During my conversation with Anna Carson, founder of Woonona’s not-for-profit health and wellness hub Entelechy Living, I have to ask her how to pronounce certain words. Ayurveda is one. Entelechy is another. And as the name of her business, that one’s probably the most important. (It’s en-tel-e-kee for those playing at home).
But Anna is so passionate about her work as a kinesiologist (that’s another), and so certain of the positive benefit the wellness hub and its many holistic practitioners can have on the local community, it’s hard to not get caught up in her enthusiasm.
Back to that word, ‘entelechy’. Turns out I wasn’t the only one to struggle with how to pronounce the name of the wellness hub. “People say, ‘how do you spell it?’ Change it!” Anna says, laughing. “And I say, I’m not changing it! The word is so important.
“It basically means the energy that you need for potential to materialise. So just like an acorn holds an oak tree within it, it needs entelechy for that oak tree to come to fruition. It’s unlocking that potential they hold within.”
The hub, which operates out of the historic Woonona Bulli School of Arts, opened its doors at the end of January so is itself in the process of unlocking its own potential. “It’s been a year of finding our feet,” Anna says.
Currently, Anna works there as an intuitive kinesiologist; there’s also yoga and meditation teachers, reiki and Ayurveda, naturopaths and many other holistic practitioners, with the offerings evolving over time.
But what exactly is a holistic health and wellbeing hub, anyway?
Anna explains it’s a community where people have autonomy and freedom of choice over their health and where the body is treated as a whole. “It’s really about weaving the mind, body and soul,” she says.
“You can’t just work on the physical. We have to understand how the role of our emotional wellbeing and often our spiritual wellbeing plays with our physical self. So bringing that back together as it’s been so separated.”
But more than that, Anna hopes the hub will provide a space for members of the local community to come together, connect with like-minded people and explore ways to empower their own health journey.
“We're designed to be connected. That’s our physiology, to be connected to one another, and yet our society has evolved to a point where we feel incredibly isolated and separate,” Anna says. “We really want to break down those barriers and bring people together.”
If you’re not sure that a holistic heath approach is your cup of (herbal) tea, the fortnightly Care Cafe might be for you. The space is open for anybody to drop-in, grab a cuppa, ask any health-related questions and the practitioners who are there offer their services at a much reduced rate – $25 for 30 minutes, $50 for an hour.
“This is a way for us to give back to the community and make these modalities accessible to more people,” Anna says.
“I think it’s [an] essential thing for us to come back together and to support one another and to see ourselves in a different way. We’ve really been conditioned to see ourselves almost like a mechanical body and you just need to press the right button or take the right tablet, and we’re so much more complex than that and so much more beautiful. There’s such magic in our own internal wisdom.”
To learn more, including dates of community movie nights and the next Care Cafe, head to Facebook and Instagram.
If you'd like to volunteer at the hub or to work as a practitioner, contact Anna on 0448 267 560.
