Touch & Go

“We travel not to leave our homes, but to leave our habits.” – Francis Weaver

Each season, 20 strangers gather in Samara, a tiny beach town located mid-way down the Nicoya Peninsula on the west coast of Costa Rica. They come to participate in an intense journey that promises to lead them toward understanding the truths of the human condition, and ultimately prepare them for a career in massage therapy.

Samara Beach, Costa Rica

For four months, they explore, process and come to embody a rigorous massage therapy curriculum that emphasizes professionalism and artistry. Their official classroom is an open-air pavilion set in a garden of fruit trees, inhabited by a motley crew of dogs, chickens and monkeys; but the real classroom extends way beyond the walls of campus into the surrounding jungles and beaches, and into the local community.

Thai Massage Class

The people who seek out and commit to this challenging immersion, are ready and willing to change their life. They have bravely left their homes, families, friends, identities and other attachments behind, and opened themselves up to experiencing a new climate, a new diet, a new language, a new career, a new life-style and many new possibilities.

By the time that I arrive to teach the Thai Yoga Massage class in the last month of their program, the students have already been transformed on many levels. On the outside, they seem like locals: they move with confidence and ease through campus and around town; they know who sells the freshest fish and the juiciest watermelon, and where and when to catch the best waves; they have learned how to keep the dogs away from the monkeys, how to smell the rain coming, and how to function when the electricity goes out.

Pura Vida!

On the inside, they are wiser and more discerning: they have confronted old habits and patterns, which their new environment and practices have helped to expose, and they have adopted a new mind-set that better supports their evolving life and career goals; they have become more open emotionally, more focused mentally, and more connected to their creative and intuitive gifts; and they have developed a respect for human suffering, and a great capacity for offering compassion.

Tuned in!

As a community, they have forged tight friendships and become a modern extended family; depending on each other, nurturing each other, confiding in each other, learning from each other, and holding each other accountable through a variety of breakdowns and breakthroughs.

As a teacher, I am grateful for the opportunity to work in a setting that is celebrated for its natural beauty and simplicity (Pura Vida!); but the coconut cream on the mango, if you will,  is sharing the experience with a group of people who have embraced change so fearlessly, engaged so fully in their own creative healing process, and who have the passion, intelligence and creativity necessary to become leaders in the massage therapy field and in their communities at large.

Fabulous Body Mechanics Stacey!

I am grateful to the Costa Rica School of Massage Therapy for recognizing the powerful link between travel (expanding one’s global perspective) and personal/ professional development (opening one’s the heart and mind), and for innovating  a program that successfully blends the potent essence of an expedition into wild, unfamiliar territory; with a fresh, modern massage therapy curriculum. Thanks to this unique educational opportunity, a new species of massage therapist is emerging from the jungle, and it is well prepared to meet the world’s evolving bodywork needs and bring balance back into the holistic healthcare ecosystem.

The New Species of Massage Therapist!

Do you travel to leave your home? Or to leave your habits?

Have your travels exposed any deeply rooted assumptions, or surprising patterns of thought? Did that discovery have any significant effect on your life?

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