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Our Founder - Vimala's Blog

The book went on to sell on Bantam’s best-seller list for parenting books, and was brought out in new editions in 1982, 1989, and 2000. My children’s pediatrician happened to be the President of the American Academy of Pediatrics, Chief of General Pediatrics, University of Colorado School of Medicine and the Children’s Hospital in Denver. He wrote a wonderful Preface to Infant Massage, a Handbook for Loving Parents.

I continued to teach my infant massage classes, bringing both of my children with me. They were my “models.” By this time, my first baby was a toddler and his sister was a three month old. Both children were a great help to me; even my toddler sat quietly as I taught the class, and was an available model when I spoke about bringing infant massage into the lives of older children.

I received a call from a childbirth educator who wanted me to teach her how to teach parents infant massage. I asked her to wait a month or so (I had not even thought of the possibility!). So I spent the next several weeks writing an Instructor Manual, putting everything I knew about teaching a five-week course into it. I also included a section with all the research and a book list in it, and a section with illustrations so that the potential instructor could lay the book out to see the strokes.

From that point on, Infant Massage grew and grew. I taught a large group of Infant Massage Instructors and several of them volunteered to bring it into being as a legitimate organization; it is now an international movement with nonprofit status in the U.S. and chapters of instructors in more than 40 countries worldwide. I am now semi-retired, and have a baby granddaughter to massage. I am so happy, so proud, and looking forward to exploring all of its facets here, as time goes by.

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