Dhyana and Syama Masla attended FSM with the September 2006 class. Dhyana had just turned 18 two months prior to starting massage school, and her sister Syama turned 20 just five days into the program. Both had graduated from the dual enrollment program at Sante Fe High School and Santa Fe Community College, and both were looking for their next direction. Their father Richard Masla, an Ayurveda Practitioner who established the Ayurveda Health Retreat in Alachua in 2001, encouraged his daughters to attend massage school.
Just six years after graduating from FSM, they’ve achieved what they consider their dream jobs. They’ve opened Stanton Street Yoga in New York City and now serve as the studio’s creative visionaries.
Upon reflecting on her education here, Syama said, “Massage and the skills we learned at FSM are what have carried us through, it’s the background that pushes us throughout our lives. Having massage therapy skills brings a sense of safety wherever we go. People are always seeking quality of touch. Massage brings safety and nourishment. It’s priceless.”
She also acknowledged that the school’s focus on taking responsibility for one’s own experience has been a valuable lesson. “FSM is really about taking responsibility for oneself, whether that is about using ‘I’ when I’m talking about my experience, or taking responsibility for my own perspective,” Syama said. “Everything else just falls away and I can just connect with truth.”
Dhyana said that massage school gave her the skills to be in relationship with other people in an intimate yet friendly way. “I feel comfortable with myself to be in relationship with others, no matter whether it’s a client, my best friend, my sister, or a stranger on the street,” she said. “FSM helped me learn how to be in relationship with myself so I can be in relationship with others.”
Dhyana and Syama still come back to Alachua to offer a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training twice a year. They try to visit FSM and are delighted to find the same faces seven years later. “People who work here seem to love it so much and become the same team,” said Dhyana. “It’s really a warm feeling year after year to come back and see the same faces here.”
Syama added: “FSM was one of the sweetest times of my life. You taught us how to be human and how to connect with something Divine while we’re in these bodies, and most of all how we can share that with others.”
Syama said that attending FSM was the point that dramatically shifted the path of their lives. “For both of us, this was one of the most profound and real educations we’ve ever experienced,” she said. “One of the biggest things was learning that when we touch a person, we’re not only touching their bodies, we’re touching into their entire past. Every heartbreak, every joy, every experience they’ve ever had. And so it is really about cultivating a quality of presence with another being.”
As a result of this realization, Syama said she had a paradigm shift. “I feel that is what real education is: when one’s whole world view is transformed, one’s whole way of living and experiencing the world is transformed.”
Before FSM, Dhyana was working in Gainesville at Gypsy Palace and Syama worked at Book Lovers Café. After graduating FSM, they both worked with their father at the Ayurveda retreat center, where they learned further about Ayurveda massage. Eventually their passion for Ayurveda and Yoga led them to Naropa University in Boulder, CO, where Syama studied psychology and yoga, and Dhyana studied performing arts and yoga. Yoga became the common denominator, hence the move to open a studio in New York.
The Masla sisters said that doing massage was the way they supported themselves through college in the Boulder area. “We have traded massage for so many beautiful things: tattoos, hotel nights, and car rides, to name a few!”
As for advice for recent graduates: “Just keep trying,” said Dhyana. “A lot of people give up after graduating. Give free sessions if you have to! Just keep doing the work.”
Syama said that sometimes entry-level massage therapists feel they aren’t good enough yet. “Just believe in yourself,” she said. “After six months at FSM, you’re probably receiving one of the best educations out there, so you definitely have an advantage!”
Learn more about the Stanton Street Yoga Center and the Masla sisters at www.stantonstreetyoga.com. For more information on the Ayurvedic Retreat Center in Alachua or the Yoga Teacher Training programs, visit www.ayurvedahealthretreat.com.
