Russ Reina entered the medical profession in 1969, at the age of 18 as a Nurse’s Aide in a nursing home on Long Island, NY. After spending some time in RN school, and then working in an operating room, he began volunteering as an ambulance attendant in Queens, NY.

In 1978, he moved to Santa Barbara County, CA. He co-founded  and organized the California Paramedics Association, the first union of emergency workers west of the Mississippi. After a twelve-year career in Emergency Medical Services, he left the field in 1985.

Russ explored other modalities of alternative medicine, including treatment of terminal illnesses, the “Encounter Movement” of personal growth programs, counseling, and 12-Step Programs while he built a career in video production and writing. He did a number of programs for the Hospital Satellite Network, in L.A.. In 1987, he became a Minister in the Universal Life Church as a sign of his personal commitment to develop as a Spiritual Counselor.  He accepts donations under this ministry. 

From 1990 through 1998, Russ supported himself through multi-media marketing for the dental profession. He intermittently lived and worked with an Oglala Medicine family on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, tending fire for sacred ceremonies.

He began working with improvisation and as a semi-pro stand-up comic. In 1993, a screenplay he wrote (Healer) was produced and became the opening night film of the 1994 Santa Barbara International Film Festival. He completed a three-year course of study of the Meisner (Acting) Technique under the guidance of a student of Sanford Meisner's, Jose Angel Santana, phD. Russ studied Reiki with a woman whose family sponsored Hawayo Takata, who brought Reiki to the US.

In 1998, Russ moved to Lost Valley Educational Center, near Eugene, OR where he lived in intentional community with about 30 adults and eight children on 87 acres in the Willamette Valley. It was an eighteen-year-old community with a conference center, personal growth workshop (Naka-Ima – from the Japanese, inside the present moment -- and magazine (Talking Leaves).  It was an experimental center for sustainable living and permaculture for the Cascadia Bioregion in the Pacific Northwest.

For the next five years, he assisted regularly in Naka-Ima, counseled members of the immediate and extended community, and produced a workshop of his own, now known as The heART of the healer. It uses acting and improv games to strengthen the healer’s ability to use heart-consciousness, complete presence in the moment, and connection as tools of healing.

In 2003, Russ moved to Waianae, Oahu, and lived there for a year, during which time he finished a book he had been working on entitled, Moments in A Paramedic’s Journey; He moved to Maui, in 2004.