This Saturday, Sept 9 from 2 – 4pm we welcome you to our 13th birthday and Open House in our new space.
Just a few details now: potluck, conversation at 3pm, 791 E McMillan St, Cincinnati, OH 45206! Cake! Hummus…”our mortar!” Hot/cold nonalcohol drinks!
And we have sooo many paintings for sale, all donated to us over the years…please buy one for yourself or a friend and we can more easily pay our rent! First one is shown below.
Each day this week I’ll recapture a little history of VITALITY, and offer some possibilities for our future, and entice you with art, today’s by Eugene B. Avergon from his Gore Bay Series, valued at over $250 and gorgeous! Reply to this email to purchase/make an offer!
HISTORY:
As you probably know, VITALITY began as a seed when Micah Richey, Sue Saylors, and I met and shared a vision for affordable holistic opportunities at our Healing Touch Level 4 en route to getting certified as Healing Touch Certified Practitioners.
Healing Touch instructor Mary Duennes soon joined the conversation, as did about 20 people all very enthused to explore a donation-based center for Healing Touch, yoga, meditation, and journaling.
We offered Healing Touch for the first time on a weekly basis at Bellarmine Chapel/Xavier University. Many of us had ties to Bellarmine/XU, and I was taking a class to keep my religious secondary education certification going. Through that class, I met Austin Muller and then through Austin met Chris Place — two key people who not only drew crowds to the free/donation-based Healing Touch sessions but also helped renovate VITALITY’s first space in Norwood, about a ten minute walk from the heart of XU’s campus.
Mary Duennes soon led the first Healing Touch class in our new space in Spring 2011 — a powerful group of people that included two people who were volunteering as greeters at the Bellarmine/XU sessions and discovered that ANYONE can learn Healing Touch. Xavier students through grandparents were in that first class.
Eventually, we expanded our Healing Touch offerings with two food pantries: CAIN in Northside and Bond Hill Food Pantry. Just like the XU sessions, these Healing Touch sessions were all staffed by volunteers.
Thanks to the Peter Buswinka Healing Touch Work-Scholarship Fund, hundreds of people have taken a Healing Touch Level 1 class through VITALITY…including two people who have been certified through all five levels: Peg Conway and Stephanie Beck Borden.
As you may know, Mary Duennes passed the instructor-baton to Stephanie last Spring!
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE:
Could Healing Touch grow to be offered on every hospital and hospice wing?
Could Healing Touch be included in the curriculum in all nursing schools? in all medical schools?
Could there be a Healing Touch-trained ‘healer’ in every home, as Healing Touch-founder Janet Mention once hoped when she created Healing Touch, first, for nurses?
Could more people get a taste of Healing Touch at a short and sweet 2.5 hour ‘course’ and then share it with friends and family?
Let’s find out!
Our next Healing Touch public sessions offered by people who have completed 16 hours+ of training are Tuesday, Sept 19 at 6 & 7pm EDT in our beautiful new space.
To a wonderful first-teen year!
Brian Shircliff
