About DHI and Hillary Hitt

I am happy to say that DHI is now going into its17th year. It all began in 1984 when Greg Hitt and I came to Koh Samui for a holiday. After several months of enjoying the island life I decided that I would definitely be coming back to set up a healing center. We returned in June of 1988, and within several months set up the Samui Language Intercultural Learning Center, teaching classes in English and Thai language, Yoga, Meditation, water movement, and offering nutritional and psycho/spiritual counseling.

Without any idea of how long we would stay on Koh Samui our love for the island and the people motivated us to set roots here by learning the language and working on translations of Ahjan Buddhadasa Bhikku’s Dharma talks, studying the history of the island, going to the Buddhist temple to listen to Dharma talks, living with the Sukasame family for one year and offering free English and art classes to local children and young adults. In a short time we offered English training programs to the government hospital nurses and doctors, new airport staff in 1990, several schools and universities, and many of the hotels.

In June1994 the fasting program was incorporated into our work by Shelley Fines, a guru in the fasting world. Shelley trained us on the practice and principles of fasting others and after 6 months left Koh Samui to open a fasting program in Australia. Greg and I then founded the Samui Dharma Healing Center according to Buddhist philosophy and began offering the full course program.

Since 2001 Dharma Healing International has been directed by me, Hillary Hitt. Over the years the program has changed and grown and expanded with more classes and updated research, emphasizing the current need for spiritual evolution in our relationships with an increasing focus on empowering our role as co-creators of global community founded on Pure Spirit, Pure Heart, a Pure Body and Pure Intention.

Hillary’s History

In order for you to get a good understanding of the core and heart behind Dharma Healing International I am going to write a short synopsis of where and when healing as a way of life started for me. You could say it is not a very different history from many of the 50s’ baby boomer stories on a similar path of wellbeing, spiritual peace and ecological sustainability. . .

My first experiences in fasting began when I was 12 years old on Saturdays when I would go to the synagogue to chant with the Cantor. I felt so happy and clear that I began to do longer fasts, first one week then two and then three week fasts. The first three week fast was in celebration of my 8th grade graduation. Fasting allowed me to feel apart from the other kids, the social and hormonal pressures and get excited about simple things like God.

When I was 16 my mother took me to my first Yoga class but I began to study Hatha Yoga more intensely with a daily practice when I was 19 at the Integral Yoga Institute in San Francisco. During this period of my life from 1969 to 1973 in the Bay Area, a renaissance was taking place, not only in Northern California but in me and many, many other people. I became a strict vegetarian-mostly raw foods, began studying the healing powers of foods and the human body along with medicinal herbs. My first job around healthy eating was at The Good Karma Café, a macrobiotic restaurant, on Dolores and Mission in San Francisco. Becoming a vegetarian in 1969 was challenging, not like it is now. The infrastructure wasn’t use to us yet.

Going into solitary retreat at this time in Mill Valley, California while living in a little redwood cottage, I began to fast more often, also, I started to study a vast number of subjects, such as: Jungian Psychology, The World Religions, Astrology, Cultural Anthropology, Mazdaznan-an ancient healing art from Persia, chanting in my own language as a form of healing myself and others, Zen Meditation, Kundalini Yoga-living at the 3HO ashram in San Rafael California founded by Yogi Bhajan. I studied a form of Martial Arts called “The Changing Way” founded by Michael Gneck; also Eckankar-Soul Travel, Edgar Cayce, Madame Blavatsky, Alice Bailey and the Ageless Wisdom, Weaving and piano.

A few years later I started teaching for the first time in Cave Junction, Oregon at Aunt Billie’s Kindergarten and then a year later took over the Illinois Valley Nursery School. I also offered maybe some of the first Yoga classes in Oregon at the Cave Junction Community Building and foot reflexology treatments, charging $1.00 per class/session. That was in 1973.

After attending several junior colleges I received my BS degree from Oregon State University in 1981 and fled to Peru in search of Andean Healers with a stipend grant from The Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago then returned to the US to live and work in Stanley, Idaho in the Saw Tooth Mountains and then back to Peru.

With a ticket around the world I continued my study in search of traditional healers while staying at universities in Africa, India and China where I also taught for six months there and in Japan for one year.

In 1986 my interest in doing a study in education and Buddhism took me back to the states to pursue a EdM, Masters in Education degree-program at The Harvard Graduate School of Education, receiving the degree in 1987. Luckily, I was able to also take classes in Medical Anthropology and Mahayana Buddhism at the Harvard Divinity School and do an internship as a nutritionist at the Pain and Stress Relief Clinic founded by Ted Kuptchuk at the Lemuel Shattuck Hospital.

Upon moving to Koh Samui I became a student of the now deceased Venerable Buddhist Monk Scholar Ajahn Bhikkhu Buddhadasa. During my stay in Thailand over the last 21 years I have been working on translations of several of the great teacher's Dharma texts. I teach The Dharma of the Theravada tradition and teach the Anapanasati (Mindfulness With Breathing) Meditation practice taught at Suan Mokkh, The Garden of Liberation, located in Chaiya, Surat Thani

In my profession I emphasize inner child work and rebirthing through the fasting process, while utilizing Buddhist psychology and philosophy in healing and education. As fasting is a very necessary practice for guiding students into themselves, Buddhist philosophy in education is student centered—all mental and spiritual development and progress is brought about through the student’s ”work” on themselves. For the past 36 years I have been teaching, designing programs and curriculums for individuals and groups following the evolution of my life practice--according to Buddhist principles, incorporating not only fasting but also Iridology, Reflexology, Spiritual Nutrition, Psyco/Spiritual inquiry, Meditation, Self-Reiki, various systems of Yoga, such as Kundalini, Kriya, Hatha, Pranayama, Karmic, Jyana, The Ageless Wisdom tradition, Ascended Masters, Chakra-Qi, Raw and Healing Foods, Self-Reflexology and devotional aerobic exercise such as swimming, running, hiking in the jungle and cycling.

Since 1988 close to 5,000 people of Thai and foreign nationalities, of all ages, religious and economic backgrounds have visited Dharma Healing International.

I am truly grateful to the numerous interns, teachers, healers, helpers and fasters who have come to join and assist me in the maintenance, development and spirit of the program over the years, contributing a great deal of time and energy. I want to thank Greg Hitt, Raja Tamaran, my wonderful webmaster, Rebecca Andrist, Rod McCormick, Carole Warren, Lynne Pressman-Thill, Winnie Rode, Annabelle Choo, Bruce Schuman, Renee and Chad Conover, Deborah White, Natasha Song, Siri Anand, Anoon (who died in 2007), Sawai and Jitra, Gittporn and Doang, Nipapan, Rebbecca Welland, Sean Dahlen, Chuck Creel, Noom, Wanida and Pim,Su Ton, Pi Boon, Pijit, Pisit, Jumni, Emmie McMullen, Claire Robinson, Becky Nodding, Sara Avant Stover, Jamie Mushin, Frank Ragusa, Krishnataki, Caesar Musso, John Robarge, Joyce Curran, Yiorgo Kritsis, Siri from Norway, Sandi Johannessen, Tisha Wheeler, Anne Hockett, Meghan Pappenheim, Rebecca Pflaum, Jutima and Paul Dallighan, Shelley Poplack, Jeanne Lim and Billie Mcleod and many, many more.

I am also thankful to say the program has inspired many beginning interns, teachers and healers to pursue further studies in the teaching and healing arts.