INTERVIEW WITH TAMMY BENNETT BY FRANCES FIGART

When Tammy Bennett was growing up in Powell River, British Columbia, Canada, she was prone to colds and respiratory issues which caused her to be ill and tired even into college and adulthood. Instead of ultimately letting this get her down, she focused herself and her energies around health and fitness. Now, at age 36, she is the Healing Centre Creative Director at Harmony Hotel and not only is she a healthy mother of an infant, but also helps others to refocus their health-related energies. Hers is a fascinating story about the unification of mind, body and spirit to triumph over adversity.

Frances: Canada is in so many ways just as beautiful as Costa Rica. Do you get back there often?

Tammy: I visited recently. It had been two years since my last visit to Canada, but with a new child it is a must to get back to see my family and his grandparents. I truly love the area I come from. It is so breathtakingly beautiful in so many ways.

Frances: How did you get from an island in British Columbia to the Nicoya Peninsula and to get this job at Harmony?

Tammy: I came to San Juanillo, Costa Rica, to a course being taught in Rebalancing Bodywork. It was a course that was inclusive of community living, meditation, communication, food, health, 5-rhythms dance, art therapy and of course it provided a technique for how to do bodywork. I really loved my time and experience with the program. So I became a teacher and helped run the school in the winter months and returned to Canada to my massage business there for the summer months. My last year of teaching in CR I moved to Nosara. Soon discovering my love for surfing, salsa, and the sun, I took over a friend’s raw-food café and turned it into Trees Lounge Massage. Before long, I met John and Susan, who were soon to become the new owners of what is now known as Harmony Hotel. They both loved my bodywork and all of us felt a deep connection. I was then invited to come and work within the hotel as a masseuse and to work as a consultant for the Healing Centre – and the rest is history. I opened the Healing Centre within the Harmony Hotel December 22, 2006. I am so grateful to John and Susan who held the vision for me to open their Healing Centre. They are both extraordinary in their vision.

Frances: What do you do during a typical day in your job?

Tammy: There is no typical day for me. I wake up and come to work and try to be as available and as open as possible to the Healing Centre and its needs, to the people that work here and to the guests that visit us. I try to live as openly and translucently as possible through everything I do. I do my best to stay neutral about the day and do my best as the day unfolds. I don’t really feel like my work is a job as much as it is a way of being. It is an environment for many to come together and live and experience life through this workplace as a vehicle.

Frances: What were you like as a child?

Tammy: As a child I was constantly concerned about the needs of everyone else, especially those that were sick or underprivileged. I dreamed of being Wonder Woman or any kind of superhero that helped save the world from evil. At the same time I really loved to take initiative and so my first entrepreneurial job that I created was at the age of seven in my neighborhood making what I called ‘perfume’ and selling it to my neighbors as well as being hired to take care of all kinds of animals, from domestic to farm animals. I really haven’t stopped with my entrepreneurial endeavors since. So there was this combination of deep empathy, reflection and take-action type forces prominent in my personality since childhood. It only seemed natural that later in my life I combined being in the healing arts with my own business. As a child I was the only person able to help my mom find any relief from her neck and head pain and it was my mom who really wanted to see me grow into what she felt was a natural ‘gift,’ that of touch.

Frances: I understand that you were very sick when you were younger. What was the diagnosis?

Tammy: As a child throughout school, I often had colds and coughs. They were such a nuisance and so persistent and so often and so many that still to this day I can hear a cough or be around someone who is sick and I can feel in my own body what that person has. During my later years of high school I was constantly fighting off being tired and falling asleep all the time. It wasn’t until college when I finally went to see a doctor that I was pulled out of school for having severe strep throat. I recovered, but then a year later when I went to study at university to start the long road to becoming a doctor, I again fell ill, but this time no one knew what was wrong with me. I could no longer teach aerobics, I could barely get out of bed, looking at my bicycle made me more tired and my mind was foggy and I just couldn’t snap out of it. I was falling into a state of despair as I was fatigued to the deepest core level of my being. The medical system offered to put me on a number of lifetime medications which all had side effects that would cause my quality of life to continue to go downhill. Doing a little research on the side, I realized that taking the medical approach, I had nothing to look forward to but only a downhill slide that would leave me bedridden by the age of 30.

So I left the medical world and entered into the world of healing though diet, whole foods, herbs and cleanses – and continued that journey, which further led me to meditation, a positive mental attitude, environmental awareness, green products and ideas, bodywork and so much more. I haven’t looked back since and truly it was only 3 days of being on a cleanse that made me feel better than I could ever remember feeling in my entire lifetime. When I say better I mean I could feel that I had pure, clean energy in my body without anything holding me back. I felt that my vision was better and threw away my reading glasses. My brain was clear and my memory was so sharp and strong, unlike it had ever been before. It was as though someone just turned up the dial on vitality for my life and I was “on.” This was just after 3 days and since I have dedicated my life to health and healing.

Frances: What personal, educational and career goals did you set for yourself and how did you achieve them?

Tammy: Truly, my desire was to find a way of supporting myself that didn’t have a social or environmental cost: to be a contributor rather than a taker. This was my measure of being successful. As a result, I have been involved in nontraditional forms of ‘healing’ my entire life. One of my first entrepreneurial exploits was creating the “energy ball,” similar to the energy bar, but then sold the company. I went on to study Rebalancing Bodywork, which wasn’t a recognized profession at that time in British Columbia. Undeterred by the common belief that recognition by the medical industry is an important factor to success, I believed that bodywork training is integral to healing and well being and continued to study it in many incarnations. This belief has allowed me to be involved in pioneering new concepts in emerging communities. Helping to re-open the bodywork school I studied at and becoming one of the teachers, I inspired raw food options and was an instigator in bringing the concept of cleanses into the curriculum. Simultaneously, I opened up two successful massage practices back home. This work was always offset by precious time alone with my kayak living on the shoreline of one of Canada’s gulf islands that is off of the power grid.

Other innovative schools of thought and organizations I have studied or been involved with, to name a few, have been Vipassana Meditation, 5-rhythms Dance, Art Therapy, Osho Meditations, Raw Food workshops, Earthsave, Healthy School Lunchbox Program, Just Dance, Superfoods, Blue Green Algae MLM, Circling Dawn Organic Food Store and Restaurant, Enzyme Nutrition, Gaia Yoga, Leyline, tree planting, permaculture, and attending many lectures on food and where it comes from.

Frances: What makes you the happiest about your current situation and why?

Tammy: I am committed on every level of my being to growth, to honesty, health and healing. I am committed to pioneering the concept that there doesn’t have to be side impact to anyone’s health or an environmental cost for me to support myself in this life. Every day I get to wake up and improve the model I am creating with the Healing Centre – and that there is way to do this. For people to have services that go further than the skin level. To not have to compromise. I get to meet people every day who either understand this concept themselves or are appreciating getting to experience this during their stay at the Harmony or during their visit to the Healing Centre.

Frances: What do you feel are the benefits for tourists or travelers who come to stay at an eco-resort or sustainable hotel as opposed to a regular, mainstream accommodation that does not consider sustainability?

Tammy: Truly, it is the intention that comes through in any business that we all feel. I believe we are all so accustomed to the intention of businesses to make money and don’t realize what we are feeling as we are de-sensitized in that business model. But when we come to an environment whose integrity is to do the right thing, you can’t help but feel good just by being there.

Frances: What piece of knowledge about wellness would you most like to impart to people reading this interview?

Tammy: Wellness is always a choice. We are either working towards our wellness or towards our ‘dis’ ease. One less cup of coffee is a choice towards heath or stopping the rush in our lives to sit and have coffee with a friend is a choice towards health. It isn’t complicated; it is just little decisions we make all day long. If we stop and listen to that little voice, the one that nags us about what we need to do or don’t do ...there it is. There is the decision to make that step towards vibrating at a higher frequency. When we don’t want to listen to it, when we want to shift our responsibility on to someone else, when we start moving into the blame game, believing that somehow something outside of ourselves is going to make us healthy – then we forget that truly it is our own journey. It is about listening, about being conscious and not being afraid to feel and know what we already feel and know.

Wellness Destinations in Costa Rica and Nicaragua

Wellness is an early morning jog along a deserted beach with mist lifting in the distance and dark-green jungle revealing itself. It is breathing crisp, clean air for a yoga pose held minutes on end. It is a massage that loosens and releases the knots of our lives. It is the song of invisible creatures of the night. Wellness is a walk with the sounds of the forest, and a swim with the dolphins. Wellness is sweet, fresh fruit, and warm homemade bread. Wellness is that drink at the end of the day, to say goodbye to the sun, hello to the night and give thanks for a beautiful days spent. Wellness is all around and yet only within.
Journey within. Come join us at one of these four unforgettable destinations and let us evoke the wellness inside.