Barbados, a small island in the sun just 21 miles long, is the home for a quarter of a million inhabitants and part of the Lesser Antilles in the West Indies. Barbados is, Covid19, aside, the favoured destination for 2.4 million tourists annually. Therefore the demands in the service industry are high!
This beautiful, popular island is also home to the Caribbean School of Holistic Therapies, run by co-directors Barbara Daniel-Goddard and Ann Maxine Harry. Bajan-born Barbara spent over 40 years in the UK and worked mainly as a freelance analyst in varied public and private organisation before leaving to return home to Barbados as a prelude to retirement. Barbara did her holistic training at various colleges in the UK and on returning decided to open her therapeutic centre – her clientele varying from those seeking relaxation to the more medically challenging such as lupus, cancer, diabetes and more. Her centre supports all types of health issues and she works in conjunction with chiropracters and orthopedic practitioners. Barbara has a solid background in training and therefore when the opportunity arose to join forces with Maxine and open a massage school it was easy.
British-born Maxine spent many of her younger days living overseas in New Zealand. She has always had a desire for travelling and now has actually spent more years in Barbados, falling in love with the island when she discovered it during a fashion photo shoot. Maxine’s earlier career was inspired from her passion to create, she studied fashion and textile design, gaining her Bachelors degree in woven textiles, and her Masters degree in Fashion and textiles from the Royal College of Art in London. Her career pathway started out working in a development centre for the International Wool Secretariat for yarn and fabric design, working with the latest technology where she predicted trends 2 years in advance to the retail trade. She spent most of her time travelling through Europe attending major trade fairs and worked in Asia in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, and Korea. Whilst in the UK she offered lectures in textile design.
Maxine‘s love of nature, was always her inspiration, and she loved to translate the colours and textures into her designs. Her ‘keen eye’ for detail became one of her strong assests when it came down to selecting details. Soon she moved into marketing, working with product design and clothing. Her next career step was becoming a photo art director for a successful high street retail company, were she coordinated photo shoots and travelling to America and the Caribbean. After several visits to Barbados, she decided to settle and bring her son over and start a different life. Besides expanding on her family, she created a photographic production company organising international photo shoots.
Although she still has her hand in on the fashion industry, she opted more to go with the wellness industry. Whilst in the UK during 1992 she qualified in massage with MTI which in the following year became ITEC. Here Maxine explains how her career pathways entwined where her crew members on the photo shoots became her clientele for her massage business!
Whilst settling into the life of living in Barbados, besides having another two children, she juggled between photo shoots and building up a clientele were she set up a small solo business with a practice attached to a workout gym. Over time she has worked and trained in various hotel groups, as well as setting up her own practice. Maxine recognised the need to always continue upgrading and expanding on her skills set, her passion for creativity did not blind her from her realising the need to establish standards in the wellness industry here in Barbados. This is how Barbara and Maxine united.
Barbara and Maxine first met up after attending a meeting to set standards for therapists in Barbados and just clicked. By 2014 they had set up a school together. Creating recognised standards in Barbados was a first step. “For us, one of the things to look at is to have licensed therapists. Currently, because massage therapists are seen as way down the pecking order, they can’t sign an insurance form. We need to be able to change and to do that we would need to be able to get to be seen as that professional level where we would have licences” says Barbara. Many of the massage students in Barbados are looking for training to work in the local hotel spas or to upgrade basic training.
Barbara and Maxine encourage their students (who come from all over the Caribbean) to practise on their private clients, knowing that they are going to get good, honest feedback from people whom are accustom to professional treatments.
The school was thriving with training running not just in Barbados but in other areas of the Caribbean until lockdown hit. Barbados was in lockdown from March to May 2020 with businesses opening up again from July 2020 – just that little too late to avoid cancelling their first planned 10-day international retreat. Barbados was back in lockdown at the end of January 2021 but is now open for business again, although there is little travel between the two thousand islands of the Caribbean. Like many schools, the Caribbean School has been focusing on virtual training for the theory, ready to start practical skills in person. The retreat is now back on the schedule for later in 2022 welcoming international visitors.
Beyond creating professionally competent therapists Barbara and Maxine are determined to sow the seeds of ambition in their students – to look at themselves as independent therapists with niche interests and skills, rather than as spa employees. Pre-Covid, they were bringing North American and European specialists to run advanced workshops aimed not just at massage therapists, but physios and nurses in areas such as lymph drainage, shiatsu, sports rehab, oncology and Dr. Vodder lymph drainage. These programmes are likely to start again during 2022.
Their ethos is very much the “hands on Touch, It is important for them to be there with their students in giving and receiving. They offer experiential learning, always advising and giving examples of their own experiences from which the students are able to learn. With the many years’ experience and knowledge along with the skill sets they offer,they ensure that students are confident in the standards they reach as well in their future professional career pathway.
Say Barbara and Maxine “When we started out, we decided that our school would be the most diverse massage school in the Caribean and we offer beginners to advanced modalities from therapeutic to medical. Our vision is to provide the people of the Caribbean and the wider diaspora the opportunities to become international professional therapists without having to leave the Caribbean for the their training – COVID has temporarily interferred with this process and we are working towards our achievement by 2023.”