SAGE HEALTH: Meet Vu Dang

Vu brings fifteen years of training and a lifetime of experience to his work as a holistic health practitioner. His story is one of accomplishment through tremendous adversity. As a small child, Vu and his family were forced to flee Vietnam after U.S. forces withdrew from that country. The early years of his childhood were spent in a refugee camp in Malaysia. After successfully emigrating to the United States in 1980, Vu and his family made their roots in Escondido, California.

A promising young athlete, Vu played football and baseball during his high school years, until his athletic career was tragically cut short. While returning a kickoff during a football game in October 1992, Vu suffered a near fatal head injury. Heroic paramedics and the brilliant doctors who performed emergency brain surgery saved Vu’s life that day, but he lay in a coma for six days. On waking again, Vu was confronted with a new challenge – he had to learn how to eat, walk, talk, and function all over again – how to live again. This long journey of recovery led Vu to an exploration of many different healing techniques, including yoga, massage, energetic and herbal therapies.

Formal training includes 1,000 hours of instruction in massage therapy at Poway Academy (Poway, CA) and Healing Hands (School of Holistic Health, Escondido, CA) -- widely recognized for its excellence. Vu has also pursued intensive training in Anusara Yoga (instructor level) through Willows Yoga (Encinitas, CA). His practical experience includes 15 years as a massage therapist, and local athletes especially seek him out for his gifted touch in treating sports injuries.

On the personal side, Vu has remained very active in the local community and is still grateful for the outpouring of support he and his family received on first arriving at their new home. Vu remains enthusiastically involved in local adult softball, as well as teaching young people (of all ages!) hooping and yoga at local parks on weekends.  He is excited to have recently discovered a true passion for hooping (hoop movement) for his own healing, as well as a directed yet fun method of getting kids and adults interested in exercise.

Vu’s therapy sessions include a level of deep-tissue work that remains out of reach for many health practitioners, due to the limitations of physical strength required. Yet his touch is also gentle and nurturing as needed, and his broad experience of a wide variety of clients allows for intuitive and customized treatments for each individual. As an instructor of Yoga, Vu incorporates Ayurvedic philosophy and principles in designing treatment and personal training programs.

In the process of healing himself, Vu discovered a natural gift for healing others. His true calling in life is to help others achieve balance, health, and fulfillment through healing touch, hooping, yoga, and meditation.

Massage Certification
HHP