ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, March 6, 1997 TAG: 9703060069
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: B-8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY THE ROANOKE TIMES
Jade Daniels has balanced dreams and practicality, combining work and fun every day
The classroom skeleton wasn't holding its head up property, and Jade Daniels couldn't resist adjusting it.
She has spent a great deal of her adult life influencing how people treat their bodies, as a teacher of soft-motion martial arts such as tai chi and a practitioner of yoga and massage therapy.
"I don't challenge your religion," Daniels said. "I appreciate other cultures and their healing bases."
Daniels, who no one would suspect started her working life in a corporate retail office, says that each step of her career has seemed like "the natural next step."
Odd that her newest natural step is closer to the retail corporate office than the meditation group that meets each Thursday night at her Franklin Road Southwest office.
Daniels is opening a massage therapy school, Daniels Institute of Holistic Health Inc., with classes scheduled to begin in April. Among her more recent pursuits has been learning Mail Merge and Quick Books software on her computer.
Before the school was even mentioned publicly, she spent six months wading through and satisfying four manila folders' worth of state guidelines so the facility could be certified by the Department of Education. The state had to review and approve her advertising, course structure and even the school's library.
"You have to learn your business holistically just like you have to learn your body holistically," she said in defense of her company-owner activities.
Among the courses she will teach are Russian sports massage, mind-body relationships, and how to establish and operate a massage business.
Daniels has headed in this direction, consciously or not, since she began teaching tai chi and meditation in 1975.
She graduated from the Academy of Healing Arts in Palm Beach, Fla., and first opened a massage therapy business in her Grandin Court home, defying Roanoke laws against opposite-sex massage and getting hauled into court for it.
Her case was dismissed.
Two years ago, the law was changed, for which Daniels takes a lot of credit. Through a progression of businesses and her work for a while as fitness director at the Central YMCA, she brought massage from a back-street image into the mainstream.
As the school brochure points out, Daniels has had a big chunk of "firsts." She started the aerobics program at Virginia Western Community College, the tai chi program at Hollins College, the massage program at the Roanoke Athletic Club.
For several years in the 1980s, she operated The Grandin Center for Natural Wellness. For a while, she shared offices with two other massage therapists in a building in the medical offices area of Old Southwest before moving to her current office.
Life propels her onward, she claims.
About the time she was prepared to open the school, she had established work relationships with many of the instructors needed, and two additional ones appeared.
Carl Yeatts, a native Roanoker, returned to the area with his wife, Carol Costello-Yeatts. Daniels knew Yeatts as a child. Both Yeatts and Costello-Yeatts are licensed massage therapists, and Costello-Yeatts also is a certified infant massage instructor.
Both will teach in the school, as will licensed physical therapist Ann Kite and certified massage therapists Carrie Bauer, Angi Hallenbeck and Rae West.
Daniels once shared offices with West, and Hallenbeck worked out of Daniels' quarters until a few weeks ago when she opened her own studio.
The full curriculum in massage therapy, which qualifies a graduate to take the new state certification exam for massage therapists, requires 500 class hours. The first semester will begin April 1 and run through Aug. 28, with classes meeting three nights a week. For students who can't meet at night, an all-day Wednesday class has been proposed. Tuition is $4,300.
Even before the school opens, though, Daniels is being pushed ahead. She already has a full clientele of massage customers, whom she intends to keep and who might end up competing with the school for space.
"I'm already looking for places to expand," she said. "I'm also hoping that ahead of me is a big vacation."
LENGTH: Medium: 90 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: SANDRA BROWN KELLY THE ROANOKE TIMES. Jade Daniels andby CNBher silent partner soon will be teaching Russian sports massage,
mind-body relationships, and how to establish and operate a massage
business. She has been headed in the direction of opening such a
school since she began teaching tai chi and meditation in 1975.
color.