Student Spotlight
Denise Hoffman, M.S. in Natural Health Candidate
“It all goes well with me,” is the sing-song tone and timbre of fitness instructor and missionary Denise Hoffman’s travel journal. It’s a mantra that extends to her artwork, her songs, and her general demeanor.
Some people might expect her to say otherwise. Born of Nicaraguan descent but separated from her birth parents and raised in America, Denise found (or rediscovered) natural health after facing a life-threatening tumor at the tender age of 20.
Although the surgery was a success, her emotional scars ran deep. “Somehow I knew, intuitively, that there was more to this situation than met the eye. No one could explain where such a deadly invader came from—until eventually I remembered having persistent swollen lymph glands at age 15, which were incorrectly attributed to a sinus infection.”
When Denise reflects on her disheveled teen years, she knows that illness became a physical manifestation of psycho spiritual crisis. “I felt foreign, politically misplaced and misshapen, as if I had to constantly prove my worth, wondering ‘Who am I?’ and with no outlet for my frustrations.”
Then after the surgery, with the help of a counselor who specializes in cultural identity and adoption issues, Denise healed her life. Exploring her rich cultural diversity through various forms of artistic expression and service to others, along the way her soul intuited that holistic health would be her calling.
She has worked in the field of exercise and fitness for approximately seven years, teaching people that health begins from within and that “one size does not fit all. Being healthy is a lifelong journey, not a final destination.”
As a certified aquatics instructor, her stress management classes include an assisted floating/rocking technique that can also involve Trager points. In what she calls “the water dance,” soothing flute music facilitates a mind-body experience that can even become a vision quest of sorts, transcending place and time.
“In deep relaxation, sometimes things come out, sometimes there’s an ‘Old Soul’ experience of seeing visions and knowing things that others don’t know.”
Featured on the Discovery Channel’s Health Cops show, Denise’s greatest joy is teaching the younger souls that fitness is fun. She once led a conga line at her old high school gym, to demonstrate why physical activity is so important to heart health. “And the sooner we start, the better,” she adds.
This Citizen of the World recently returned, joyfully, to her native Nicaragua for a mission trip that put her to work in a soup kitchen, a sanctuary for runaways, and a day care center. Denise envisions she’ll someday work with children: “Pediatrics,” she observes, “is one profession that mirrors itself throughout the world.
“My CCNH education allows me to learn about healing as it relates to my Latina background, a culture in which natural health and creativity are the foundations of well-being. I am now expanding my writings and paintings to include aspects of healing, learning about other cultures and how they have contributed to the world of natural health.”
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