“Heather’s courses begin with being brought into circle, owning your own stuff!!” Trish
As a Board Certified Nurse Midwife and licensed Massage and Bodyworker, I was searching for more. I had studied with Rosita Arvigo, the creator of abdominal massage, and Jennifer Mercier, the creator of Mercier Therapy. Both created a skill set that I had never experienced previously. What was missing was the work of Heather Bruce who has truly brought together the knowledge of Eastern meets Western Medicine along with the crucial commitment to self-care. Heather does offer courses that over-deliver. Her generous materials are ever-evolving along with her previous teachers being acknowledged throughout as she presents.
Working with Heather has been both inspirational and informative. She is a holistic practitioner, previously working as an acupuncture consultant, naturopathic physician, flower essence practitioner, natural birth advocate, author, and teacher.
She has been teaching for well over 40 years, has created many courses, written many books, and has created multiple resources for her students.
As a midwife with a holistic practice, I have learned techniques that enhance the life of the pregnant woman and her family along with how to best support the “fertility challenges” From there, we are taught what is most crucial with Heather having already sent us class notes to download. Thus making it easier to manage materials. And every midwife and doula should have a copy of her book (which I refer to as her handbook) WHAT DADS CAN DO! Having participated in Heather’s classes, I highly recommend attending one of them. I have loved her on-line classes and only wished I could have been in NZ or Australia live when she is teaching… TRISH – USA 2023
Your classes are helping me find this change viscerally in my own body; I grab a cup of tea, settle on the couch, show up as just myself and immerse in the flowing, non linear feminine storytelling/story sharing way of learning, experiencing, and understanding. The self-study materials you are giving me to review before classes is also very helpful and intriguing. Megan
Dear Heather, when I began studying with you two months ago, I had no idea how overwhelmingly right it would be that I am immersing into this information. I am so grateful to be able to learn from your 40+ years of accumulated life experience, multi lineage training, and clinical experience. I am grateful to your teachers, and their teachers too; I bow with respect. When you warned me that ‘I’d be learning the things to do before I do what I already know’ – I didn’t understand at first, but now I SO get it!! What I am learning is filling in so many holes in my personal healing journey as well as holes in my other professional trainings in women’s well being massage. I recommend your work to all the womb centric abdominal massage therapists I know. Doulas, pregnancy and postpartum workers, Maya abdominal massage therapists… You carry a very important bundle of women’s healing information that I’ve simply not been able to find anywhere else in the western massage world.
Your teachings are giving me the ability to shift out of a mode of heroic self-healing done when things go wrong, and climb into gentle self-support done regularly. This is a conceptual shift as much as a practical one. I am working with myself much more now that I am able to come at it from a deeply feminine way of ‘what would feel good and true right now for the next 15 minutes?’. 🙂 As the world changes from the pandemic, and people’s bodies are struggling to keep up vitality and immunity, I am finding these gentling ways are so key to centering…. and also being able to support clients where they are at with the healing potential they have created for themselves currently. (Everyone is in a different place with that right now.) What a gift. Thank you so much, from my heart. I look forward to learning more. In gratitude for all you’ve done and share, Megan, USA
I first met Heather on an Arvigo training course in 2024. I quickly realized that she was full of knowledge and started asking her questions about my own health. Over the following months I had a number of sessions with her and my energy started to increase and my pain got less and less so I thought “I could learn a lot from this woman to help my own clients”. I took Heather’s Gentling Way accelerator training, and eventually the intensive practical at her home, and began to incorporate her discoveries into my massage sessions, immediately seeing very positive results, leading me to make the Gentling Way a cornerstone of my practice. – Sonia, Chch, NZ
Heather is all about what our grandmothers would have done. I can feel mine smiling down on me with all I’ve learned. Thea
I began studying with Heather in 2020. My massage practice was on hold due to the pandemic, and I was looking for someone to help synthesize the different healing modalities in which I was trained. Heather helped me understand the necessary ingredients for health (sunshine, water, nutrition), how to address imbalances in the body (like the regular use of magnesium and iodine, as well as high-quality vitamin /mineral supplements), and the best healing techniques to facilitate change (moxa, cupping, gua sha, pulling out the cold, movement of Qi). As I started to employ her techniques (first on myself and my family, and then with clients), I was surprised by how quickly they generated noticeable results. I recently saw two female clients who received three consecutive days of treatments during a weekend intensive. The change created by applying Heather’s program was remarkable.
Both saw significant improvement with constipation, mild uterine prolapse, anxiety, hand/forearm pain, swollen ankles/spider veins, as well as insomnia. And they have reported continued improvement by doing self-care practices on their own. Modern healthcare is expensive, complicated, and often ineffective. Heather’s approach is simple and effective – not necessarily easy. It does require personal change. But so does anything that is actually worthwhile. I highly recommend Heather for any practitioner wanting to deepen their understanding of what actually works for transformative healing. Thea – USA
I love how Heather brings in Body, Mind, and Spirit as none of these ever were nor can they be separated from the whole healing package. Elisabeth
I have found the Gentling Way the fastest, safest way to help clients return to their balanced, natural well state of being and results tend to be more permanent, especially with client compliance to lifestyle upgrade suggestions and continued self care on the client’s part. Studying with Heather has greatly added to my own life, personally and professionally. It’s taken me in deep to the more traditional probably pre-Maoist ‘real’ Chinese Traditional Medicine, not what is conveniently packaged and standardized and that has given me a different reference point for working with my clients, myself and my family.
There is no denying Shen to Shen (life force to life force). I’m also constantly checking myself and my own healing progress as now I know exactly what my body is telling me, though I understood much of the meaning intuitively, now I have a map on what to do and how to make things better.
Heather also puts the sexy and juicy back into being female and woman, which got stripped away by the patriarchy. Taking classes or getting treatments with Heather is like surround sound feminine (which traditionally women did do most of the community and family healing roles around the world). Heather is putting being female and doing things the female way back in style. Elisabeth, Australia/USA – 2017
I first heard of Heather while I was studying Chinese medicine in Brisbane. I followed her online and resonated with what she had to say. Years later, when we both had become Arvigo practitioners and teachers we met in person. I like to joke that we bounded over sperm. I had become increasingly frustrated with the prevailing narrative around women’s health, fertility and birth while I was working in Singapore. Since I had nobody there to discuss this with we started to chat online. I always resonated with the fact that we really need to return to the simple healing tools that grandmothers and wise women held, which is what Heather’s work is about.
Abdominal work really resonated with me as I had a profound experience with a Maya healer while working at a yoga retreat in Mexico. Years later, after I found out I had fibroids, I remembered this work. Realizing that the belly is a microcosm, like the foot in Chinese medicine, I became fascinated with belly work. Since the belly is our core, our power source, our movement and life force originate from this focal point, it makes sense to start there to attend to our health concerns. I am passionate about empowering my clients with tools to help themselves.
Heather’s Gentling Way adds to these tools. Sometimes the body just needs a little nudge It is an essential addition to what I do to empower people to realize they really do have the ability to heal themselves. .
IOWA 2023 – Lisa Kelly, Trish de Tura and Thea Hornbacher showed up for an intensive retreat
Beginnings and endings
