I learned to associate caring touch with love and healing while living with my  custodial grandparents in Kentucky during the first few years of my life. Growing up Kansas and as a young adult in Nebraska and Texas, I spent time in what were then called “Old Folks Homes” with various singing and visitation groups; and I have always felt comfortable with the elderly.
While working toward my MFA degree at the University of California at Davis, I also took yoga, bodywork and meditation classes while teaching relaxation and massage workshops through the Experimental College. In 1978, I received certification as a massage therapist while serving as a teaching assistant for Judith McKinnon in the first class of her school, which later became the McKinnon Institute of Massage. While continuing to study various forms of bodywork, I created and produced a workshop series, “Bodywork Alternatives,” which allowed people to spend an evening with the originators or master teachers of modalities gaining popularity at that time such as Michael Reed Gach’s Acupressure Massage, Arthur Pauls' Ortho-Bionomy, Feldenkrais, Rosen, and Trager methods, "Touch for Health" and others. I also began taking workshops from Stephen Levine and Intuition studies with Helen Palmer.
In 1980, I was introduced to a residential retreat known as “The Enlightenment Intensive” and this unique form of contemplative inquiry resonated deeply with me. I trained with Lawrence Noyes to begin leading Enlightenment Intensives and eventually helped him train others to give them while continuing to deepen my own practice in this realm. What I experienced transformed my life and the way I relate to others in deep, profound and lasting ways; and those experiences became the ground on which COMPASSIONATE TOUCH for Those in Later Life Stages™ was built.
After completing a 540-hour Awakening to Life and Death Certification through the Rosebridge Graduate School of Integrative Psychology, I founded COMPASSIONATE TOUCH for Those in Later Life Stages™ and began implementing the Program in a number of care facilities in the Bay Area. I was part of the Hospice Care Team for Kaiser Permanente Walnut Creek-Martinez for five years, providing COMPASSIONATE TOUCH for Those in Later Life Stages™ sessions to patients and in-service training for staff and volunteers. I eventually trained three other massage therapists who joined me in providing touch services for up to 40 hospice program participants per week.
I have been privileged to spend hundreds of hours relating to care facility residents and hospice patients in the context of massage and touch sessions and to travel across the nation (and abroad) teaching workshops as well as speaking at Conferences about the power of touch in communicating with and caring for those in later life stages.
In July of 2002, I appointed a Professional Level Practitioner, Ann Catlin, as Director of my Program in order to give priority to maintaining my health after treatment for ovarian cancer, to write my next book and to help care for my mother in the last few years of her life. Ann has now chosen to go forward in her own way using the name Compassionate Touch®.
My practice and teaching, under a new name,
From the Heart Through the Hands, will continue to be centered on quality of life enhancement for the elderly, the ill and the dying, as I deepen and simplify the modalities I developed as the Founding Director of COMPASSIONATE TOUCH for Those in Later Life Stages™. I will also be offering workshops and retreats for both couples and individuals that support conscious and compassionate living and dying.
Since I first met her in the early 80’s, Dawn has had a true, divine inspiration that has motivated her to reach people at a spiritual level through touch. In the 90’s, Dawn co-led several training groups
with me and I have always appreciated her simple realness and compassion when working with people. Her work with the elderly and the dying comes from a place of service and it is intuitively true and so obviously healing. Dawn’s books are an extension of her experience and wisdom and many people are reached by her words and her art.
Lawrence Noyes, author: The Enlightenment Intensive...
Seminar Leader, US, Canada and Europe
Dawn's work has sparked the imagination and expanded the capacity for sincere connection with those of us who have been trained by her. She has provided a unique path for us to be of greater service in our professional and personal lives. I am deeply appreciative of Dawn’s continued support and advocacy over the years for each of us, as students and as individuals . . . the basic concepts of COMPASSIONATE TOUCH for Those in Later Life Stages™ permeate the touch that I give, and what I teach. Over time, these concepts have become part of how I communicate with everyone, and the depth of their influence is seen with each passing year.
Leah Anderson, LMT, Groton, Massachusetts
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