Though now inspired to pursue more massage work, Valerie spent several years traveling through Europe and Asia, and crisscrossing the continental USA, while soul searching and looking for just the right place to continue her training. Eventually she began studying Psychology at the University of Delaware; but by early 1996, the siren song of the desert was calling her back. She left Delaware for the Desert Institute of the Healing Arts (DIHA) in Tucson, AZ.

   During a one-year, full-time program at DIHA, Valerie logged 1000 hours of training in an array of both basic classes and specialized massage applications. In addition to studying prenatal massage and Kundalini yoga, she enrolled in a clinical class with DIHA’s Addiction and Recovery Program, helping recovering addicts reconnect with their own bodies as they detoxified and got themselves “clean”. 

   Her most profound learning experience at DIHA grew out of her eight-week class in the Women in Transition program, which focused on the healing processes of women who had been traumatized by physical, emotional and sexual abuse. One of her clients in the course was a 25 year-old woman who had been the victim of a cult for the first ten years of her life and who, as a result, had developed multiple personality disorder (MPD). Massage is known to promote the reintegration of the fragmented personality by releasing blocks in the physical body that inhibit integration. As a first step, Valerie first helped her client experience “safe touch” through massage, then continued to work with her reintegration process well beyond the end of the class – for her entire year at DIHA, in fact.  Valerie completed the program at DIHA in April 1997. 

By the end of the year she was back in Delaware and working at The Massage Center (now located on Philadelphia Pike in Wilmington). Later, as that business changed hands, Valerie moved her practice to her home and returned to her psychology studies at the University of Delaware.

   While building her practice and completing her degree, she also managed a Brew Ha Ha store, one of a chain of local coffee houses. She spent the month of April 1998 studying Tui Na therapy at Guang An Men Hospital in Beijing, China, and in 2000 earned her B.A. in Psychology.

   Given her love of travel and expansive spirit, Valerie’s home – wherever that might be – seems to be as much a place to leave as it is as place to live. She spent the summer of 2001 at Omega, a holistic retreat center in Rhinebeck, NY, where she had what is arguably the best job in the whole world: baker in charge of chocolate chip cookies! Tearing herself from that sweet assignment at the end of the summer, she attended her first Landmark Forum that October in Philadelphia, PA. This was a life-changing event for Valerie that broke through personal and relationship barriers she didn’t even realize she had. By this time, she had saved enough money to indulge her love of travel, and in late 2001 set out to travel the world for a couple of years.

First she spent six months in Hawai’i, where she obtained her massage license and attended a course in somato-emotional release on the island of Kauai. Next she crossed the Pacific to tour southeast Asia and study Thai yoga in Chiang Mai.

In fall of 2002, Valerie took a position teaching massage at the Deep Muscle Therapy School in Hockessin, DE.  While she loved teaching, she couldn't bring hereself to stay in Delaware very long.  

    In April 2004 Valerie travelled to Yoga Plus, a center at Agios Pavlos Bay on the island of Crete (Greece). For five months she participated in Astanga Vinyasa yoga (a work-exchange program), studying with Radha Warrell, a student of Sri Pattabhi Jois, in return for cooking and cleaning work, and serving the needs of other guests. In between other classes in Panchakarma Yoga, Pranayama (breathwork), Tai Chi, and the Alexander Technique, she enjoyed the beaches and scenery of Crete’s remote southern coast.

    After returning to the US in September 2004, Valerie earned her TEFL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language) certificate in Manhattan in the spring of 2005. While attending a lucid dreaming workshop led by Stephen LaBerge at The Lucidity Institute on the Big Island of Hawai’i, she was offered a job teaching English in southeast Asia. But she decided to forego the teaching work in favor of massage. Briefly tempted to settle in Hawai’i, soon she found herself working instead at The Mindful Body, a yoga and massage center in San Francisco, CA. While there, she worked at Body Focus Health Center, the clinical facility of Dr. Harris Meyer, D.C., and also assisted with advanced courses at Landmark’s world headquarters.

    Her expanding participation in Landmark brought Valerie to a singular insight. “I realized that I needed to be in Delaware,” she explains. “This is where my roots are, and this is where I need to do my most important work.” She settled in Arden, DE in early 2006 – “empowered and ready to contribute to the community,” she emphasizes – and has developed a growing reputation as a massage therapist par excellence, thanks to the wide variety of experience she accumulated in her studies and travels.

    Valerie brings all her training and techniques to the table, allowing her observations and intuition to guide her in giving a client the most beneficial massage possible. She has discovered that her returning clients appreciate her “deep touch”, both physically and spiritually. She is adept at creating a safe space and spiritual environment for her clients to go deep within themselves, in order to tap their own inner guidance and healing power.

     In January 2010, Valerie completed a 200 hour yoga teacher training at Nosara Yoga Institute in Costa Rica.  (www.nosarayoga.com) The experience was life changing and has since motivated her to continue traveling, teaching, and practicing yoga and bodywork around the world.  She will be leaving Delaware again in November 2010.  Please email her to find out where in the world she is now. 

     Through her adventures, travels and studies, Valerie has developed a global awareness that infuse both her massage work and her other passions. She seeks to transform consciousness through her professional and personal work in the world. She is also a facilitator for the Pachamama Alliances' Awakening The Dreamer, Changing the Dream Symposium.  (www.awakeningthedreamer.org).  The mission of the symposium is to create an environmentally sustainable, spiritually fulfilling, socially just, human presence on the planet.