Former Teacher Has Healing Touch
The warm-up pants I’m wearing rustle like wadded newspaper in the silence of Janice Puente’s garage-turned-meditation center.
A fire glows through the window of the wood stove in one corner. A 50-something man in worn bluejeans slips off his shoes and socks by the door. A tiny gray ponytail clings to his neck.
“Well, let’s start,” Janice says. Her voice is soft and breathy, and her chestnut hair shines like a model’s all the way to her waist. “Just stand comfortably with your arms at your sides.”
When Janice taught school in Kellogg, she must have enraptured the little boys. She quit the public schools after 12 years, feeling like a round peg in a square system. But teaching still pulled her.
She tried business and secretarial work, unaware something was missing from her life. Then she watched a Bill Moyers television special about integrative medicine, which merges old world healing techniques with Western science.
She saw a woman kneel next to a man on the floor and place her hands on his head.
“I almost cried,” Janice says. “I wanted to transcend the barriers we put up between each other, do something in healing.”
A flier for a Healing Touch class arrived in her mailbox the next day. Janice registered, and learned how to use her hands to balance a body’s energy. With several classes behind her, she opened a Healing Touch practice in Silverton. Business was slow.
Janice added cranialsacral therapy to her services after six classes at Shoshone Medical Center. It’s another therapy that uses hands to balance energy.
She knew she’d found her calling, but worried about her credibility. A physical therapist friend advised her to train in the Feldenkrais method - a four-year commitment.
Feldenkrais teaches people to understand how they move so they can function better. It’s a subtle, slow process that’s popular with athletes and performers.
Janice finishes her training in Berkeley, Calif., this summer. She took over the Tree of Life Healing Arts Center in Coeur d’Alene a year ago. Business is slow.
The night I try Feldenkrais, Janice directs Grover Woessner and me to the center of the room and leads us through a series of slow movements for an hour.
We turn our heads while we’re standing. We lay on the floor and try to feel where each part of us ends.
We bend our knees and tilt them gently left to right, feeling the point where our spines twist.
A lodgepole pine whacked Grover across his shoulders years ago.
“Ripped me up pretty good,” he says.
He’s light on his feet now and moves effortlessly. Staying in shape helps. Feldenkrais moves his muscles back where they belong, he says.
“It always makes the difference in how my muscle structure feels,” he says.
I’m limp when it’s over. Janice’s soft voice and the slow pace have relaxed me. But I’m thinking new thoughts. Do I favor my right side? Am I slouching?
Awareness is what it’s all about, Janice says, still the teacher.
“There’s only one thing in life I’m really sure about,” she says. “That’s that I’m doing the right thing.”
The Tree of Life Center, 1125 N. Third St., Coeur d’Alene, will have an open house Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Call 664-6996 for details.
Up with age
Blue Cross of Idaho makes it easy to nominate your inspiring elder for an Ageless Hero award. Do it online at www.bcidaho.com or call 888-994-2843.
Awards go to active people over 65 for vigor and vitality, community involvement, beating the odds, continuing education, inspiring younger people or promoting healthy aging at work.
Who’s the Panhandle’s heartiest senior citizen? Pinpoint a powerhouse for Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200, Coeur d’Alene, ID, 83814; fax to 765-7149; call 765-7128; or e-mail to cynthiat@spokesman.com.