The Rise of Alternative Health and Wellness

This story is part of our November 2024 issue. To subscribe, click here.

Tucked at the end of Main Street in historic Folsom, Mind Garden
welcomes the community into an outdoor oasis flush with greenery,
tables for two, a fountain and a hearth surrounded by plush
seating.

The garden invites the public to enjoy a quiet moment to relax or
reconnect. Inside, an acupuncturist and naturopathic doctor see
patients. Soon, the yoga room with floor-to-ceiling windows
looking onto the garden will fill with people stretching and
moving their bodies, focusing on their breath and calming their
minds.

Opened in June by Leo and Sabine Martinez, Mind Garden is a
holistic health and wellness center emulating a practice the
owners found in Thailand where they met training as therapists.
There they found multiple modalities under one roof and a strong
sense of community that fostered healing.  

Holistic health considers the whole person — physical, mental,
emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual — a view well
understood by ancient medical systems such as traditional Chinese
medicine and India’s Ayurveda.

Similarly, the approach of Whole Health, a movement led by the
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is, “Let me understand who
you are as a person. … What matters to you as opposed to what’s
the matter with you,” says Dr. Michelle Dossett, an internist who
specializes in integrative medicine at UC Davis Health Point West
Clinic in Sacramento. “I think eventually it’s going to transform
what we do in conventional medicine in this country more
broadly.”

Today, there’s a growing awareness and demand for alternatives to
conventional medicine that has historically focused on treating
disease and still relies heavily on pharmaceuticals. The shift is
changing how the American public, physicians and businesses
perceive and address health. 

Alternative therapies 

“Most of us in the western world have grown up with Descartes: ‘I
think, therefore I am.’ There’s the mind and there’s the body,
and they’re these two totally different things,” says Dossett.
“What we have increasingly recognized over the last few decades
is that, no, the mind and the body are intricately intertwined,
and that our state of mind can impact our physical function.”

Major health care systems in the Capital Region, including UC
Davis Health, Dignity Health and Sutter Health, have integrative
medicine programs that offer evidence-based therapies,
complementing conventional medicine to treat the body, mind and
spirit. Alternative therapies can include acupuncture, Chinese
herbs and qigong, reflexology, energy work such as reiki,
meditation, yoga, osteopathic manipulation, supplements, special
diets and naturopathic medicine.

“When we get real rest or we have real, true relaxation, then
we just feel better. … If we’re not slowing down, and we’re not
relaxing, and we’re not having meaningful experiences and
present moments with people and ourselves … our body is
responding to that by being stressed, and our body is
forgetting how to relax.”Cori Martinez, owner, Asha Urban
Baths

Naturopathy is a medical system that combines science with
non-toxic, holistic approaches to treat the root problems of
disease and strengthen the body’s natural ability to heal itself.

At Mind Garden, all the practitioners share a holistic mindset
toward wellness. And while each works for themselves, the
Martinezes designed their offerings with the ability to cross
refer to one another.  

“I have definitely seen that the collaboration gets better
results than just one thing — just doing yoga or just doing
acupuncture, just going to therapy. Really getting all of those
pieces together is holistic health at its best,” says Caitlin
Fanning, Mind Garden’s naturopathic doctor.

Mind Garden also offers massage therapy, hypnotherapy, Pilates,
multiple therapy modalities including somatic therapy that
integrates mind and body, therapy for couples or substance abuse,
and meditation, which can improve mental and physical health.
 

Research shows meditating for 20 minutes a day for eight weeks
creates visible changes on an MRI scan of a person’s brain, says
Dr. Dossett, who adds that meditating for that same length of
time “can change expression of over 1,500 different genes in
white blood cells of the immune system,” leading to benefits such
as decreases in inflammation, improvements in how the body uses
insulin and increases in mitochondrial energy production.

No one is immune to stress, but how we deal with it is a
determinant of health. Stress is linked to chronic inflammation,
which is linked to prevalent chronic diseases in the U.S.
Overeating, consumerism, self-medicating with alcohol or drugs,
and binge watching are common trends to cope with stress in the
U.S. that provide immediate, temporary relief but compromise
health.   

Small businesses in the Capital Region have responded with
holistic alternatives to help people destress. Urban Baths Folsom
opened in June as the first franchise of Cori Martinez’s Asha
Urban Baths in Sacramento. Folsom’s only bathhouse provides space
to completely unwind, relax and rejuvenate the body and mind
through hydrotherapy and heat — a practice embraced by cultures
for thousands of years for health, healing and community.  

“When we get real rest or we have real, true relaxation, then we
just feel better. … If we’re not slowing down, and we’re not
relaxing, and we’re not having meaningful experiences and present
moments with people and ourselves … our body is responding to
that by being stressed, and our body is forgetting how to relax,”
says Cori.

Bathhouses under the Urban Bath franchise are designed to be
unpretentious, accessible and relatable. To support everyone who
enters the communal gathering space, a culture of acceptance and
respect for every person and their experience is central to the
bathhouse’s framework and is expected of staff and patrons alike.
 

“We do a lot to cultivate a very specific vibe, which allows
people to settle and connect more intimately,” says Cori. “And
that’s what you get with quiet voices, all devices prohibited, at
a slow pace.”

The Jacquelyn in Midtown Sacramento also built holistic health
and wellness into its inclusive women-focused club. The club
provides the time and space to relax, making it convenient for
members to take care of themselves, says CEO Maren Conrad. 

During her research, Conrad found the simple pleasures of a bath
and a nap are key to how women relax, but often their homes
aren’t conducive to that, she says, with shared spaces, small
children, tub toys, Amazon deliveries, barking dogs and roaring
leaf blowers. At The Jacquelyn, members can soak undisturbed in a
private tub or take a 45-minute nap in a private room complete
with a bed, weighted blankets, provided pajamas and no outside
noise or interruptions from mobile phones.

Members can also try floating meditation, swaddled in a silk
aerial yoga hammock while an energy healer performs a chakra
restoration — aligning the body’s seven chakras (energy centers)
— using crystal bowls to create healing musical sound and
vibration. 

“Reiki and other biofield or energy therapies are probably on the
frontier of integrative medicine,” says Dr. Dossett. She likens
it to acupuncture when she was training as a physician, which was
considered placebo by those in conventional medicine. “Now we
have really robust, randomized, controlled trial data showing
that acupuncture is more than placebo.”

Chi, or energy, is fundamental to traditional Chinese medicine, a
medical system practiced for thousands of years. According to
that system, chi is the life force that flows through the body
along pathways called meridians, and it’s responsible for the
health and well-being of the intertwined body, mind and spirit.
Practices such as acupuncture, the use of Chinese herbs, tai chi
and qigong promote the flow of chi in the body to maintain health
or restore function.

When the body is emotionally weak, it becomes stressed,
contributing to illness and disease, says Tian Li, owner of Tian
Chao Herbs and Acupuncture in Sacramento, where she treats a
range of health conditions, including pain, digestive disorders,
insomnia, anxiety, depression and infertility. When people are
ill, she encourages them to question what in their life may be
contributing to poor health and what needs to change.

Happiness and reducing stress is key. So is common sense, says
Li. She acknowledges there’s a time and place for conventional
medicine, but instead of popping a pill, she wants people to ask
themselves, “Why am I sick?” 

“There are many things that can heal us,” she says. “The dog can
be a medicine, the flower can be a medicine … or a river
walk.” 

Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes living in harmony with
nature and its seasonal rhythms. The human body is meant to walk.
It’s supposed to sweat in the summer and rest and conserve energy
in the winter. The body’s circadian rhythms are aligned to rise
with the sun and wind down when it sets. But modern society has
made it easy to disregard natural rhythms. We no longer need to
walk, and we can stay comfortable all four seasons inside,
explains Li. 

Walk, eat, rest, connect

In October, The Jacquelyn introduced its Surprise and Delight
Walks, shifting people’s focus outdoors while they move
naturally. Walks reveal hidden gardens, murals, art and fun
surprises you wouldn’t necessarily know about Midtown, says
Conrad, creating opportunities to observe everyday commonalities
with a new perspective. Members can also join Pilates and yoga
classes. 

To keep the practice of movement accessible, Mind Garden offers
free yoga classes in its garden every Saturday morning. Yoga
Moves Us, a local nonprofit, also offers free yoga in several
communities throughout the Sacramento region. 

Working in tandem with how people move their bodies is how they
fuel them. UC Davis Health’s integrative medicine program often
works with variations of the anti-inflammatory diet, says
Dossett, which may be a vegan diet for some or a shift toward a
Mediterranean, more plant-based diet for others. The Jacquelyn’s
restaurant, The Cellar, is also based on a Mediterranean diet.
And Li recommends eating seasonally.

For example, watermelon is not a winter food, she says, but you
can buy it all four seasons. “So every time I see watermelons …
out of season, I think, oh gosh, OK, I wish people knew the
health impacts of eating this out of season.”

In late 2024, Li will open the Violet Wellness Spa in Fair Oaks
Village. The region’s first traditional Chinese medicine spa will
feature Chinese-inspired spa services as well as seasonal living
and lifestyle education, such as how to eat seasonally. Li’s
second book, “Stay Healthy With the Seasons,” is expected to be
published in the first half of 2025. 

And central to holistic health are social networks that shape and
support healthy behaviors. That sense of community is fundamental
to The Jacquelyn,  where supportive, positive interactions
and space to process emotions such as grief are built into its
culture. It’s encouraged at Urban Baths Folsom with a quiet space
to truly connect with the people in our lives. And community
building is key to healing, says Leo Martinez at Mind
Garden. 

It’s about “the importance of showing up for yourself and for one
another. … There’s such power in just showing up and then holding
space for one another, connecting with one another,” says Sabine
Martinez. “That is the essence of Mind Garden.”