Issue link: https://www.massageandbodyworkdigital.com/i/68173
FROM CALIFORNIA TO CAMBODIA Heart Touch began with a Rolfer, Shawnee Isaac Smith, who had a friend dying of AIDS. When other bodyworkers were reluctant to work with her friend, she agreed to do it, and found the experience of working with someone in the final stages of life to be so profound that she began recruiting others. "But she realized that people needed special training in how to work with the dying," says Patrick Callahan, executive director of the organization based in southern California. "That was the beginning of Heart Touch in 1995. Now we're coming up on our 15th anniversary." For many years, Heart Touch volunteers went into hospitals and hospices throughout California. But in 2006, a volunteer from Thailand suggested that Heart Touch volunteers could fill a dramatic need in that country, working with children either suffering from, or left orphaned by, AIDS. Estimates are that in 2000, more than 1 million children in this nation of 64 million people had lost at least one parent to AIDS. In November of that year, Heart Touch took its first international trip to Thailand, sending 13 volunteers to visit orphanages to work with children. Eventually, they sponsored trips to Africa and to Cambodia, also to work with sick children and orphans. "With children, we don't do traditional massage, but we play massage games, so they get positive experiences with touch," Callahan says. "But in the hospitals, we find people who are suffering a variety of illnesses, many with tuberculosis, so our work there is more like traditional massage." Heart Touch volunteers must first take a three-day training in the Heart Touch method. "It's not a methodology or system of strokes. It's really a way of approaching a client in a heartfelt, compassionate manner," Callahan says. "The training is experiential as well as intellectual. The idea is for people to find out what it means to be a heartfelt presence, and how you deal with someone in the end-stage of life in a way that makes them feel honored and seen and cherished." The training costs $250 and counts for 20 continuing education hours. It is offered four times a year. Another two-day course on massage for medically fragile infants and children is also good preparation for the overseas trips. Cost for a two-week trip overseas is around $3,600. For information, contact Heart Touch at www.hearttouch.org or 310-391-2558. continued on page 61 connect with your colleagues on massageprofessionals.com 57