Valentina Riente

I come from La Thuile, a mountain village in the Aosta Valley, a place of streams, waterfalls and woods that change colour with every season. There I learned early on to listen: birdsong in the morning, footprints in the snow, the silence of the valley rising towards the Ruitor glacier. It is a heritage I still carry within me, and one I find again whenever I need to return to my centre.

The human body fascinated me from childhood. Years of study led me to my greatest passion, massage. But under my hands I felt something anatomy could not explain: a rhythm, an emotion, a wordless communication with the people who came to me.

Three years of Shiatsu and Traditional Chinese Medicine gave me a language for what I was sensing. Craniosacral work taught me the word that has stayed with me in every treatment since: listening. Finally, naturopathy helped me to see the person as a whole, unique and unrepeatable.

Meanwhile I chose to work only where excellence is the rule: five-star luxury hotels, from Capri to Sicily and on to Rome, where I learned that care lies in the details a guest feels before even noticing them. From this meeting of listening and service, the N.E.P. Method was born: naturopathic, emotional, personalised.