A Florida native, Howard is originally from Ft. Lauderdale and grew up in that part of South Florida. Never having lived more than fifteen miles from the beach, he now lives in Satellite Beach, approximately 800 feet from the sand and the waves.

Career Path
During his senior year in high school, Howard attended a full-time vocational program in Computer Electronics, which prepared him for a career as a computer technician. After one year in a community college Electronics Technology program, he withdrew from the program to begin working full-time in the computer industry at a local minicomputer manufacturer, Systems Engineering Laboratories, also known as SEL (ironically, the founder and president of SEL had moved to Ft. Lauderdale from Melbourne, where he worked at Radiation, which later became Harris Corporation).

At SEL, which was purchased in the early 1980's by Gould, Inc., Howard held various technical positions over the next eleven years and was offered relocation to Melbourne in 1988. Shortly after that relocation, the company was purchased by Encore Computer Corporation. Then, after five more years with the company, Howard was layed off in a company downsizing.

Fortunately for Howard, as the minicomputer industry was losing ground to the microcomputer (or PC) industry, he purchased a PC in 1988 (a 10MHz 286 computer with a 20 MegaByte hard drive!) and began teaching himself the ins and outs of the PC and its operating system, DOS. Based on the knowledge he gained, in 1995, he landed a technician position at a Melbourne PC integration company. That same year, after being advised by company management to pursue a college education, he chose instead to take the American Mensa acceptance exam and passed, allowing him to join an organization of persons with IQs in the top 2 percentile of the population.

As the company made management changes that were detrimental to the well-being of the entire staff, the increase in stress caused intestinal problems that led Howard to his first massage in 1997 with a massage therapist who also practiced Reiki Healing Touch. Although the treatments did not provide much improvement for the intestinal problems, he found Reiki to be amazing and researched it until the following year, when he became certified as a Reiki II practitioner. During the certification process, the bronchial asthma that Howard battled with for nearly 25 years was miraculously  healed.

Health Challenges
With continued on-the-job stress, Howard's intestinal condition got progressively worse and caused a weight loss of 50 lbs. (down to 120 lbs. at 5'10") and eventually landed him in the hospital in 1999.

During time off from work for recovery, Howard learned a lot about natural healing alternatives and the Specific Carbohydrate Diet for intestinal imbalance. And over the next year back on the job with increasing stress inflicted by mentally unstable management, he decided that a career change was necessary and enrolled at Space Coast Health Institute's Massage Therapy program, in order to practice Reiki in a professional setting. The 500-hour program began in February, 2001 with part-time evening classes. Graduation was in February, 2002, the National Certification Board Test was in late March, and a Florida LMT license was received on April 4th, 2002. Then, on April 15th, the computer company he worked for downsized 33% and Howard was layed off, which opened the door to a full-time massage therapy career.

Training
A major part of any serious massage therapist's career is ongoing training. Howard has completed Continuing Education courses in Advanced Deep Tissue & Neuromuscular Therapy (NMT), Myofascial Release, Medical Massage for the Cervical Region (neck), and Medical Massage for the Upper Extremities (arms and shoulders). These four courses provide the necessary training techniques used in most medical massage treatments, as well as in the most beneficial therapeutic/deep tissue massage treatments.

Hobbies
In his spare time, Howard plays guitar (and fakes playing the keyboard) and works on original compositions. With a love for most types of music, he makes an effort to see live music performed as often as possible. In relation to that, Howard has become a collector of autographs from the musicians he meets whose music he loves.

If you'd like to check out Howard's original music compositions and see pictures of the musical instruments and recording equipment he uses, here are their pages: