Name: Caitlin Boyle
Occupation: Owner at Rooted Akron, Healing Arts Director at Big Love Network, Reiki Master
Hometown: Born in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada; grew up in Huron, OH
Current Neighborhood: North Hill
Contact: rootedakron@gmail.com
Name: Kelly McHood
Occupation: Owner at Rooted Akron, Healing Arts Director at Big Love Network, Yoga Teacher
Hometown: Akron
Current Neighborhood: North Hill
Contact: rootedakron@gmail.com
What’s your Big Idea?
To create a safe space for our community to heal, a space where complementary and alternative medicine and various healing modalities, meditation, and adjunct therapies can be explored. In this space, you won’t be turned away from these beneficial modalities because of your income. Instead, this center will work to provide access to this care across socioeconomic barriers so we all have a chance to heal from physical, emotional and mental trauma. This will provide a place where folks can find adjunct methods to aid in their health, healing and well-being and not replace Western medicine.
Why pursue it?
No one should be denied a space to heal, especially due to their monetary income. So many of us have trauma. From the moment we are born, or sometimes even before birth, we encounter traumatic experiences, some large and some small, some emotional, some mental, and some physical, that we carry with us. When we grant ourselves the time and space to move through that trauma and explore alternative methods of healing, we can experience transformations of mind, body and spirit.
There is true value these methods have made in our lives, as well as in others’. We want to be a part of the movement to put these methods on the map as legitimate, real and important. We want to support the incredible individuals already working with these different methods in our community by joining in a network to offer their gifts and passions on a community-wide scale. We want to provide these beneficial adjunct therapies to as many in Akron as we can, especially to folks who, because of a number of political, social, economic, racial, and ethnic reasons, do not have access to them. We want to create a space where yoga, yoga therapy, Reiki, doula care, garden therapy, music therapy, art therapy and massage, to name a few, are offered to our community without the weight of financial burdens.
When did you know your big idea was a good idea?
Our intuition tells us! This is our life’s work, our passion, and part of our purpose.
How do you hope your big idea helps Akron grow?
As we move down this journey of healing and explore ways in which we can simply just be, it’s like pieces of ourselves connect back together. We start to feel whole, we feel growth.
Imagine if as many folks in our beloved community were given the opportunity to experience this. What would our community look like, feel like, act like? Through the exploration of complementary and alternative medicine, healing modalities, adjunct therapies and meditation, Akronites can feel supported as they take the time they truly need to heal, to explore, to be.
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