Shiva Reinhardt is:
» Owner/Director at Blue Lotus Day Spa & Yoga in Ruidoso, NM
» Owner/Director/Teacher at Mountain Meadow Massage School
» Licensed Massage Therapist since 2004, and a Registered Massage Instructor since 2008.
» Prana Flow Certified Yoga Teacher
» Practicing Massage Therapist since 1999
Shiva went to massage school on the island of Kauai in Hawaii where she learned the art of presence-based massage from renowned teacher and practitioner, Lee Joseph and is currently licensed in the state of New Mexico as both a Massage Therapist and Massage Instructor. She is the director of our 650 hour Massage Certification Program and our 500 hour Yoga Certification School. She brings her knowledge of anatomy and the physical body together with her understanding of consciousness and emotional healing to create an atmosphere of acceptance, community, and personal growth. Her schooling programs are fortified by academic rigor.
While on the island of Kauai she attended massage school for 1 year and then went on to work as an assistant the following year. During that year she worked closely with her teacher Lee Joseph, not only learning how to teach massage and structural integration, but also helping him to transcribe and edit his book on consciousness, awareness and bodywork. The third year she went on to teach Swedish Massage, Spa Treatments and Yoga at the Pacific Center for Awareness and Bodywork.
I am originally from Florida and I currently live with my husband Ron in Ruidoso, NM. Ron and I have been together since 2001. I love to practice yoga, go running, meditate and study awareness, healing, psychology, and bodywork! My greatest loves in these areas are the practice of Meditation, pranayama and asana and Ayurveda, a holistic system of health and healing from India. I truly value studying in-person with masters in the art of yoga, the primary practice of which is meditation. I attend week-long silent meditation retreats twice yearly to stay grounded in my practice.
Her view while teaching yoga classes is to honor the Tantric roots of Hatha Yoga and focus on awareness in the present moment, awareness of the space both physical and mental, and allowing everything to exist in freedom. This meditative awareness is the basis, along with the breath, of all her asana classes, whether they are relaxing restorative classes or vigorous vinyasa. Shiva creates a safe and sacred container in which her students can return to their true essence-nature.
Shiva’s Training consists of:
- 700 hours Massage Therapy and Connective Bodywork at Pacific Center for Awareness & Bodywork
- 600 hours Massage Teaching Apprenticeship at Pacific Center for Awareness & Bodywork
- 221 hours Forrest Yoga Teacher Training with Ana Forrest
- 300 hours Prana Vinyasa Yoga Teacher Training at Exhale Venice
- 50 hours Shirodhara Therapy at Sacred Stone
- 300 hours Ayurvedic Lifestyle Counselor Institute of Vedic Studies
- 250 hours Yoga Therapy at Integrative Yoga Therapy
- 76 hours Panchakarma Theory and Practicum at Ayurvedic Institute
- 18 hours Anatomy Trains at Sarasota School of Massage
- One 10-day silent meditation retreat, 2 5-day silent meditation retreats and 2 7-day silent meditation retreats
- 6 month Classical Tantra immersion program with Hareesh Christopher Wallis
Now that I have been practicing massage therapy for 20 years and teaching yoga for 18 I have started to become aware of what could be called the trends in the industry, or the arc of time and history. I can see where we’ve been and have a clue to where we’re headed. And I’m concerned about where we’re headed. I believe yoga has become a commodity, which I understand is a funny thing for a yoga business owner to say. It’s important to me that we stay true to the roots of yoga, which is that it was a spiritual practice. The physical part was just that your body needs to be relatively healthy before you can begin to focus on non-physical things. Here in the west we’ve elevated the physical practice to star-status and think if we add a few spiritual one-liners in there we can call it good. I think this is a mistake. The practice must be first internal, first focused on awareness. I struggle with this because students have come to expect a healthy and sometimes vigorous physical practice and I want to give them that. But I’m not entirely certain it’s really yoga any more at that point.
I feel a little better about where massage is going. We are relying more and more on peer reviewed research and getting away from a lot of the superstitious and magical thinking that has dominated the industry in the past. That’s a good thing. We are also incorporating a lot more neuroscience into massage training programs which is essential. The skin is our point of contact with the body (not the muscles, as you may think. Can’t touch those!) and the skin is an extension of the nervous system. In the embryonic development process the skin and the brain come from the same initial tissue. So in a sense as massage therapists it’s really more honest to say that we’re working with the nerves and the brain, rather than the muscles. This research, which is very solid, is slowly being translated in to how it can help us as therapists and it turns out it can help us a lot, and therefore help you! I’m very excited to be bringing this fresh perspective to my own bodywork and more importantly to the massage students I’m teaching.
