If you’re tired of expensive co-payments from the doctor and prescribed medication that doesn’t seem to make a difference, you might want to meet the alternative healers in Marbletown.

The Holistic Healing Community’s (HHC) main goal is to offer free health care that helps mend the mind, body and both the emotional and spiritual wellbeing of its patients. Its board and practitioners believe that love is an essential component of healing and that everyone has the capacity to do so. Healers and patients are equals in the process, which involves deep listening and respect.

“I just felt a really deep and much needed relaxation,” said an unnamed patient in a documentary about the work they do. “More than anything I felt cared for and that is really special.

The community was founded by a trio of like-minded healers, including Stone Ridge resident Cornelia Wathen, Fay Loomis, and Dr. Nancy Eos. The three met at a town-led training in 2011 and found they had a shared vision of offering free, holistic healthcare. After examining existing models, like one from the Ithaca Health Alliance, they returned home to found their own version in Marbletown. A local organization called “Health Care Is A Human Right” helped the community operate under Family of Woodstock, with financial support from Community Funds of the Hudson Valley. The Holistic Healing Community became a registered non-profit in April 2013.

On the first day of spring of 2012, the community held its first Community Holistic Healthcare Day, which has since allowed residents to sign up for free sessions with alternative healers on the third Tuesday of every month. The session is open to everyone, not just Marbletown folks. Visitors are encouraged to either donate money or pay by doing an act of kindness they may not have done before their session.

“I feel like I don’t always know what I need, or why I need it,” the same patient said. “But there’s always a broad scope of interesting things available.”

Before the pandemic, the Marbletown Community Center, where the healthcare day is held, is often crowded with 30 people by the time doors open at 4 p.m. Organizers complete a cleansing ceremony and open with a circle meditation session to invite warm, healing energy into the space beforehand. Visitors then fill out intake forms to help organizers pair them with the right provider before sending them to one session per month. Folks are encouraged to keep an open mind and try new healing methods if their provider of choice is too busy.

But when the pandemic shut the world down last March, the monthly healthcare days were not spared. Instead, the community held virtual sessions at the end of each month for the providers who did not need to meet in person (including lots of emotional support). While everyone involved surely missed the face-to-face connection, Wathen explained that the community was able to reach even more people online, including some out-of-staters, and even picked up a few new providers. In-person healthcare days resumed in July, but visitor numbers were low with some still worried to venture outside during the pandemic. Wathen said the online sessions may continue based on their successful test run.

On the physical end of healthcare day treatment, folks can visit a variety of providers, including massage therapists, chiropractors and acupuncturists. High Falls resident and community healer Diane Silverberg has practiced acupuncture for 22 years and explained that it redirects the body’s blood and energy flow, allowing injured areas of the body to nourish and mend themselves. Donating her services to the community is one of her favorite parts of the job.

“It fills my heart with love and also increases my healing ability,” she explained. “My strength and energy come from sharing my gift.

In addition to her role as coordinator of Community Holistic Healthcare Days and Weeks, Wathen is an experienced “energy healer” who is certified by the Barbara Brennan School of Healing: a four-year energy healing school based in Florida. She explained that her training taught her that the body is made of energy, which vibrates at various frequencies. These frequencies can be negatively impacted by emotional trauma and “low frequencies” are often precursors of disease, she claimed. With muscle testing techniques, kinesiology (the study of human movement and often intuition), energy healers purport to being able to pinpoint weak areas in the patient’s body and channel the appropriate frequencies, from their own bodies, into afflicted areas to revitalize them. Wathen loves to share a quote by Albert Einstein with her patients that captures this understanding:

“Everything is energy and that’s all there is to it. Match the frequency of the reality you want and you cannot help but get that reality. It can be no other way. This is not philosophy. This is physics.”

Wathen is also certified in a healing modality called “The Emotion Code,” where she identifies, locates and releases negative emotions trapped in the body when a patient experiences severe trauma.

The community also occasionally hosts special guests for lectures and sessions on various holistic healing modes. Wathen said one of the most popular guests was local healer John Beaulieu, who gave a lecture about “biosonics” or “sound healing,” which involves tapping two biosonic tuning forks to “bring your nervous system, muscle tone and organs into harmonic balance,” according to his website. Over 100 people attended that lecture, Wathen said. The community also used to partner with the Rosendale Theatre Collective to host wellness-themed films, like the 2018 documentary Heal, which follows three people’s holistic healing journeys after being diagnosed with fatal diseases. The community is also looking to partner with People’s Place, the Ulster County YWCA, and the Seasoned Evolution Center (all in Kingston) to expand their free holistic care beyond its normal region.

Recently, the HHC hired a fundraiser and architect to help design a healing sanctuary that could host healthcare days, events, regular healings and more. The community currently has no home base aside from the community center once a month. The sanctuary design utilizes “sacred geometry,” meaning its measurements and alignments make the building itself a healing force. The land of the sanctuary would not be owned, but rather managed by a community of residents and workers who live under a set list of intentions, ideals and principals. Much more money is needed to fund this goal, so those who support the vision can donate on their website: holistichealthcommunity.org.