Vera and Michael

Shintaido Blue Mountains
Vera and Michael former members of SOA (Shintaido of America) as well as members of ISC (International Shintaido College) up until 2016.

 

Vera Costello and Michael De-Campo with Shintaido Founder Hiroyuki Aoki (Sonoma, California USA July 2012)

 

VERA COSTELLO
As a graduate of Japanese language and Asian studies Vera lived in Japan for 5 ½ years while teaching English as a Second Language. She began practising Shintaido in 1976 in Tokyo and after returning to Australia, established Shintaido classes in Sydney with Alexandra Pope in 1983. Moving to the Blue Mountains in 1989 with her partner Michael De-Campo, she focused on teaching Japanese language and culture to University level.

Sharing her partner's values of wholistic living and wellbeing, she and Michael ran a home-based enviro business based on chemical-free homes and sustainable living (Enviro-Tru 1998-2003). She established a green business network in the Blue Mountains. They organized the first ECOhomes Tour in the Blue Mountains with ECOdesign architect Nigel Bell, as a school fundraiser. Together with partner Michael, she teaches classes, workshops and gasshuku (intensive residential retreats) in the Blue Mountains.

MICHAEL DE-CAMPO
Beginning with hatha yoga and transcendental meditation in his teens, Michael made the study of Oriental arts and natural therapies his life path. Living for 3 years in an East-West Centre study house in Sydney, he was trained in shiatsu massage, oriental medicine and macrobiotics . He taught aikido with ki classes in Sydney for five years and practiced shiatsu therapy for 15 years. He helped establish several wholefood businesses in the late '70s in Australia, including the first Japanese tofu factory^[1].

Mentored by Dr Alfred Kaufmann^[2] from 1981-86 (founder of Sydney College of Osteopathy in Australia,1959), he was introduced to Shintaido described by Alfred as "an art form that synthesises Eastern and Western thinking". Seeing in Shintaido's practice the culmination of all the wholistic disciplines he'd previously studied or taught, Michael has focused on teaching Shintaido for the past 25 years as a tool for developing the whole person. As well as being a qualified Shintaido Instructor, he has Level 2 Coaching Certificate and a Senior First Aid Certificate.

Michael has trained at 8 international Shintaido events. He lives in the Blue Mountains with his (former) partner Vera Costello.

Michael also served as a director on the Board of ISC (International Shintaido College) from 2009 to 2016.
From 2014 to 2016 he served as Chair on the ISC Board.

 

1. History of Tofu Compiled by William Shurtleff & Akiko Aoyagi, 2013, pp. 1392-3 [The Soy Bean Factory, Surry Hills NSW]

2. Dr Alfred Kaufmann and Osteopathy in Australia, pp. 20 & 21