The Centre's Directors

Deva Daricha has lived a rich and varied life. A qualified teacher at the age of 18, he taught in primary and secondary schools for seven years before he was invited to take up a teaching position in Philosophy at Melbourne Primary Teachers College.

For the next 13 years he taught Philosophy and developed some of Australia's most innovative programs for training teachers. With degrees in History, Philosophy and Education, in 1982 he resigned as Chairman of the Philosophy Department at the Melbourne Campus of the State College of Victoria in order to establish a meditative healing community with his wife Shivam Rachana.

In order to balance his studies in the Western Tradition, in 1974 he had begun to study yoga philosophy and practice with Margrit Segesman - the first yogini to bring these teachings to Australia. His seven years of study and practice in this area were complimented by intense study of the works of Rudolph Steiner and Christopher Hills. This was followed by additional exploration of the healing power of breath with Dr.Stanislav Grof and Jai Daemion.

He established Melbourne's first Breath Therapy Centre in 1981. In 1983 he began body work training with Dr. Joy Johnson of the Florida Institute of Psychophysical Integration and became a practitioner of Postural Integration.

Advanced studies in the U.S.A. with Dr. Johnson and Dr. Jack Painter, the founder of Postural Integration, led to his becoming a Master Practitioner, and then an internationally certified trainer of this discipline.

Practitioner studies in Neuro-linguistic Programming and Rajneesh Psychic Massage were followed by qualification in Accelerated Learning and Psychoneuroimmunology from the John David Learning Institute in San Diego in 1988.

Initiated into the Spiritual traditions of Tantra and Shamanism in the 1970's, his original insights in these areas have led to the publication of "The Tantric Path", (co-authored with Shivam Rachana), and "Shamanism and Nature" which is currently being edited.

Daricha has spent the last 15 years developing Body Transformation as a state-of-the-art training in bodywork and wholistic body re-education. During that time he has trained over 100 bodywork practitioners and given and supervised over 7,000 bodywork sessions.

Five graduates from his trainings have gone on to develop their own bodywork schools. He brings a keen intellect, penetrating insight,a compassionate heart and joyful humour to the trainings.