intuitive sense to me.
Yogassage Training
1999 was a busy year! A few months after I had completed
my BioSync training, I traveled to Costa Rica to study Yogassage at the Nosara
Yoga Institute. What an amazing
experience! Nestled in the jungles of Nosara, just a 10 minute walk from the
most untainted and exquisite beach I had ever seen, was a training facility
where every day we received and learned to give Yogassage. In
Yogassage, the therapist helps to move you more deeply into the yoga asana on
the floor (no standing positions).
While you're in this deeper stretch, the therapist works with his hands,
feet, back and knees to give a revitalizing acupressure massage. Most people feel relaxed and energized
after a Yogassage session.
You Gotta Do Your Homework
Over the years I have discovered that the clients who
tend to get the strongest results are those who work on their own bodies. For example, one of my favorite clients
is a fellow named Tom who is a Teamster in the television industry. Tom had chronic lower back issues going
back at least a decade. We began
doing BioSync sessions on a weekly basis, and Tom started seeing great
results.
But Tom did something not all clients are willing to
do. For after some sessions, I
would show him different stretches and exercises he could do on his own to
augment the work we were doing together.
And bless him, he actually did them! I'm not saying that every suggestion I gave was a magic pill. But by taking the time to explore the
different stretches and exercises, he could determine what was working and what
wasn't. More often than not, you
know when you're strengthening an area that needs to be strengthened, or
stretching an area that needs to be stretched. Giving a part of the body strength or flexibility that needs
it is like watering a thirsty garden.
You're body is so grateful.
The School For Self-Healing
With this awareness of how important it is for my clients
to help themselves, I began attending the School for Self-Healing in San
Francisco. The founder of this
school, Meir Schneider, is a genius and an inspiration in his own right. Legally blind since childhood, Meir
taught himself to see with relentless exercises that he learned and developed
on his own. I am astounded to see
Meir's power of visual observation in the way he analyzes a person's gait and
posture. Meir learned that by
doing self massage on the body and working muscles that had previously been
dormant or inactive, there was a world of problems he could address. While making huge leaps in improving
his own vision, he has had miraculous results assisting people with such
crippling diseases as muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis and polio.
I have since logged in over 170 hours at the School for
Self Healing so I can further empower my clients with strategies to help
accelerate their healing process.
Thank you
I thank you for taking the time to peruse this site and
learn about me and my work. It has been a rich and rewarding journey built on
thousands of hours with wonderful people, many of whom I consider friends.
If this site has spawned further questions or inquiries,
please feel free to call me at (818) 326-2822 or e-mail at
danavhubbard@yahoo.com. If you
need a quick response from me, the phone is always better. I look forward to
the conversation.
Take care and be well,
Dana
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