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Shiatsu Thai Yoga Bodywork
200-hour Practitioner Training
with Marilyn Hart & Nini Melvin

Introduction    Program Schedule     Faculty
About Shiatsu Thai Yoga Bodywork
Introductory Workshops

Introduction to the 200-hour Practitioner Training

Join us for this innovative, comprehensive blend of the bodywork techniques and theories of Shiatsu and Thai Yoga massage and learn the fundamental theory and skills to be a practitioner of Shiatsu Thai Yoga. 

The Shiatsu Thai Yoga Practitioner Training is twelve-month, 200-hour program beginning September 2007 and ending August 2008.  The curriculum has been skillfully structured to prepare graduates to confidently give full-body treatments in the Shiatsu Thai Yoga modality.  Experienced bodyworkers, as well as those new to the field, can awaken and enrich their quality of presence, movement and touch, body mechanics, communication, and diagnostic perception.

We will study theory, technique, and alignment while cultivating intuition and inner wisdom, depth of presence, ease of movement, fluidity, continuity and efficiency. Clients and practitioners wear loose, comfortable clothing (no oils are used). Treatments take place on a futon on the floor.

We will meet for one weekend a month (Sat/Sun), plus an additional Sunday each month for supervised practice (see dates & hours below). The cost of the 200 hour training is $2800; we are happy to arrange payment plans. 

For more information or an application, contact instructors Marilyn Hart (413-367-0054 or mhart@crocker.com) or Nini Melvin (978-544-7960 or NiniMelvin@hotmail.com). 

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200-Hour Practitioner Training Schedule 2007-2008

Training Hours: Saturdays 11 am - 2 pm & 3 - 6 pm; Sundays 9:30 am - 12:30 pm & 1:30 - 4:30 pm

Practice Hours: Sundays 10 am - 5 pm

Training Weekends + Supervised Practice Day

Sept. 8/9 + Sept. 23
Oct. 20/21 + Oct. 28
Nov. 3/4 + Nov. 18
Dec. 1/2 + Dec. 16

Jan. 19/20 + Jan. 27
Feb. 16/17 + Feb. 24
Mar. 15/16 + Mar. 23
Apr. 12/13 + Apr. 27

May 17/18 + June 1
June 21/22 + June 29
July 12/13  

Graduation Ceremony: July 20, 2008

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Introductory Workshop

TBD, 1 - 4 pm ($35)
at Green River Yoga & Movement Arts
158 Main Street, 2nd Floor, Greenfield, MA
 

This preliminary three-hour workshop is designed to provide participants an opportunity to experience essential elements of the 200-hour training as well as the teaching styles of the instructors.  Click here for details.

For more information or to pre-register, contact Marilyn (413-367-0054 or mhart@crocker.com) or Nini (978-544-7960 or NiniMelvin@hotmail.com).
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About Shiatsu Thai Yoga Bodywork

Thai Yoga bodywork can be traced to the monastic community that formed around the Buddha around 2,000 years ago. It is part of a unique therapeutic system incorporating traditional Indian (Ayurvedic) and Chinese medical wisdom. With meditative reverence, the practitioner gently moves the client through a sequence of yoga-based stretches. While sensing and treating meridians and pressure points using compression and stretching, s/he uses hands, thumbs elbows, knees, and feet in rhythmical, relaxing sequences.

Shiatsu is a Japanese healing art that works with meridians and pressure points to release pain and holding patterns and resolve energetic imbalances of abundance and depletion. It is based on the same meridian and point system as Chinese acupuncture, and yin/yang theory. Students will gain insight into the Creation Cycle of the Five Elemental Phases, experiencing the dynamic interconnection of the elements within us. As we discover our own patterns and tendencies, we learn to discern these qualities in others, and treat them through the meridians and stretches. We will explore and sense levels of abundance and depletion, and treat them accordingly.

Shiatsu Thai Yoga is an innovative, comprehensive blend of the bodywork skills and theories of Shiatsu and Thai yoga massage.  This practice can free up joints and stimulate the flow of vital energy through channels from the top of the head to the bottom of the feet. This can be deeply therapeutic, leading to improved flexibility, increased blood and lymph flow, increased vitality, alleviated pain, and a deepened experience of ease.  Essential to the practice are the concepts of loving kindness and compassion. This is an invigorating and highly physical treatment in which the practitioner endeavors to remain in a state of mindfulness, allowing for sensitivity to subtle shifts of energy and changes in the client's body-mind.  Essentially applied yoga, the treatment progresses with different forms of touch--pressing, stretching and twisting--through supine, side-lying, prone, and seated positions. We create trust with recipients by developing sensitivity to lightness and depth of touch, with hands, Hara and heart.

Join us for this fun, thorough, inspirational, enriching practitioner training! 

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About the Instructors

Marilyn Hart MA (413-367-0054 or mhart@crocker.com)
A 500-hour Yoga Alliance master yoga teacher, first certified to teach at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in 1985.  She has extensively studied many yoga traditions and methods in the U.S. and India, and founded Green River Yoga in 1996. Since 2000, she has assisted Patty Townsend in her embodyoga™ Teacher Training at YogaCenterAmherst.  Marilyn began training in Thai Yoga bodywork in 1999, traveling to Chiang Mai, Thailand to study with Pichet Boonthamme and others, and she is certified to practice by the Thai Healing Alliance International.  A practitioner of Vipassana meditation since 1985, Marilyn is most drawn to the Advaita Vedanta tradition and aspires to pass on the heart-centered skills and gifts of these various schools and traditions with respect and encouragement, poetry and precision.  Marilyn teaches the classical yoga poses with a focus on healthy alignment, free breathing, deep relaxation, and balancing flexibility with strength.  She is available as a yoga teacher (group and private), yoga teacher trainer, and Thai Massage practitioner. 
 

Nini Melvin (978-544-7960 or NiniMelvin@hotmail.com) Nini Melvin created PresenTouch by blending her training in shiatsu, dance and meditation.  She is continuously exploring the dynamic inter-relationship between Mother Nature and human nature, aligning personal and planetary healing.  In 1979 she received her M.Ed. in dance from Temple University in Philadelphia.  In the 1980s, Nini studied shiatsu and became a senior instructor at the Ohashi Institute in New York City, where she taught for ten years.  Nini was on faculty for eight years at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, and she has been training practitioners and instructors internationally for since 1990.  She is also a practitioner of aquatic shiatsu.  Nini is available for treatments and private lessons in Wendell, Greenfield and Northampton, Massachusetts.  For more information visit her website www.PresenTouch.com.
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