The Journey: Pioneering Holistic Wellness in the Spa Industry

It started with curiosity. Like many teenage girls in the UK, I was fascinated with horses. I desperately wanted to be around them—ride them, muck out their stalls, anything to be in their presence.

My father had been involved in working with horses, and I think I absorbed his passion. It was here that my education into the world of health and natural therapies truly began. I learned how to feed horses for performance and daily maintenance, understanding why we gave them specific foods and what purpose these foods served—for their coat, digestion, joints. I discovered how to prepare them for jumping and showing, and how to treat them afterward with hydrotherapy protocols, bandaging, scraping, and more.

These experiences made me wonder: why didn’t we show this same level of care for our own bodies? While we generally ate a healthy diet where vegetables were always a must, specific nutrients like fiber, minerals, and vitamins were rarely mentioned although we did receive our regular dose of Cod Liver Oil.

During these formative years, I also watched my father, who had suffered a traumatic injury, gain weight, develop heart disease, and live a compromised life. This observation would profoundly influence my future path.

The First Steps into Wellness

A decade later, I undertook my first formal training in the health and beauty world through a certification program. Here, I was introduced to the lymphatic system’s role in physiology, red light and UV therapy, the principles of hydrotherapy, and face and body treatments. BUT it was specifically the lecture on the lymphatic system that lit a flame within me—I needed to know more.

Upon graduation, I set out to seek deeper knowledge, but I couldn’t find anyone teaching Manual Lymphatic Drainage (MLD). I did, however, discover Eve Taylor, who taught Aromatherapy and discussed the lymphatic system within this program. I was all in. Eve’s teachings revealed the skin’s ability to tell a story and showed how touch combined with essence could release emotional trauma and unite body and mind healing. It was here I fully came to understand the principle that “We are what we eat, what we inherit, and what we think about.” This became my foundational study.

Yet questions remained—how could Eve interpret what the body was telling her? This burning question led me further into the search for MLD training and into the world of reflex therapists, foot reflexology, and connective tissue work. It wasn’t until the early 80s that MLD training appeared on my horizon via a school in France. 2 years later, I discovered this wasn’t the authentic MLD technique, and for authenticity, I needed to look to the Vodder School in Austria.

Bringing Authentic Techniques to America

The Vodder School was established in 1976 by Hildegard and Gunther Wittlinger in conjunction with Emil and Astrid Vodder, becoming the official organization charged with spreading these teachings and techniques globally.

Since I couldn’t travel to Austria immediately after my move to the USA, I brought Hildegard to teach in Florida. She returned annually, and I progressed through the program until eventually traveling to Austria to certify in 1990—at a time when no certification program existed in the US.

After certification, I was drawn into treating lymphedema, which provided an entirely new level of learning and some extremely gratifying interactions with clients. By 1995, I decided I wanted to teach MLD and practice with a broader concept focused on its potential as a preventative holistic protocol and moving away from treating lymphedema. This led me to introduce MLD to the American spa industry.

I developed what was initially called Advanced Spa Body, later renamed Clinical Wellness, teaching the broad applications of MLD and its remarkable effects. My practice became focused on treating a wide variety of conditions, some acute like post plastic surgery, shoulder injury etc and focus on treating other chronic conditions. After 25 years of teaching with the Vodder School, I parted ways in 2020 amid many changes and the pandemic. I continue to teach the original Vodder technique for health and beauty under the ASTECC umbrella.

The Holistic Approach Emerges

Throughout these years, I continued studying other modalities: craniosacral therapy, neuromuscular techniques, trigger point therapy, thalassotherapy, nutrition, and biochemical elements. My approach was inspired by something I had read in the writings of Alexis Carrel—he said that specialists who focus on only one aspect of the body without understanding how it works as part of the whole are of no use to their patients. The body’s interconnectedness was like a jigsaw puzzle I was determined to solve.

In 1996, my daughter Leah joined me after completing her studies in Health and Beauty Therapies in the UK, certified under CIDESCO and the International Federation of Aromatherapists. She also became certified as a CDT/MLD practitioner through the Vodder School. Together, we studied Elizabeth Dicke’s Connective Tissue Manipulation under the guidance of German physical therapists.

Having observed the effects of these techniques not just in rehabilitation but on the skin and psyche, I realized we had discovered the principles upon which aromatherapy modality was based. As a result, we developed the Natural Face Lifting protocol and body contouring methods based on these techniques. It was a perfect synergy—we addressed both beauty and health simultaneously. We developed truly therapeutic protocols for spa treatments based on the effects we had witnessed, while Leah also pursued extensive yoga certification.

The Birth of ASTECC

That same year—1996—we launched ASTECC, which we called a “connect the dots” program. ASTECC’s curriculum is simply based on the “life of the cell,” its dependence on its environment, the efficient delivery of digested nutrients, and the effective removal of waste to eliminate stagnation. We recognize the power within each human to heal, the individual aspects of a person’s constitution and their biochemical needs, the power of the psyche, and the feedback loop between our gut and mind. We joined the dots to provoke the flow of what we call “the River of Life.”

A Legacy of Innovation and Integrity

Now with more than 45 years in the industry, I am proud to be part of the original group that brought spa wellness back to the US in the early 90s. After working in the field for almost 20 years, my transition into education and the formation of ASTECC in 1996 marked a new chapter in my journey.

My teachers have since become mentors and trained others, creating a legacy committed to the highest integrity, lasting results, and science-based therapies. What’s remarkable is that while our curriculum has become more refined over time, the core principles haven’t changed—and amazingly, as new scientific discoveries emerge, they only confirm the efficacy of these therapies.

The journey continues, as does the River of Life, flowing through everything we do at ASTECC.