It was with shock and sadness that we discovered Tovi Browning died in 2016.
As several of us were trained by Tovi, and she is the founder of Holistic Pulsing in New Zealand, Peta Joyce shares a historical tribute to honour her.

"I first met Tovi in the mid-1980’s in Auckland when a friend said to me there’s a new osteopath in town, I’m going for a session, do you want to come? I watched in amazement as my friend was gently rocked and stretched and engaged with on the table, and got up feeling much relieved of her back pain. I asked Tovi what she was doing, as I had never seen an osteopath work this way, and she said it’s called Holistic Pulsing and I’m doing a workshop next weekend, do you want to come? I was hooked from that day on!

Roberta Skye, who became my practitioner when I was going through the full Diploma training with Tovi, was invited by her to be a private student, before Tovi wrote her first book Gentle Miracles. Subsequently, Roberta was invited to teach throughout New Zealand, and then Europe, when Tovi went to live and teach in Australia. Tovi then went back to live in her home country, Israel, where she founded the International Training School for Holistic Pulsing in 1998.

Roberta (who now lives in Canada) says,

“I was first introduced to Holistic Pulsing when Tovi offered me a 10 minute session for my sore back. Receiving this deep listening, gentle, free-flowing body work was profound. I was surprised to be in tears in a few minutes, we went so deep so quickly. It’s continued appeal for me was that, if one is truly holistic, you could address everything with integrity and respect.”

“I appreciated Tovi because she revelled in going deep. She had a delight and fascination with the human condition. When I was her student she was writing her first book, and she was excited about experimenting with her ideas and processes – we were in a spirit of inquiry together. She also had a quality of personal radiance which was inspiring.”

Although Tovi did not ‘invent’ Pulsing (Curtis Turchin originally developed Pulsing from Trager work) she took the bodywork technique to a whole new level, using her background in Gestalt counselling to develop the philosophy and psychotherapeutic aspects of Pulsing and calling it Holistic Pulsing. Tovi was a pioneer in her time, recognising the healing potential of the complex interrelationship between body and mind long before the concepts of ‘body mind’ and ‘mindfulness’ became popular. In an era when many healing therapies focussed on pain and dysfunction, Tovi introduced the concept of healing through pleasure, awareness and acceptance. It was a radical approach at the time.

I remember her as a charismatic and inspirational teacher who taught like a performer with grace and style. As a practitioner, she was skilled at facilitating us to go deeply within our bodymind awareness, gently questioning our firmly held life scripts and beliefs with loving acceptance and playfulness.

She was also a very accomplished Egyptian dancer, who taught us an exquisite awareness of how to use each part of our bodies to full and flowing affect. For me, this enhanced my ability to move my whole body freely whilst pulsing.

Tovi’s vision was global, in fact she called the company for publishing her books Global Embrace. Now her legacy lives on in her books, in we who trained with her, and in our students, practitioners and teachers in New Zealand, Australia and Israel, and in Europe and other countries where Holistic Pulsing lives on.