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NEW ALBANY — A local wellness center is expanding its mental health services to meet needs amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Heart 2 Heart Wellness Center, 3306 Plaza Drive in New Albany, is launching a digital practice that will serve the Louisville and Indianapolis markets.
The business offers therapy, therapeutic yoga, meditation, holistic health care services and medication management for children and adults, and as it adapts its services to a digital format, the center is facing significant growth.
The digital practice will include the type of one-on-one telehealth therapy and healthcare services it has been offering amid the pandemic, but it will also include weekly online yoga classes and guided meditation classes to provide a more “holistic” approach to wellness, according to Glynita Bell, founder and clinical director of Heart 2 Heart.
The digital wellness center practice will include virtual meetings with licensed therapists, nurse practitioners, therapeutic yoga instructors and meditation practitioners.
“It is absolutely a privilege to be able to use our gifts of therapy, yoga, massage and meditation and all of these services that are so imperative to people’s wellbeing during a time that’s so difficult to navigate,” Bell said.
Bell, a licensed clinical social worker, started Heart 2 Heart in 2012 by contracting with local schools, and the brick-and-mortar wellness center opened in 2017 with five employees.
The center has since increased its workforce by 76% with 21 employees. Bell said the the center has hired 11 people just since September of this year.
The pandemic has “wreaked havoc” on the community, Bell said, and therapists have had to quickly adapt to offer telehealth. The center switched telehealth visits in March before resuming in-person services in August, and over the summer, it introduced outdoor yoga sessions. “We were anticipating the winter and losing the opportunity to be outside and have safe socialization outside,” Bell said. “We’re preparing in the field for increased mental health issues — increased isolation, increased depression and increased anxiety.”
Bell was initially hoping to open another physical location in Louisville this year, but with the sudden switch to virtual visits, that plan was placed on the back-burner, and she has been focusing instead on serving Louisville clients with online sessions and the virtual practice. “We didn’t stop the vision of being able to serve as many people as we can, especially during such critical time in all our lives for mental health and social health,” she said.
Bell said she is excited to expand services in the region, and she notes that the Heart 2 Heart digital practice’s staff includes three therapists who live in the Indianapolis area. “We’re ready to grow as volume dictates, but we thought it was good to start with three,” she said. “I think it’s important to have relative commonalities you can talk about with clients and places you can connect a little more on the surface to be able to talk about what’s going on in your own city.”
Bell said her goal is to offer Heart 2 Heart’s services across the region, and “this is just our first step towards our future.”
“We are just excited to be able to grow in response to the needs we’re seeing in our community at-large and the community around us,” she said.
She said Heart 2 Heart aims to create a “sense of community” with the virtual wellness services. If a client signs up for an online yoga class, they will also be interacting with others in the class, not just the instructor. Bell said Heart 2 Heart follows a collaborative approach to holistic wellness, and clients can sign up for packages to bundle services such as yoga, meditation and therapy.
To learn more about the digital wellness practice, visit https://www.heart2heartservices.com.
Source: https://www.newsandtribune.com/news/heart-2-heart-wellness-center-to-offer-virtual-practice/article_07052d10-22de-11eb-a8dc-bb0d38fe88e7.html
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