gentlewellness.com
Mary Martha McNeel has been a student and practitioner of the Movement Arts of Yoga, Tai Chi, and Qigong since 1990. I began the study of the self-care practices of Tai Chi and Qigong after a diagnosis of a near fatal condition. I began researching to find the best possible treatment and discovered that Yoga, and Tai Chi would be a beneficial part of a program for recovery. After recovery I began to study these healing arts with the objective of teaching and sharing with others. Insights through the years of study have supported my understanding of how these practices can be integrated into our own health care system, reducing costs and empowering patients to begin to think in terms of Wellness and feeling better.
Mary Martha is currently teaching groups of people on the South Side and West side through the Connections Outreach program at the UIW retirement Center. This program began in February of 2006. The first site was San Felipe de Jesus. The idea was to teach Wellness practices to under served communities empowering the community to begin practicing health based activities. The response was so enthusiastic, Mary Martha began to expand the program to Libraries and Learning Centers where English as a second language and computer skills are taught.
She is now teaching 7 Outreach classes per week. Mary Martha initiated 2 informal research studies of the effects of Tai Chi and Qigong on High Blood Pressure through the auspices of the IIQTC(Institute for Integral Tai Chi and Qigong) based in Santa Barbara, California. To date this program reaches roughly 150 people teaching Wellness based skills through the Movement practices of Tai Chi/Qigong and Yoga. Listed on Mary Martha’s web site gentlewellness.com are testimonials of participants who are benefiting from the program. Another key component of this project is to train teachers so that when the grant is finished there will be integrative therapeutics teachers in community centers and churches to foster the growing interest in wellness coaching. To date Mary Martha has trained 2 Tai Chi Easy community leaders.
Mary Martha’s teaching experience previous to the Outreach program includes two years teaching through the now defunct Center for Spirituality and the Arts, the Sol Center at University Presbyterian Church
and classes at the Landa Library.A list of certifications and the forms I am certified in.
Mary Martha leads tai chi class at the Omega Institute
gentlewellness.com
