Whole Life Times: Conscious Business

March 2005

Conscious Business

Pioneering Massage School Rubs the Right Way

Next month, the Massage School of Santa Monica (MSSM) celebrates it’s 30th year of providing the highest quality touch therapy training to thousands of beginning and advanced SoCal healing arts students. As Director of the family-owned and operated MSSM, Bernadette Gessner has graduated countless success stories. She has also watched massage evolve from a fringe industry into a mainstream mainstay while managing to maintain MSSM’s status as one of the west coast’s most revered training meccas for massage certification.

“With the growth and [popularity of] physical fitness, healthy lifestyles and alternative healing, we have begun to rediscover the importance of massage and intuitive touch as an aid in personal transformation and healing, as well as a preventative measure in the relief of stress,” shares Gessner. The resulting surge in demand for bodyworkers has drawn more individuals to pursue massage as a trade; it has also created an environment where corporate-run vocational schools driven by the promise of profit are popping up like mushrooms. In 1988 there were only three schools in Southern California teaching massage. Now there are more than 20. “They certify people like a gas station,” quips Gessner wryly, referring to what she perceives as some of her more unscrupulous competitors. “Diploma mills,” adds her daughter and MSSM’s Associate Director, Maryse.

Few area schools can match MSSM’s comprehensive curriculum, experienced faculty and strong industry reputation. With two campuses, one on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica and one in North Hollywood, MSSM offers both basic and advanced massage therapy courses as well as hundreds of hours of specialized continuing education workshops. For more information on how to become a member of the MSSM family, visit the school’s website massageschoolsantamonica.com or call 800.746.2772.

Putting the Arts Back Into Public Education

“We are a group of Valley mothers, artists and community activists who have proven that ordinary people, when rallied together for a common cause, can effect great change in their communities and in the world,” says Spike Dolomite Ward, Director of the Arts in Education Aid Council (AIEAC), a nonprofit succeeding at growing public school art programs in the San Fernando Valley.

To experience the inspiring results of their efforts firsthand, join AIEAC staff and volunteers along with 200 area students and their families at a celebratory reception on March 13 marking the fifth annual Valley Wide Student Art Show. Come honor the work of students from 13 participating San Fernando Valley public middle and high schools while you groove to the Pacoima Middle School Jazz Band. For more information, contact AIEAC at aieac.org or 818.705.8758.

What the Bleep: To Blockbuster and Beyond

Part documentary, part narrative drama and part visual hallucinogen, the quantum fable What the “BLEEP” Do We Know? (June ’04 WLT) arrives on DVD and VHS March 15. One of indy film’s biggest triumphs of 2004, Bleep’s popularity proves the efficacy of the spiritual cinema genre (featured in the January ‘05 WLT) while challenging the typical Hollywood formula for success.

Originally discouraged by movie industry insiders who told him that he was committing “financial suicide,” Bleep filmmaker William Arntz got the last laugh when overwhelmingly positive word of mouth caused the runaway hit film to gross over $10 million dollars. Says Arntz, “[I knew there were] millions of closet metaphysicians in America, just hungering for a movie like this.” Get thee metaphysics–loving self out of the closet and to your nearest purveyor of fine quality films for a mind, body and spirit-blowing cinematic adventure.

Eco Fashion, Not Just for Momma

Make your baby’s night of sleep a peacefully organic experience with Grembo Organic’s new 100 percent organic cotton sleep bags available at grembo.com. In Italian, grembo means womb, and fittingly Grembo sleep bags lovingly cradle new babies in a warm, pure organic cotton, free of synthetic dyes, abrasive chemicals and pesticides.

Drawing on our European heritage, we are proud to join our two concepts: the European style sleeping bag and extraordinary organic cotton fabric,” says Grembo Organic Founder Vanessa Landegger. “As a mom of two with a background in Public Health, I noticed there was a void in the United States for this type of safe, stylish product for children. I hope that by launching Grembo Organics, other parents will be able to experience the same comfort as I have in knowing their children will truly be sleeping safe-and-sound.”

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