About Me

Lauren Lee

renaissance gal

bodyworker

yoga teacher

I could give you a resume with all my “credentials,” the fancy spas I’ve worked at, and the famous clients I’ve given massages to in Los Angeles, but I’d rather share the story of how I began my massage career.

The way to my first massage course was simple.  I was deeply unsatisfied with my first job out of college as a production coordinator in Los Angeles, and when the show I was working on went into permanent hiatus (that’s fancy talk for being canceled),  I shook my fist at the sky and asked the universe to give me a “sign.”   (I had just finished reading “The Alchemist” and it seemed the right thing to do).  Do I keep looking for more soul killing jobs as a film production lackey?  Do I become yet another artist/waitress?  Do I marry one of the sons of my mother’s friends and become a Stepford wife?…looking down at the L.A. Weekly,  the first ad that caught my eye was an open house to the California Healing Arts College.  A week later I was enrolled, and a year later I found my way to the Shiatsu Massage School of California where my “real” training began under the guidance of my teachers Grand Master DoAnn Kaneko, Dr. Mikio Sankey and Dr. Vincent Medici.

My fascination with energetic bodywork started in weekend long seminars held at a remote cabin in the Santa Monica mountains with Dr. Medici.  As I learned to open up physically and mentally, chronic back pain, headaches and other ailments I had been suffering from started disappearing.  I realized that I was flexible, that my limbs could stretch and that something as simple as breathing deeply could produce incredible feelings of pleasure.  I played around with nutrition, fasting, acupuncture, meditation, and all the new-agey hocus pocus that abounds in Southern California.  Life was good, and so were the fresh figs from my local farmer’s market.

I got more involved with yoga.  I think its something that starts to go hand in hand with opening up physically. Sitting in lotus already came naturally to me, after all I am Korean ; ) now I just added the downward dogs and sun salutations.  I went on to complete a teacher’s training with Ana Forrest in Seattle and then an advanced teacher’s training in Berlin, and also studied Tai Chi and Chi Gong with Mantak Chia in upstate New York.  In addition,  I continued to further my massage skills with mentorships with Val Guin (Forearm Dance) and Glen Black (Bodytuning).

Eventually, opening up my body allowed me to open up my voice (another one of my passions is opera), which brought me to New York, where I met another influential teacher in my life, this time for singing not massage, and this has led me ultimately to Berlin, where I live now.  Blissfully.

This summer I completed my first year of studies in the Grinberg Method.  It’s a modality of bodywork that interests me because my goal is to help people find more space in their bodies and minds.  To get them to recognize old patterns that don’t serve them, and give them a safe arena in which to release old tensions and emotions that get trapped in the tissue.  Our bodies are amazing vehicles, and my hope is that everyone gets a chance to experience the ecstatic energy that runs through our nervous system, muscles, bones, joints, organs and spirit.