In 2003-2004, I spent a year doing a 660-hour Ayurvedic bodywork program with this local…read moreuniversity. At that time, it was one of the only programs in Ayurveda around, and we were lucky enough to have an awesome Ayurvedic doctor/acupuncturist (John Holmstrom) teach us!
John is a WEALTH of knowledge - he spends weeks seeing patients in India each year and beyond his wealth of information, he's got an intuitive sense of others. Learning from him and getting his feedback as we'd practice was really huge for our growth as students.
At the time, I had really only practiced Jin Shin Jyutsu (energy work) for a couple of years so Ayurveda was this all-encompassing, totally new thing that focused on the body and mind and the psyche and herbs and diet and behaviors and LIFE. The classes were intensive, yes, there was SO MUCH information! But what I learned was PRECIOUS.
John taught us about tissues, pulses, marma points, doshas, herbal prescription writing, medicinal uses of wild growing herbs and ancient Ayurvedic herbs, yoga, anatomy, panchakarma, abhyanga, shirodhara, pinda swedhana, swedhana, nasya, vasti, spirituality, Ayurvedic cooking, and - most interestingly - the psychology behind people's desire to hold on to potentially damaging behaviors (and food and drink!). We had one other teacher for Practice Management and Ethics and Anatomy 2 (both great), but other than those 2 classes, John was our main man!
Students had the opportunity to work in the school's clinic for credit, which was really instrumental in getting us used to the flow of abhyanga and shirodhara. John would do an intake interview with the client, then discuss the information with the students and form a plan of action. We'd do everything else - set up the room and the equipment, make the rice/herb mixture for pinda swedhana, work on the client, and then clean up!
I have such fond memories of working in clinic - when you do 4 hands on or even 6 hands on one client, you learn to listen in to *everything* around you - yourself, your fellow bodyworkers, your teacher, at the SAME TIME you're listening in to your client. Without those 2 quarters of clinic experience under my belt, I never would have had the courage to practice on my own!
Plus, especially for a student who doesn't yet understand the power of their new skills, there's nothing quite like seeing a client go in to a treatment looking wan and weak and feeling achy and depleted, and emerge hours later (abhyanga and shirodhara can be an hours-long treatment) looking 10 years younger with a sparkling gleam in their eyes. (If you're interested in being a client, they still have a clinic where they offer amazing prices on Ayurvedic bodywork!)
There were many times that us students played client, when we didn't have a client to work on. Throughout my program, I ingested so many herbs and oils just from working with them, that I felt my own healing take place.
Aside from all the intensive memorization, there was really fun stuff: wild medicinal herb lessons taught at a few botanical gardens in the area, oil and salve and tincture making classes that were messy and herbaceous, and herbalized ghee making classes.
The bottom line: I had an amazing and *life changing* learning experience at this university, and still stay in touch with the awesome administrators. I cannot say enough good things about what I took away from John Holmstrom or the university!
