Photo of a Community Holistic Healthcare Day by Tom Hammang.
We spoke with Cornelia Wathen, co-founder of the Holistic Health Community, which arose in 2011 after a Mohonk Consultations program. Since 2012, the Holistic Health Community has hosted free Community Holistic Healthcare Days each month in Stone Ridge, NY. Volunteer administrators and providers offer services including acupuncture, reflexology, chiropractic, massage, and many more. They have also offered free Holistic Self-Care classes each month, many free weekend special events, and feature films related to well-being at the Rosendale Theatre.
One in a series of conversations with organizations that grew out of Mohonk Consultations programs, as a way of marking our 40th Anniversary.
MC: How is the Holistic Health Community connected with a Mohonk Consultations gathering?
CW: I was one of the people at the Mohonk Consultations meeting where the three of us who are founders of the Holistic Health Community met—Fay Loomis, Nancy Eos, and me. It was a Transition Towns conference and the speaker was Tina Clark. She was a wonderful teacher and the inspiration for Transition Marbletown. The three of us met when she had us split up into our interests—Nancy, Fay and I were particularly interested in holistic medicine. We were surprised and excited to discover that we held a very similar vision, and it was out of that meeting that we began to brainstorm creating the Holistic Health Community. On our website there is a page called History with more on how we got started.
MC: What are some standout memories from the early days of the Holistic Health Community?
CW: We were amazed at the number of people who showed up at the Marbletown Community Center for our initial meeting, announced in the Bluestone Press.
We were delighted by the great number of holistic practitioners who wanted to volunteer at our Healthcare Days. On our very first Healthcare Day, on the March 2012 Spring Equinox, over a hundred people came to receive services, though this was beyond our capacity.
When we needed a lawyer to form a non-profit corporation, we made a serendipitous connection with a top firm, and they offered to do the work pro bono.
MC: What achievements have brought you the most joy?
CW: We were thrilled to premiere our 22-minute documentary film at the Rosendale Theatre on October 1, 2019.
Since then, our film has been accepted by the Love Wins Film Festival, the Awareness Film Festival, the New Orleans Second Line Film Festival and the New York World film festivals, and has won the Award of Excellence at the Doctors Without Borders Film Festival, an Award of Merit from the Impact Docs competition and the Award of Merit at the Best Shorts competition.
View our film.
MC: Looking ahead, what are your aims and vision for serving the community?
CW: We received a generous two-year grant from an anonymous donor through the Community Funds of the Hudson Valley. We are now in the second year of that grant. The purpose of the grant is to take first steps toward realizing our Future Vision. We hired a project director to oversee the Future Vision project, and we hired an amazing architect who has been working with us to draw up plans for our Healing Sanctuary. We also rented an office and hired an office manager and a web designer to design a new website for us. We are now working with a business consultant to develop a strategic business plan for our Future Vision.
For a description of our Future Vision visit: https://holistichealthcommunity.org/about-us/our-future-vision
MC: How has the coronavirus shifted your work?
CW: As of March 2020, we could no longer hold large group gatherings at the Marbletown Community Center. Beginning the last week in March, we replaced our monthly Community Holistic Healthcare Days with monthly Healthcare Weeks. During our most recent Healthcare Week, 23 practitioners offered over 100 sessions by phone or zoom. We have also offered a number of holistic classes online. Many clients have expressed deep gratitude for these services, and our practitioners have expressed great pleasure at being able to serve in this way.