Kalamazoo massage school changes hands as founder steps aside after three decades - MLive.com

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KALAMAZOO, MI —After 36 years of teaching massage, Su Bibik, founder of the Institute for Massage Education/Kalamazoo Center for the Healing Arts, is stepping away from the table.

Bibik, 73, who founded the school with her late husband Jim Herweg, recently made the decision to retire, and in the process, made a calculated call to sell the school to 2001 graduate Valerie Erlandson and Erlandson’s sister-in-law, Shawn Compau Scalpone.

In lieu of going through a broker, Bibik made the decision to reach out via the school’s website and alumni newsletter and created an application process for those who may be interested in taking over.

Erlandson, who teaches fundamentals of therapeutic massage at the school, said she had been intrigued by the call for new ownership and had been questioning if it was something she wanted to pursue. When Scalpone reached out to her about a potential partnership, she knew it was meant to be.

“As a graduate, it’s been awesome being back in the classroom,” said Erlandson, who also owns and operates Point 2 Studio in Plainwell and has been a practicing massage therapist for over two decades. “I love working with the new massage therapists. Bringing them from that level of scared and excited and seeing them as they start to transform and become more proficient and get more comfortable and seeing those nerves kind of just go away. It’s been really fun getting to be a part of that.”

For Bibik, she saw a need in transition and finding the right owners.

“I feel like the school and the center have been a real benefit to the community over the years and I was looking for someone who wanted to pick that up and carry it,” she said. “Lighting the next torch and bringing the next generation forward was just really important to me.”

As she readied to retire and many other schools and practices closed down during the pandemic, Bibik said she knew that wasn’t an option for her or the institute. She realized that people were going to need massage therapy more than ever when the pandemic ended and throughout its waning months.

“For me, it was a piece of understanding that what we do as massage therapists is not first responder work, but the trauma that was going to be inflicted and that people were going to come away with – everything from anxiety, depression, complex PTSD, all of that from the pandemic — we were going to need more massage therapists when this was done.

“The pandemic was a real opportunity for me to assess whether we were going to close the school and call it quits and I was really clear that I felt closing the school wasn’t a good idea. Inside I knew, I am one of those people that can carry us through this and get us to a place where I can pass it along. In my opinion, everybody needs more massage, the world needs more helping, healing, healthy touch and Kalamazoo doesn’t have any other resource for that except what’s here.”

Bibik and Herweg first began teaching and offering massage out of the Crystal Circle Center in 1986.

“Yes, it was the ‘80s,” Bibik said, referencing the school’s original name.

Five years after founding the center, they moved into a larger facility and changed the name to the Kalamazoo Center for the Healing Arts, which has stuck. In 1993, the school became state certified, and it has been since, graduating more than 750 students over the past three decades.

The center, now located at 5320 Holiday Terrace, southwest of the Stadium Drive/U.S. 131 interchange in Oshtemo Township, enrolls class sizes of between six and 12 students four times per year and boasts a 94% employment placement rate for students upon graduation.

The program, which meets the state requirements of 625 teaching and practice hours, up from 120 hours when Bibik started teaching, takes 12-14 months to complete, she said.

Bibik, who continues to teach courses in ethics, introduction to business practices and business practices application through the transition, said the business courses are among the offerings that allow the institute to stand out from what other schools offer and require of graduates.

“A lot of our graduates are going to be independent contractors and not employees and we want them to have a solid foundation, so they understand the finances of it and know how to build a business plan,” she said. “We pay real close attention to communication, ethics and business.

“That skillset, from the door to the table and back to the door, where you can interview a client and ask the clarifying questions to design a session that gets the client to what they are really looking for and understand their boundaries. Those are some of the skills that really make our grads stand out and put them in demand,” Bibik continued.

The school teaches a variety of modalities, including therapeutic massage, acupressure, traditional Chinese medicine, myofascial release work, cranial sacral therapy and more. Students are hands-on from day one and begin logging hours with members of the public once they are about two-thirds through the program, said Bibik, who wrote the curriculum and maintains rights to it.

“Moving forward, the curriculum is absolutely going to stay the same,” said Scalpone, who recently retired from a 25-year career in physical therapy and now teaches exploring touch and communication skills at the school. “There will be no changes with that, the Institute for Massage Education will stay the same.”

As some things stay the same, others will evolve as more workshops and trainings will be added to the offerings, she said. Included in that will be yoga classes and possibly a yoga teacher training.

“We are looking to bring the center for healing arts piece of it back,” Scalpone said. “The idea is to bring more of the community back in. This is a support center for the community. We plan to have some taste of massage offerings for community members who have never had massage, do yoga, have something for everyone.”

The community is invited to an open house from 4-6 p.m. Nov. 11, at the center at 5320 Holiday Terrace, Suite 5 in Oshtemo Township, to meet the new owners and honor Bibik’s legacy. Refreshments and complimentary chair massages will be provided. There will also be a pour painting station.

For more information about the center, visit kcha.com, call 269-373-0910 or email kchands@kcha.com or admissions@kcha.com.

Community members can also book massage work with students for $40 a session through the website.

“It really gives the students an opportunity to work with a variety of bodies and to work with people that they don’t know because, through the program a lot of times, they’re working on family and friends or each other,” said Bibik, who plans to use her newfound time for writing and scuba-diving.

“The ownership is passing, but it’s passing in a really uplifting and expansive way,” she said. “Let’s not forget that’s really what we’re doing. I’m 73. I’m not bringing the next generation forward.”

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