Wellness Fair Report!

On Friday, April 19th, Brattleboro Food Co-op hosted a Wellness Fair. Many folks applied to participate, and thirteen wonderful local businesses took part. The café bubbled over with excited energy as folks engaged in conversation, tried exercises and sampled goodies. In the words of life coach Heidi Fortsch, “It was a much needed infusion of community and I was grateful to be a part of it!”

We caught up with each Wellness Fair presenter to ask them the question, “What is your definition of wellness?” Their answers were thought-provoking and fun to hear, so we wanted to share them with you here. We plan to offer another Wellness Fair in 2025, so keep an eye out if you are interested in applying to participate!

Name: Sarah Manning
Business: Fit Body Boot Camp Westminster
Product: 30-minute boot camps that challenge the body and deliver results in a positive, supportive atmosphere
“Wellness is taking care of your whole self—body, mind, and spirit—using a wide variety of resources, not just one thing. It takes a village to create wellness. That’s why our campers like to join in doing local service projects together. Wellness is not just about what you eat. It’s about so much more.”

Name: Shyla Foss
Business: Vermont Department of Health
Product: Lifestyle support and education
“Wellness is the ability for the healthy choice to be the easy choice for all people. It’s about removing barriers, implementing strategies and creating a community culture that supports everyone in living their best lives.”

Name: Emily Sat Akal Millspaugh
Business: Windhorse Naturopathic Clinic
Product: Thermography, Colon Hydrotherapy, Naturopathy, Infrared Sauna, EMDR
“Wellness is a self-exploration. It’s knowing what you need to feel your best and perform your best. It is an ever-evolving spiral of getting to know yourself.”

Name: Mary Freihofer
Business: Advanced Skincare Solutions
Product: Skin care aesthetics, Ayurvedic based facials, microdermabrasion, peels
“Wellness is physical and spiritual. It is about what makes the individual feel good. Some people use therapy as their self-care, some massage, and some facials.”

Name: Suzanna Kamphuis
Business: Totum Vos
Product: Multi-Collagen Chews
“Wellness is being energized and engaged. It can encompass all kinds of things. Pain can make it hard to be present. If you have what you need to be fully present, that is wellness.”

Business: AIDS Project of Southern Oregon
Product: Prevention, empowerment and harm-reduction
“Wellness is being happy and healthy” -Dakota
“Wellness is prioritizing your sexual health and equipping yourself with knowledge to learn about harm reduction.” -Heather

Name: Jeremiah
Business: Sojourns Community Health Clinic
Product: Nonprofit health clinic that provides integrative health services
“Wellness is the crossroads where your mental state, emotional state, and physical state are in harmonious balance.”

Name: Erin Englehardt
Business: Jasmine Healing Arts
Product: Massage Therapy, Holistic Skin Care, Energywork, Ayurvedic Bodywork
“Wellness is balance, but it is not a static balance. It is the ability to return to center from every extreme. Life is pulsing, and your state of wellness will also fluctuate. Being flexible with the flow of this fluctuation is wellness. In Ayurveda, this is called spanda, and it is depicted as a figure eight—your energy may flow one way or another but in wellness, it always returns to center.”

Name: Louise LeGouis
Business: HomeBody
Product: private and group yoga practices, self-myofascial release training, and wellness coaching
“For me, wellness means ‘wholeness,’ where body, mind, and spirit are on the same page, a sense of integration or alignment. In other words, my body’s wellness isn’t being hijacked by my mind and my mind’s idea of wellness isn’t in conflict with what my spirit needs.”

Name: Laura Thomas, LAc
Business: Acupuncture for Humanity
Product: Affordable community acupuncture services
“Wellness is a place of balance and harmony of body, mind, and spirit. It’s a state of allowing the natural flow of the universe. Wellness is always available and always flowing. We just need to be in a place of allowing it to flow.”

Name: Heidi Fortsch
Business: Dirty Girl Coaching
Product: Life coaching through life’s many transitions, empowering folks to lead with their hearts and souls.
“Wellness is contentment with your physical, existential, emotional, and spiritual surroundings. It’s not just what you eat or how you’re exercising, it’s about who you’re spending time with. There is an element about empowered choices about all layers of life.”

Name: Fran Freeman
Business: Reiki Healing Arts Vermont
Product: Reiki sessions and classes
“Wellness is balance with body, mind, spirit, and emotion. All levels.”