Henry Ford once declared, “History is bunk.” He said it to a Chicago Tribune reporter in 1916; bold words from a man who would go on to build a museum dedicated to preserving exactly that. What he clarified, though, was this: the only history that truly matters is what we create today.
I’ve been turning that statement over in my mind for a long time.
Because I believe history does matter. History creates legacy. And legacy is both something we inherit and something we build upon — a living thing, not a relic.
I say this as someone now in the latter season of a life’s work that spans nearly five decades. The passion hasn’t dimmed. If anything, the awe has deepened. The wondrous complexity of the human body, the gifts nature continues to yield, the results we accomplish when we combine her healing elements with the intelligence of touch. I still find myself asking: how much more can we do?
This is a vocation. A commitment. A love.
The Legacy I Inherited
Let’s begin with Dr. Emil Vodder and Manual Lymphatic Drainage.
When Vodder developed MLD, he was working alongside his wife Astrid, a Naturopath, in a small practice. What grew from those early treatments became something extraordinary, a modality now employed in medical clinics, hospitals, and holistic practices across the world. A treatment that genuinely bridges the medical and the holistic. That kind of reach doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because people believed, sacrificed, and carried the torch forward.
That responsibility fell to Gunther and Hildegard Wittlinger, who made their own considerable sacrifices to preserve and evolve Vodder’s work. Their dedication led to MLD being classified as a registered physical therapy for lymphedema. Today their clinic in Austria treats patients from around the world.
It was Hildegard who shared with me the other dimension of MLD. The one concerned not just with lymphedema, but with general health and wellbeing. The documented positive effects across more than 60 pathologies. The treatment that addressed our modern lifestyle disorders: troubled skin, eczema, acne, blood pressure, chronic conditions. A treatment that washes the internal body, calms the nervous system, and supports healthy cell regeneration.
Here was where Health and Beauty truly came together. I was captivated.
Where My Journey Began
It started in 1978, in a classroom.
I was in my initial training as a Health and Beauty Therapist when a lecturer introduced the theory of the lymphatic system. I remember the moment precisely; it was as if everything stopped. I put down my pen and listened with absolute attention. When the lecture ended, I looked around expecting my classmates to be equally transformed. They were still taking notes, completely unfazed.
I thought I had stumbled on the secret of life.
I searched for MLD training immediately and couldn’t find it. What I found instead was Aromatherapy (a modality closely linked with the lymphatic system) under the extraordinary tutelage of Eve Taylor (now a Dame). That began a parallel pathway, one Eve described beautifully as the River of Life. She instilled in me a curiosity that has never left: the journey of exploration through the stories the skin can tell, the realization that the body holds entire universes within it — joy and suffering, health and sickness, essence.
From there came Reflexology, Connective Tissue work, and a growing understanding of how touch on the skin’s reflex pathways reaches the very core of a person.
It wasn’t until 1985 that I finally located MLD training in Austria, of all places. But that was the year I was emigrating to the United States, and relicensing here made the trip impossible. So I did the next best thing: in 1987, I brought the training here. I hosted Hildegard Wittlinger for the first of what would become many, many workshops over the years. Even long after I had certified as a teacher myself, I continued to invite her, because I wanted my students to sit with someone who had worked directly with Dr. Vodder, someone who could tell his story firsthand.
Legacy isn’t just technique. It’s transmission.
What Aromatherapy Taught Me That Changed Everything
From my first post-graduate training in Aromatherapy, through the writings of Marguerite Maury, came a framework that has guided everything since:
We are what we inherit. What we eat. What we think about.
Essential oils opened me to something beyond the tangible, to the role of spirit, to the rituals I had loved as a child in sacred ceremonies where frankincense and myrrh filled the air with something both inspiring and comforting. That thread led me to Bernard Jensen’s workshops and his foundational work The Chemistry of Man, which illuminated how our very identity is woven into the soil upon which we walk, how food nourishes not just the body, but the mind and soul.
And if food influences our thoughts, then those two forces together (what we eat and what we think) have a profound impact on our cells, often overriding much of what we inherit. This is the science that Bruce Lipton explored so eloquently in epigenetics, and that Elizabeth Blackburn has examined so rigorously in her research.
The journey continued through Hydrotherapy, through the Nature Doctors and their practices that became the foundation of traditional European Spa medicine, prescribed by physicians, steeped in the intelligence of moving our internal rivers. Thalassotherapy added yet another dimension, drawing on the nutrient-dense healing power of the sea.
The Nature Doctors and natural healing are the origin of our wellness industry. And of wholesome beauty.
What This All Means
Marguerite Maury understood Aromatherapy not as a treatment, but as a commitment to lifestyle. She defined success simply: purpose, passion, and connection.
Fifty years in, I believe she was right.
The ASTECC program was built on this foundation. Everything we teach, every modality, every principle, culminates in a Personal Lifestyle Profile: a way of seeing each individual whole, on a physical and emotional level, and facilitating the body’s extraordinary ability to heal itself.
So is history bunk?
Henry Ford built a legacy. An industry. A museum. He created today, and that today became tomorrow’s inheritance.
What we do in our practices, in our classrooms, in our treatments — it has relevance beyond this moment. The practitioners who came before us sacrificed, believed, and built something worth carrying forward.
This is an invitation to join us. To become part of that thread.
In the hands of practitioners you can trust.
Look for ASTECC-certified practitioners in:
- Dr. Vodder’s Manual Lymphatic Drainage, Face and Body
- Connective Tissue — The Original Natural Facial Lift (since 1996)
- Aroma Reflex Therapy — A transformational holistic modality for face and body
Explore our directory of certified practitioners here:
Explore our upcoming class schedule here.
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