Redefining Wellness: From Grief Counselors to Spa Pioneers - A Journey with the Power Sisters of 5 Elements

hello there fearfully and wonderfully made soul today on the holistic counselor podcast I have the pleasure of welcoming two extraordinary sisters who are revolutionizing the world of holistic Wellness meet Diana and Ornella from five elements Wellness Spa a dynamic duo with an impressive background in the mental health industry with Diana's LPC credential and orell's degree in counseling psychology their expertise covers both the clinical and emotional dimensions of well-being after a successful decade of owning and operating

a home health and hospice agency in Philadelphia these sisters decided to embark on a New Journey focused on preventative care their transition was marked by Passion and dedication as they sold their previous business to pursue their vision of holistic Wellness combining their love for beauty and wellness Diana and Ornella have created a unique Venture that emphasizes both internal and external well-being their Spa nestled in the heart of South Florida deerfi beach to be exact aims to

set a new standard by integrating mental and emotional health with traditional Beauty practices I had the pleasure of discovering Diana and Ornella Spa myself drawn in by its intriguing construction and Innovative Services as someone who values Mental Health health and wellness I found solace in their Wellness room complete with amenities like a steam room sauna hot tub cold plunge and red light therapy speaking from personal experience I understand the transformative power of biohacking for mental health

in fact I chronicled my journey in a blog post titled integrating biohacking for mental health inspired by my experiences at their Spa Diana and arnella's commitment to creating a welcoming and inclusive space for holistic Wellness is truly inspiring so without further Ado let's dive into our conversation with these Visionary sisters who are reshaping the landscape of selfcare welcome to the show Diana and Ornella thank you so much for having used amazing so can you share just

a little bit with the audience the inspiration behind transitioning from grief counseling like that right there that gets me like wow because I get it I'm still doing that as a therapist grief counseling and behavior analy analysis to opening up a spa focused on holistic healing well after we graduated with our degrees we worked with a lot of behavioral therapy di did um we did with kids various different um Spectrum disorders but I worked with children

adolescents and older adults somehow ended up transitioning from that into bereavement care and got my first taste of hospice and what that was like in that in the in the mental health field and working with families and doing grief counseling and bement counseling um and then in that business we I kind of learned with my sister like the the things that weren't being addressed the issues that weren't being taken uh seriously by the agencies and the

different auxiliary like what oh gosh putting me on the spot um so you know they they're solely focused on the individual which is wonderful but what about the families right the families are going through grief the families are going through all the stages and nobody was addressing that and or the social worker would maybe give them like a couple of sessions right and couple pamphlets they don't really know how to take care of a bedbound patient

right they don't know what to do um a lot of times it would end up putting the the patient in a nursing home because the family just wasn't equipped to take care of them they didn't know what's available to them um unfortunately this industry could be not always the best type of Industry people take advantage of these clients um they bill for the services but they don't actually give the client what they need yeah um we

come from a cultural background where you really take care of your elders it's just in our family's always been as it should be for everybody and what culture is that we're spartic saric Jewish baharian and it's big in our family like our grandma lived with us her whole life um so when we would see these patients it was very SE the needs that they had that weren't being addressed I was like arella we can do this

ey open let's see where the um gaps are and and fill them and so that started the whole home health and hospice we were called Helping Hand home health and hospice I love that we were one of the largest at the time right before the pandemic when we sold but during the tenure there we learned different ailments and how they um how you age how you decline um what and that that younger people were getting diagnosed

with terminal illness or you know some sort of other Progressive diagnosis so we were thinking about it from the preventative measures like what can we do to help educate or help facilitate a little bit more of a preventative measure which is how the spa idea came out it really was an organic decision it was crazy because obviously being in that industry is really heavy um it's rewarding when you have the right group of people that are

very caring um you know we're big on education so we bought a lot of equipment in home like in our house in the office we had like a a hospital bed to show Home Health AES how to change a bed bound patient sheets or Chucks how use a how to use AER LIF wheelchairs you'd be surprised how many people don't know how to properly take a person out of a wheelchair it's about education and resources right

it's like learning and and unfortunately we were in Philadelphia and the demographic there is very low income in most in the inner city cities and it was very unfortunate especially a lot of family members didn't really some didn't care un fortunately and some didn't have the finances to help or education to know what to do so after we learned a lot it was mostly also seeing different types of patients and being psych Majors our curiosity as

to well how is this client stage four and they are we called it graduating from hospice because they weren't actively declining quick enough to be considered hospice but obviously their cancer won't go away but it's stabilized enough to not be declining rapidly to be for hospit we would graduate them into home healthare and where we would still have a nurse still have a therapist and whoever else comes to see them where they still get their supplies

we were always curious like what what was different here and it wasn't the slew of medications it wasn't how many meds they had to take to offset the symptoms of those meds and those meds it was it was hope it was it was a lot of kept them going 100% it was the fact that all of a sudden now they have somebody coming over um the nurses taking care of their medical needs the home health aids

taking care of their emotional and mental needs and the desire to keep going made such a difference you could even see with their wounds their wounds were healing faster because now they're eating and the protein helps your wounds you know um or they're being fed which you know some they were neglected otherwise so that really played a role in Us and how like okay so very holistic it was crazy to see honestly like and it was

such a pattern and after 10 years of reading charts and seeing these clients right we were like wow like this is pretty wild when they say mind body and soul like it truly is a trifacta and it everything you do for yourself mentally physically emotionally affects how you age and how you will age right um you know I always joke with my husband like he's always if he gets sick and he's out for the day as

a mom I tell myself I don't have time for this I can't be sick right now even if I don't feel good and guess what somehow I push through and I don't get sick I really think it's a mental state that really controls how you are and that is so important and you take care of your but you also take care of your mitochondria so you know that's the mind I get it it is the mind

but because you understand how important it is to put the right things into your body yeah that's why you're pushing through too that was such a big even with our own grandmother she was 83 and initially she had like maybe 12 different medications and she had a um a cancer of her blood so it was like a lot of pain and stuff like that and eventually my mother slowly weaned her off we changed her diet um

we started making her be more mobile Physically Active we got a PT in there we got OT in there I mean a really holistic Tak her out with us more often like even if she didn't want to we made her she came to Florida a couple times and to be honest at 83 at the end her only medication she was on was Advil like ibof wow and can that work for everybody no I am a strong

believe in medications if properly used you know I love and I'm not against it and you know seeing the children that we've seen adults that we've seen medications are beautiful and we're so grateful to have them should be the last resort not the first exactly or in combination with right with the other holistic integrative that's right that's what we were talking about with Dr Dave the acupuncturist it's like we need that's why I'm like I have

him as an acupuncture I have my chiropractor I have my massage therapist I have the wellness circuit uh you know and even though it sounds like it's a lot of money but you're going to pay either way you're either going to pay for prevention or intervention what is more important than your own health health I mean to me I will pay what and and and prevent it from getting to the point where it's going to cost

you more right you know doctor visits co-pays medications um these things are not cheap a lot of times insurances don't cover a lot of these medications we've had insul clients um in home care and hospice that were diabetic they couldn't afford their insulin I mean it was insane cuz these medications are really expensive so you either do your best to prevent it and invest in yourself now in a healthy way then have to invest in yourself

later in a you know where you have no option and you have to do what you have to do exactly so okay so with the grief counseling and and all that I mean what a shift now now all of a sudden boom I'm starting to see this building and I'm like all excited I'm like where did Royal Fiesta go and cuz the royal gem now yeah I mean the Five Element spot and then I saw that

big old go goddess um wait green godd green got and I'm like oh that makes me real all the all my girlfriends are like that's really curious and the next thing you know I'm like waiting and waiting and waiting and it finally happened and I walked in and I'm like it was a very strenuous long time coming it took us almost two years to do the construction you know with the city of Deerfield we're not going

to talk about that but it's it was a process and we we did it in the midst of a pandemic too let's not forget that and we were also moving from Philadelphia building our homes here florid we were coming back and forth from Philly every other week we'd stay a week here a week in Philadelphia a week here just to it meant a lot to us though because I think you know our mother is a raiki

master so we've been around it our whole lives um my grandmother she always tried to like heal us with different herbs and stuff and you know being young we didn't appreciate it then and like the older get you understand like what you had and um you know I think with our background and just everything we said it's it it started small the idea and then it just kept spiraling organic and we found that building and we

were like wow we could do a lot here and it was mostly important of just bringing the community in awareness of what we've learned we never say that we're experts on this or experts not it's just in our experience of what we've seen what firsthand from our own patients it's just it's incredible like what you could really accomplish by putting in time for yourself right um and the right things to do so that's kind of how

five elements came about five okay and why five elements why that name we wanted to keep it healthy organic incorporate all the elements of nature as much as we can um even on our logo if you look it's actually a tree and each Leaf is one of the four elements and in the middle it's actually the fifth element which is like the spirit um so we just think it's a it's it's important to bring people back

to Nature um I think it's important to teach how we can incorporate more natural holistic approaches for well-being so I think that's kind of how we really thought of five elements like hey we want to incorporate everything and that's even in our design we have a lot of water elements Earth ele like you know the stone the grass like we Tred to do that salt room I could sit there all day long I'm surprised you guys

haven't kicked me out yet never never three hours in and I'm like oh I I gotta know get back to they fall asleep and they're like we have our two hours you're G to enjoy this and we know to book those people when it's low so they're uninterrupted and it's just such a it's such a beautiful like compliment that you feel so safe that you can fall it is I feel super safe and that's hard for

me being someone with a complex PTSD so like for me to be there it's it's just been and it's just like okay we're going to talk about biohacking in The Wellness room now okay the wellness circuit because I've never SE I've gone to Spas before like all you know in Miami and boa West p and other places North Carolina I never seen anything like what you created there and honestly I have to let the The Listener

know that I was so anxious sitting there with my son CU you allowed my son to come to because it is um a co-ed Wellness circuit and he was curious as well and he's never done a cold plunge and I've heard so much biohack you know that's a big deal to me people do it for physical and I literally sat there almost crying and he's just like Mom you can do it you can do it and

when I first did the Cal plunge it helped with my anxiety Y and my depression absolutely to a point where I was just like I can't believe I did it and then it became so exciting because that just went to show how fixed minded I was at that point and then right after that I was able to go back into the ocean and go Boogie boarding and all these things I used to do it's the weirdest

thing after I did that punch I didn't know that that's awesome so tell me about that that that area and why that like the way you did it aside from it being a relaxing space because you want to get the amenities of the spa and you know everybody has their own goals for what they come into experience um we wanted the wellness component even if they don't understand that there's a wellness component associated with the Steam

for your respiratory or with the sauna for your joints or the cold plunge that releases endorphins I mean everything has a purpose in our SP SP even if the client doesn't is not aware I mean we we educate we give them pamphlets and explain what each amenity does for you on a cellular level on a physical on a mental health level um and so we designed it based on what we would have wanted to have in

our spa based on what we know works I mean this is true science right this has been tried and true you know that red light therapy helps people with Ms helps people um who are dealing with you know cancer and radiation um it alleviates pain it's great for your skin skin and hair you know this the um hot tub I mean and it's not just a regular hot tub it's a hydrogen therapy hot tub so the

point of that is it's not just a we were very specific when we purchased it CU each section is a circuit in the hot tub and the reason for that is it has jets that go along your um your whole body and they're aligned in different positions to help circulate your blood flow it's great for edema it's great I mean so there's just so so many benefits like people think that these things are just to relax

which they do they make you relax but what what's behind it as well like you you're you're detoxing reducing stress reducing inflammation anxiety um like she said with the cold plunged endorphins and it teaches you to Breathe It teaches you to take a second and just it's all about the breathing and I think that in itself is is extremely therapeutic because I'm like you where I'm like I have my own everybody has their own traumas right

and to sit there and I got up to 15 seconds which I know to most people they giggle when I say that but I'm like hey all you need to do in that cold plunge is just dip you don't even need to be in there for very long I was up to 4 minutes what are you talking beautiful does 10 and for him it's meditation technically they say three after 3 minutes you're not gaining any more

benefits however people do it for up to 10 minutes for their own it's mental they try to test themselves to see where they can go and when they achieve that goal it takes over you and you feel wow I could do that I can do anything nobody likes being cold so I mean these things and just how we educate everybody you have to go from hot to cold in these amenities it's for a reason so you

know I think all of those things we try to incorporate because we understand it's not just for relaxation there's such a deeper meaning so when people leave they're not leaving just because they got relaxed they left because they truly felt better so good and that was the purpose of incorporating the amenities yes okay and I see that you you have the sign up there where it's like you know you tell the people specific Al what to

do which I love I love that cuz I had no idea and then you know you told me and my memory was like but I do feel a lot better since joining the the wellness circuit and stuff like that and I'm going away but so I'll be back though for sure and I like that's my because what I do for a living like as you guys know I am a therapist and I don't care if you're

a first responder or anything it's like understand the importance of taking that time even a mom a St home mom to go there and just I love it there's no distractions like I don't bring my phone in there I mean we have signs no phones yeah because it's about you and it's about what you're trying to achieve and we truly preach that self-care is not a luxury it's a necessity that's like our Mantra because we've seen

it firsthand so we get it even for ourselves I'm you know we work there we're there every day and sometimes we don't stop and take the time to even do these things ourselves and we started saying hey we need to practice what we preach to get in there because I'm working there and I don't have time to do it so I understand but it's so important to take that time to give to yourself and that's disconnect

and just reconnect with yourself and you know this when you know you do something positive for you and you put yourself first especially as a mom especially somebody who's working we always tend to put ourselves last because we we say we don't have time for ourselves but we need to prioritize ourselves cuz nobody else will exactly like you have to prioritize your health cuz it's number one if you're not if you're not right how can you

take care of everybody else right exactly I mean it's that that you know what we all we've all heard the oxygen like you know you put the oxygen on you first before you put it on the children if the planes going down and you know if you start focusing on what's going on in the world the plane's going down it's been going down going down so it's like it's not about the left wing or the rightwing

it's just like okay understand your power that you have and that's all you really do have is understand understanding you and what your needs are and how are you going to make the difference in the world without you know because you have a purpose I feel every human being on this Earth has a purpose 100% right and understanding the holistic approach to things especially to mental health and having this this is why I brought you on

because people need to hear that like the word Spa automatically like I can't afford a spa yeah yeah we get that all the time and then they look at our prices like oh that's not bad at all like an hour massage and amenities for $160 okay I can do that you spend $200 on a meal every Friday you you know if you put $165 away for the month you can come and do a treatment and get

that self-care and it's so important I mean I cannot stress enough how even for myself I had just recently a sound ball healing I've never tried that but uh we had these two incredible providers that are like we want to try this it's it's supposed to like align your frequencies and like I'll try anything I'm I'm open-minded I want to see how it goes um you know I'm very spiritual I can't say I'm very religious but

I'm certainly very spiritual let me try this I Diana it's changed my life I felt like a whole new part all my anxieties and he didn't do anything like physically to me right he had the sound balls and he and the megahertz is around people don't understand like we're electrical beings and that really helped me I mean aside from me like almost falling asleep and I had to stay awake because I wanted to experience it right

but it put me in a state of relaxation that I've not tapped into before and that to me was definitely altering like it's a different type of therapy you know I mean I think people have to find what works for them different types of therapy sometimes people don't feel comfortable talking to others sometimes writing is a great way to get it down art um exercise you know but sometimes just coming having a person and take care

of you exactly it's all you need and it's such a like she said like a spiritual connection that you just feel like wow like I didn't I didn't have that before nobody's done that for me before nobody's made me feel that safe and comfortable before with somebody you just met you know so it's that's the environment you know we used to say we will build it and they will come because people like why would you do

something you've never done and we said because we know that this is something that people are now more open to more holistic approaches but also I think that when you have a location that people can come and get educated they'll come and it's funny because the more we're open we realize it's not about the clients that are coming it's mostly the people that come that love what they do and are teaching us of what to teach

the community as well and that's going to be something that I want our building to be like a place for that and that's where where I was um going I mean that's one of my questions was like what are your what are your future goals and aspirations for expanding the holistic healing services at a at five elements Wellness yeah what is it like what cuz I know I started seeing classes on Mondays and you're teaching the

community tell me a little bit about that so we started doing mindful Mondays which once the second floor is done in a couple weeks it's going to be coups maybe three three to four weeks four weeks still like to myself couple weeks it's happening it's happen so the point of that is we're going to have over 3,000 feet of open space and the point of that open space is to share that open space with others that

are interested in the same things people that are interested in teaching or educating whether it's you know we did the mindful medit um um member Mondays and what we did is so people didn't feel like they had to purchase something they had to come and pay for something but they're curious they just wanted information before they make their decision so we had like an acupuncturist come our acupuncturist Clive who's fantastic cuz he met he studies Chinese

medicine he's amazing um so he would come and he just sat for like two hours and just talked with those who showed up and they asked questions um we have one of our clients actually suffers from severe Lyme disease oh go and that's Aime so bad and he was asking all these questions and it like made my heart so happy that Clyde was able to answer and say how this could help and did you know you

could do fire cupping and what is fire cupping and he just educated him and he felt comfortable enough to say okay maybe I'll come for a session um so then the next one we did like a raiki we did even a personal trainer who comes and she's willing to do like group sessions for like $10 a person you know what would be good do you do you have someone lined up to explain massage and the different

kinds of massages lymphatic and and what our actual um lead massage therapist Bridget she is actually a teacher at the massage schools she was and then she came to us full-time but she loves to teach and she's amazing at it and she's also clinically trained okay so she could talk to anybody with any injuries that you know are working on that if they need to do more sports massage more stretching she knows muscles very well um

so she's going to be actually doing courses as well because I was actually just talking to her about it because I want to incorporate not just what massage is but also for you know women that are pregnant how to be safe in their pregnancies what to do what not to do also to bring in some of our home health background we want to educate older clients that how to be safe within the home how is the

right way to bend you know what not to do for your back what's a dangerous way to put on your shoes um there's these things that we have to educate our clients back in home health like how to not topple over you know so these things I think would be nice to share with the community of understanding SA for themselves but also what could benefit them what kind of massage will work for them what they shouldn't

do um just things like that even amenities we tell people certain things you have if you're on certain medications you can't do certain things right um I saw your sign in the sauna yeah yeah like don't do drugs or alcohol while you're in there well yes that's not the sign I'm just saying if they have like a heart condition we take you know medical absolutely we take that very seriously you have to go through you know

sign all the consents and make sure that you're clear to be able to use these because it's not for everyone you know now we are um accessible I don't know if we talked about that we so if somebody is wheelchair bound and they need to get into any of the tubs we do have a Hoyer lift that we yes we do wow do you hear that people like they thought of everything they thought of everything just

because we know what was lacking in this industry I think you know and you know what I was just thinking I wonder if Bridget would know how to do because somatic healing is so important in Greece we want to get in on that as well I'm talking to a sematic healing person she's actually out of Philadelphia but she's willing to fly in every so often and do her little seminars so we were talking about that wow

because to me I try to I try to I'm an online therapist right but I try to teach them like okay watch this video and do this or here let me show you or because to people for like especially when you're disassociating right when you have disassociation of any kind and you're trying to get back to the now because whatever just triggered you right and so that's I do something called glimmers and triggers like okay what

triggered you and then the glimmer is when they actually take the tool and do it I like that I like that we practice mindful exercises I me we have mindful meditation uh Guru his name is Pier he's actually a local Deerfield Beach uh resident he's written three books how do I not know him I'll introduce you he's such a he going to do seminars and by the way all of the seminars that we're doing on the

mindful Mondays is is complimentary there is no Fe a little coffee and tea and station for how you sign up so once the second floor is done we're going to actually have a calendar and we're going to do days of actual just presentations that are free anybody can join just to learn and then we'll have the actual seminars for sessions to sign up group sessions um sometimes people feel comfortable coming alone but sometimes people want to

bring a friend you need a support or or a significant other or maybe something you just want to do with your mom and reconnect and have you know what whatever the reason may be there's no right or wrong it's just a way to kind of be open for everybody to see what fits for them and to answer your question so we basically want to implement everything that we can that we can find that we think will

help the community in any which way is what we want to put in the building like a a a mecca for beauty and wellness because it really does go hand inand right yeah I mean that makes sense it's just um I'm I'm trying to think like now my my brain's thinking because I you know I love producing and so I'm like oh what else can we get in there internal family system just the understanding of other

things that go together with especially the mind you know what I mean because it's the okay let's talk about the Mind Body Connection right um well it's like CB cogni behavioral therapy I to say CBD for a second sorry wrong connection what are you thinking about wrong connection which I'm in favor of any she said CBT cognitive behavioral therapy your mind your your thoughts affect your behaviors and your mood and then your mood and your behaviors

affect your thoughts it's a cycle so what we want to do is bring you to the here and now you're detaching when you come into the spot it's a sensory experience you smell the senting you get the wellness shot smell it right now you know that right you do oh no you guys every time I'm like Oh my see and that's how you know yeah like I smell the spa right now and I love the smell

like I love I'm like so we want you to focus on that we want to focus on the Aesthetics we want to focus on the smell we want to focus on the touch we want to focus on the on the all five senses all of them are you have to and that's how the Smoothie Bar came about because we wanted to give smoothies and all of our smoothies are organic smoothies shout out to higher power that's

what I drink every time no chemicals no sugars no preservatives no dyes nothing even all of our products we were so we we were very clean we looked for products for probably a solid year until to tie that into home care and hospice how do you want to tie that into it so okay in hospice it's not only how you feel mentally but it's also what you're eating it's also what you're putting on your body people

don't know this is the biggest organ that's why we might have anxiety and depression 100% like even the per I I get it you can't live in a bubble but just to even say um and I'm not knocking the FDA but in Europe you cannot find half of the products that are allowed here in the US in Europe they're not allowed they're illegal they're you cannot put certain ingredients so part of what we decided to do

is Come As Natural as we can given the parameters that we have but we've sourced product lines that are so clean so pure so natural that they're actually good for you um all of the massage oils all the facial products all the skincare that we use all our is like plant-based for our skin for the face um literally everything in there is plant-based there's no there's no preservatives di perfumes nothing no no chemicals so I think

people need to understand that when we did all these things even the perfumes we have like the fairmon so riddle oil I don't know why I love candles that we sell are like soy or beeswax like we tried very hard and they're all locally sourced by way we always to BR different businesses together and you know everything we have from our sunscreens to everything is as clean as we can find in the market and we're proud

to sell those products because we want to make sure that people leave not only feeling good but what they apply at home makes a difference as well well and that's another thing that we're going to be educating clients is like okay you can't live in a bubble you're going to go order a pizza you're going to wear this even the clothes yeah be more aware of what you do and little changes you do throughout the day

make an effect on you every day just one thing like that's one thing I do with my clients who come in really in a hard hard place it's just like I'm not asking for you to do a thousand things let's Pi one and when it becomes the habit and you don't even realize you're doing it like the lemon water in the morning what I'm like yeah you're going to wake up and drink lemon water you're my

therapist I'm like I'm a holistic therapist and you hired me because of that so and but it's all the small WS that add up over time Atomic habits take your bed in the morning like something simple and you realize that like you don't get overwhelmed in the day if you just do one thing at a time and then we celebrate and that's what we do we celebrate every single time they were able to actually take the

shower if they're depressed or they're so anxious that I did 2 minutes of breath work you're so proud of me I'm like yeah you need to be proud of you it's not about me you're hiring me to do a service do you feel like some of your clients uh ask for your permission to do certain things I felt like when I was yeah I give you permission yes you can do this it's because when they come

with people pleasing and fawning and Trauma and stuff like that they don't know they just don't know like and so when you give them the permission cuz they never had the permission they were either sucked dry by whoever it was the the people around them that caused the trauma you know and they did not that's all they thought they were worthy of that's why I'm like it's not about perfection at all because no one we all

fall short of the glory of God i' say that all the time we all fall short we're human beings it's just what what are we going to do today because that's all we have is today absolutely and I'll tell you that's true and true through the business we were in before hospice it doesn't discriminate right cancer doesn't discriminate cancer doesn't I mean we had and oh the other thing I want to dis sorry my brain is

just in mile a minute um part of the things we were seeing in hospice and end of life was our guest Our Guest our patients were getting younger and younger yeah so I think our and we didn't do pediatric which is you know a different contacted a few times and we were like I can't M handle that but we we did see the adults were getting younger and younger and they were getting diagnosed with end stage

I mean at at 32 skin cancer I mean you have to wonder why if they're living a normal healthy lifestyle what's going on so I think it's the product that they put on their body it's what they're EA it's the I don't know it's the five sent this is what I products it's the the processed foods you know gate on the foods it is it's insane even when you buy organic are you really getting organic what

is the first thing well I don't know if you ever really delved with um behavioral disorders and uh kids who have Spectrum disorders one of the things they tell you right away is you got to cut out the food D oh yeah you know and the sugar and to me I'm like are you taking a probiotic cuz I did I worked remember I worked with teenagers for most of my career it was just three years ago

when I opened up through the valley therapy yeah I don't think you know that and so and so I was working at night dealing you know having my clients at night and then dealing at the high school CU I worked in alternative high schools my whole career and so I saw some stuff and that was like I'm like but yeah they have ADHD but you see they're drinking Mountain Dew and having Captain Crunch one of my

first clients I've ever had was a 12-year-old boy that I had to shadow in school to see monitor his behavioral to seees patterns they diagnos him as schizophrenic oh at 12 I was like I remember I called you and I was like is that a is that a thing like I thought it's usually in your 30s like and I get every situation is different and people are different but this poor kid was so heavily medicated and

I noticed that he was obese he was a very heavy set boy lovely lovely kid as soon as his medications would start to wear off and I had to walk him to the nurse to make sure he gets his next dose that 45 minutes of where he wasn't heavily medicated you could just see the spark coming through his eyes and he started talking to me and he would be like not you know normal but like still

be in a place where like he's he's overly medicated and the first thing I did was talk to the mother and guess what it wasn't received very well I it was who do you think you are well if you don't have a fancy degree which I kind of do but I don't like well at the time I didn't when I was starting off and it instant Instinct like I knew when I was I got I understand

it's like why are 12 13 year olds have five different orange bottles by their bedside or Not by the red side but the foods he was eating and everything he had chips for snacks and just well people don't listen come yeah I come from the inner city like I I get it and the only reason I know these things now is because I it was taught to me and that's the that's the problem like we're so

focused on first of all a lot of these um medical schools are you know pharmaceutical companies are giving them the information and like I said it has its place like if I had a car accident and my bones were broken yes I want a do medical doctor MD doctor to help me in the emergency room and please give me a painkiller because I don't want to die of the pain right and I get it it's just

people don't know that there's another way people don't understand that there are resources out there because because it's harder it's well it's also harder to figure that out but it's also we trust we trust the people that are more educated We Trust like you know people come in and they're like well you're the expert I'm like no you're the expert on yourself you're with yourself 24 hours a day seven days a week who would know you

the best right let's figure how to get I think the problem is also that as a society we live for we want instant gratification people want the Quick Fix how do I quickly lose weight how do I quickly get smarter how do I quickly do this like there is no healthy way of doing anything quickly anything that matters Takes Time same thing with the holistic approach will it heal you instantly no but it takes time and

but it took your time to get to that point so it's going to take that much just to you know even something as simple as gut health that was really a big thing for me when I experienced my own what did my doctor say oh you have some forming ulcers here's Nexium here's this and you know bye and I did in the beginning I was in my early 20s and I was like okay great trust the

this older person that has the knowledge in time you realize well what is that medication doing to me otherwise and then you research it then you say okay if I change my diet if I'm more aware of my sensitivities or this and that and what is gut health you know and it's a slow process and it does become more of a routine LIF change it is and it's harder why I never say diet I'm like it's

a lifestyle change it is a lifestyle change and it is harder to do but than to take that quick medication but in the end it makes the best you have to always revert to back to everything where did all medications come from they came from plants so in the end you go back and you figure out a healthier way right the more closer to me it's like the more closer wait no how's Dr Heyman say if

it's something if it's a plant like created and it's an original plant eat it but if it was made in a plant oh stay away from it like stay away from like when I first found out about the middle of the grocery store I I never knew that until Dr Bernstein taught me it's like don't ever shop just just shop the edges of the grocery I'm like what he's like think about what's on the edges of

the grocery store and he made me think critical thinking and I'm like okay oh fruits vegetables Dairy butter he's like yeah that's where you shop stay away from the middle yeah and I'm like what oh my gosh that doesn't make sense it's all the high process uh high fruit gross corn syrup Ultra processed the sodas the frozen foods of like pizzas and stuff like that and listen even if you eat like that like okay fine if

you start feeling crappy then take one thing and substitute subtitute right it's not about like I'm not trying to guilt and shame anyone cuz that's the last thing that I ever want to do to human being as a therapist you know but I want them to have responsibility and understand be aware or an education I I think also a lot of times folks don't know and again this is going back to our previous business um it's

Insurance drives your therapy unfortunately in in a lot of cases most cases yes and if your doctor is you know I don't want to say it but if he's getting some sort of reward for prescribing X medication he's going to continue to prescribe X or he doesn't know because they did not take uh you know two days of nutrition or not two days but like you know credits after credits of nutrition they they have what four

hours or something and then everything else is focused on other things it's like food is medicine 100% right and health is wealth that's it we say that all the time so anyway ladies I just at where we're um starting to close out the that went really quick I know I know we we have a few minutes I know oh like seriously when we get into things it's like wow this is awesome I so just what would

you like to say to the audience as we're closing like any advice to mental health professionals or people that are you know like a little wary about all this is woo woo stuff like what would you like to to say to the audience as a mental health provider um I know everything about burnout is true so take the moment and take that healing time for yourself we as therapists we give so much of our soul to

the client we do this selflessly we don't get anything out of it right like physically or um but it also drains you at some point and you need to recharge and the way you do that is by providing self-care or going to another therapist but for me my therapy is disconnecting yes putting the life on hold and just taking care of me whether it's a circuit whether it's a facial where it's a massage that's the way

that I heal but that's me I take a walk I'll do I think I do every single thing you say plus more well there's so much important to try to stay sane in this world you carry a lot of that heavy with you yeah and it's hard to separate you know they say don't get personal don't but you yeah you a human but you're a person you're going to care and that's why you're in the industry

but you carry that sometimes with you especially when you hear things you wish you didn't hear and it's hard cuz you think about it and you think about it and you think about it and I wish I could have helped this person sooner I wish they didn't have to go through that but you know unfortunately life can be very ugly but at the same time life can be very beautiful and that's why there's people like you

who do what they do thank you and you guys need to really make sure to put yourselves first as well cuz you won't be any help to those that you're helping if you are not taking care of yourself and your mental health and that's why I think my faith is the most important that's why I pray for my clients before they come online and when they're when they leave I pray again I'm serious like this is

this is how I stay sane like I said because it's my main focus is to me and and my belief is the cross like I have to let that go and that's where I let it go at I'm like this this is yours please take it and then I do every single thing I possibly can that's healthy for me because I used to drink you know I used to drink alcohol and do drugs and take not

take care of myself and I had a lot of battles with that and now I mean being my age menopause is hdden I hope you guys do something for that like we're looking into there's a lot of interesting there's a lot of interesting mentalities but a holistic approach to it because I know my doctors wanted to put a pill in my back and do all these other things and I'm like oh and my mom and my

grandma like you know they don't come from this country and they're like there's better their ways you know and so it's like okay like and and what am I scared of because that's another thing in this culture we don't want to feel pain or sadness or anger and the thing is it's like oh no let's I'm going to sit with it at times well you don't have to I'm like no but listen how do you work

through it if you have to learn to cope with emotions not numb them out yes amen you know amen like it's Amen you need to life is meant to be felt every which way if we didn't have bad emotions we wouldn't appreciate the good ones exactly you have to have a healthy balance in life exactly exactly all right ladies where can people find you we are on um 1680 Southeast third Court in Deerfield Beach inside the

Cove shopping plaza you can find us online www5 elements spa.com five is spelled out and our Instagram is the number five uncore Elements uncore Spa and you can get more information also calling our Center at 954 531007 all right ladies thank you so much for being on the show thank you for having us this was incredible I love I know I love you guys too so much thank you so much for just going at it and

and and opening that place up especially by by me and hopefully we can create a group for therapists okay we'll talk we work together figure out like a way to no because we need it we do we need something like this and I'll we'll we'll have this conversation after we're off there so listeners thank you for listening and I hope you got something really great and please go self-care it's not selfish and remember trust in the

Lord guard your heart and renew your mind bye and now for the disclaimer to make sure you understand that you are responsible for you the content provided on the holistic counselor podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice diagnosis or treatment always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical or mental condition never

disregard professional medical advice or delay seeking it because of something you have heard on this podcast the views expressed on this podcast are my personal opinions and do not represent the views of any professional organizations with which I am Affiliated call your doctor 911 or 988 immediately if you have a medical emergency the holistic counselor podcast does not recommend or endorse any specific tests Physicians products procedures opinions or other information that may be mentioned on the

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