Becky Aud-Jennison

Gentle, soft-spoken David Cain wears many hats — artist, businessman, practitioner of the healing arts — and the blossoming of his career closely parallels his personal development. Cain graduated in 1981 from Illinois State University with a bachelor’s degree in music composition and performance. In 1983 he received a master’s degree in communication, with a […]

Eva Muller says she learned how to be a therapist as a child, sitting on her mother’s knee and listening as her mother related memories of the Holocaust, including being separated from her husband and forced to give birth to her son amid the horrors of the Bergen-Belsen death camp. As her mother’s stories of […]

During her years in practice as a dietitian, Neala Ausmus says, she met many clients who could have taught the mechanics of weight loss better than she. “As I worked with clients,” she recalls, “I realized that they frequently knew about calories, portion sizes, food groups, and exercise.” After seeing this over and over, Ausmus […]

In a home on the west side of Springfield, I recently met with a group of five local reiki practitioners. Their walks of life vary, but one thing they have in common is a passion about how the practice of reiki has changed their lives and how it can positively affect others. Reiki (pronounced “ray-key”) is […]

My first experience with Jim Sullivan was light on words and heavy on physical touch. I had heard about Sullivan’s skill with bodywork and went for a massage — a satisfying experience in which he practiced a variety of techniques. But it was after hearing bits of his personal history that my real interest was […]

Donna Griffiths’ life is marked by many firsts: She’s the first in her family to go to college, Springfield’s first female union carpenter, and the area’s first resident Rolfing practitioner. Griffith’s interest in Rolfing — a process to improve posture and body structure — dates back to 1976, when Griffith met a 67-year-old woman who […]

Come in. Shut door. Sit down. Close mouth. Barely out of her teens, Joyce Surbeck-Harris found her life forever altered by those words. As a child, Surbeck-Harris was aware and proud of her Eastern Cherokee and Cree heritage but was starving for more cultural knowledge. Her search led her to the most influential teacher of […]