Wellness & the Healing Arts
Mission
Wellness and the Healing Arts
Certificate Mission Statement
The rapid expansion of interest in and demand for alternative approaches to health care has created a unique opportunity for NSCC students to distinguish themselves in the market place. Hospitals, clinics, chiropractors and other health professionals are in various stages of ?integrating? alternative/complementary therapies in their services as a response to public interest.
The highly experienced faculty prepare students to engage in an exciting learning process through the interdisciplinary study of healing systems in which the wisdom of the past is integrated with present day medical care. The courses are designed to explore holistic thought and practice in health care and to build healing arts skills.
Programs of Study
A high school diploma, GED, or passing score on a
federally approved Ability To Benefit Test is required for admission
to all programs. Contact the Admissions Office
for more information.
Announcements
NEW COURSE!
The Certificate in Wellness & Healing Arts has added a 1 credit course to the program, Ethics & Holistic Health Practitioners. The course will first only be offered online beginning Spring Semester 2006. Later we hope to offer the course as a classroom course.
The certificate is now a 29 credit certificate.
Transfer Opportunities
The Certificate in Wellness & Healing Arts should be thought of as a foundation certificate. We encourage further education by urging our students who have completed this certificate program to consider matriculating to well established, accreditated institutions. Our graduates have pursued further education at Lesley University and other schools with programs in Nutrition.
Program Resources
Wellness & Healing Arts Admissions Packet
Kristin Webb, Coordinator Biography
Kristin Webb was the Chairperson of the Interdisciplinary Studies Department from 1985 to 2002. She has been studying the field of Alternative/Complementary Therapies most of her life. Webb became a Reiki Master in 1994 and realized the need to offer Reiki in an academic format. She is co-author of an article, Reiki in Academia, published in Reiki International Magazine. The Certificate in Wellness & Healing Arts became a reality in 1997 through her efforts. Since then, thirty-six students have completed the Certificate, most of them on a part-time basis. Interest continues to grow with several Massachusetts Community Colleges following suit in developing their own wellness programs. She has taught Certificate courses, Traditional Usui Reiki 1 and Music & Healing.
Webb developed the Music & Healing course in 1978. Her interest in the subject grew from a need to understand how music could have so profound an effect on humans, and indeed, all living matter. In her mind and heart, there was an imperative to move beyond the concept of music as passive entertainment or being vaguely good for you. The goal has been to help others understand how critical music/sound is to our emotional health and wellbeing and to lift musical understanding beyond the general public's perspective of music as a frivolous activity. Webb also is a Certified Provider of the Listening Program developed by Advanced Brain Technologies.
Faculty Biographies
FLORENCE C. WHIPPLE began her study of Reiki in 1988. She became a Reiki Master in 1994 with John Harvey Gray after an extensive apprenticeship. She is Co-Director of the Salem Wellness Center at Prana, Health & Yoga Center established in 1989. Currently she is the Director of the Reiki Morning Clinic and Co-Director of the Reiki Evening Clinic at Union Hospital, Lynn, MA. Whipple is the instructor of the Traditional Usui Reiki 2 class. She is co-author of Reiki in Academia, published in Reiki International Magazine. Visit her website www.reikiprofessors.net.
MARGI FLINT Herbalist, Professional Member American Herbalists Guild, began studying herbal therapies in 1974. Flint studied with Rosemary Gladstar and Cherokee and Chinese authority, David Winston for many years. Flint has completed intensive study with Christopher Hobbs, Donald Yance, Rosita Arvigo, Cascade Anderson Geller, Dr. Ryan Drum, Kate Gilday, Tori Hudson ND and more.
Flint has been Adjunct Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine since 1994 where she taught Herbal Approaches to Treating Organ Systems to medical students. In addition she taught a four-week rotation in clinical herbal medicine for fourth year medical students and practitioners at Union Hospital and her clinic in Marblehead.
Her recently published book, The Practicing Herbalist: Thoughts for Meeting with Clients, is a guide for practitioners and students.
She confers with many local doctors concerning shared clients. Flint owns EarthSong Herbals where she sees clients for consultations & offers apprentice programs and advanced clinical studies from the office and school at EarthSong Herbals. Flint is the author of A Practicing Herbalist: Thoughts For Meeting With Clients. Visit her website www.earthsongherbals.com for further information.
DOROTHY WRIGHT IRWIN teaches Theories of Healing and Reiki 1 in the Wellness and Healing Arts program. Dot holds a unique B.S. degree in the Healing Arts, with a concentration in Touch and Music Therapy, from Lesley University where her area of concentration at included three internships in nursing homes. She designed and conducted a double blind pilot study at several North Shore facilities on the benefits of alternative therapies for the elderly, the ill, and the dying.
Dot, a Reiki Master and Certified Compassionate Touch practitioner and instructor, walks between the worlds of traditional and alternative medicine on a daily basis. She has many years experience in pharmacology as a certified pharmacy technician. In addition she pursues a private practice of Reiki and volunteers her services at local Reiki clinics. Besides teaching, her passion and private practice is Care with Compassion in which she administers alternative therapies to clients in hospitals, nursing facilities or private home settings.
The educational background of BERNADETTE LUCAS includes a BS in Nutrition from the University of Rhode Island, a Master's Degree in Clinical Dietetics from Boston University and a Vocational Teacher's Certificate from UMASS Boston. In addition to this, she completed a year long Dietetic Internship at Massachusetts General Hospital.
She has worked extensively in dietetics and teaching. Her experiences include: Chief Clinical Dietitian at Union Hospital in Lynn and Catholic Medical Center in NH, a consultant Dietitian to area Nursing Homes and owner and operator her own private practice, Healthy Options. She began teaching in 1983 at the Somerville Hospital School of Nursing and accepted a position as Nutrition Science and Diet Technology Program Director at the Essex Agricultural Technical Institute in 1991. She became the IDS chairperson in 2002.
JOE OCCIPINTI is a human geographer who has focused his research on critical social theory and ethnic studies. He has lived in Canada, Europe and South America, including a year in two Native American villages in the Andes Mountain region. Joe also has a life-long interest in comparative religions and eastern philosophy and healing. As a Reiki Master, Joe has a small private practice and teaches Reiki as a healing art and as a tool for emotional and spiritual human development.
COMMENT ON WELLNESS
What does wellness mean for the student interested in the Wellness & Healing Arts Program? A national movement is well under way examining the role of meaning as it relates to health and looking at human beings in a holistic manner. What is holism? The term was coined by J. C. Smuts in 1926. The word holistic is derived from the Indo-European root kailo from which we get heal, whole, hale, hallow and hearty. And so we equate health with wholeness. What does it mean to look at the whole person? John Dewey wrote:
To assume that anything can be known in isolation from its connections with other things is to lose the key to the traits that distinguish an object as known. . .The more connections and interactions we ascertain, the more we know the object in question".
(Dewey, John. The Later Works: 1925-1953, ed. JoAnn Boydston.)
What interactions? Today it is acknowledged that mind, body, spirit and community comprise the major aspects of a person's life, that which can help us experience ourselves and others as a whole. Many have written about the need for the medical profession to see patients as individuals rather than the "kidney in room #2". If a medical professional is only seeing the "kidney" where does that leave the individual? Less than whole?
If the interrelationship between mind, body, spirit and community is deemed to be important in defining wellness, how does a student measure his or her readiness to embark on the wellness path? Wholeness is not an artificial summation of parts. The active dynamic in wholeness seeks to maintain an equilibrium, a continuous interaction of parts. A holistic practitioner must strive to see him or herself as whole as well as the individual seeking holistic treatment. It is a never-ending cycle?the seeing and the seen, the knowing and the known. It is a reflective process seeing oneself mirrored in the individual seeking help.
It is evident that there is no such condition as perfect health. There is a rhythm to ease and disease in everyone's life. As they say, "Life happens". Everyone experiences aches, pains and accidents at some time. The critical question then is making a conscious, responsible decision as to the best course of action. One must seek a lifestyle that helps the process of "getting better", of living a life worth living. How, then, can one reconcile personal health issues with the urge to be of assistance to others? How does one arrive at the conclusion that one is physically and emotionally healthy enough to be of assistance to another person in a professional sense? These are very important questions that require careful thought.
What creates the foundation for improving one's health as a student in Wellness & Healing Arts? What is expected of a student as the program progresses?
- Daily Reiki self-treatments
- Periodic self-evaluation of life energetic patterns that shape our lives
- Examination and self-reflection on impact of daily challenges and interactions with others
- Understanding of the concept of holism and its role in holistic health practice
- Putting exercise and principles of good nutrition into practice
- Taking personal responsibility for one?s health and life-style
- Taking an active role in the decision-making process regarding
medical treatments when necessary whether conventional and/or complementary
- Commitment to ongoing self-education in the health field
- Awareness of the ethical implications of one?s actions
- Acknowledging that the Certificate in Wellness & Healing Arts is a beginning foundation in Alternative/Complementary Studies and that working in this field requires making a commitment to life-long professional development
Questions or comments to kwebb@northshore.edu.
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