by Martin Miron

Shivam Ray has been successfully operating Aum Body & Soul Spa, in Guttenberg, for eight years, offering wellness massages and treatments, along with a yoga studio, but he decided to branch out and create Lotus Genesis Wellness Center in May at the same location, which offers many more types of specialized treatment, including a ayurvedic/naturopathic doctor on staff.

         “What we’ve decided to do with Lotus services is to offer many different modalities from all over the world—ancient traditions and wellness sciences—all under one roof. You have anything from Chinese medicine to Indian to Native American to modern things like quantum biofeedback and hypnotherapy. So it’s like a one-stop place where you can get everything done,” says Ray.

         “But what we do differently is offer a curated experience for people. If somebody has back pain, they want to know what they can do that’s holistic and that will be helpful for their symptoms. Typically, they go online and research many different modalities, like reiki, acupuncture, chiropractors, and so forth. Then from there, they have to decide which modality is going to really be effective with research and study. Then they have to find somebody who’s local in their area, who’s well qualified, whose style is legitimate, who can really help them and work with them. So by the time somebody does that, they basically had to have a master’s degree in how all these different modalities work, who they can work with, what kind of results they can expect, and it becomes a lot,” explains Ray.

         “Oftentimes they say, ‘This is too much. I’m finding conflicting information online; somebody says chiropractic is good for this, somebody says reiki is good for that,’ and they’ll get frustrated and overwhelmed, giving up exploring holistic options, in addition to having to cope with their illness. What we do instead is we have somebody come in, and they necessarily don’t need to know what treatment they need; they just tell us what the problem is. Then from there, we will guide them through any number of different modalities that give them the most effective and direct path to being healed,” notes Ray.

         Ray is a board-certified hypnotherapist and an adjunct professor at the Hypnotherapy Academy of America, in New Mexico, where he teaches at one of the most prestigious schools in the world for hypnotherapy. Ray says, “The mind doesn’t live in the brain, it’s a very common misconception. The brain is an organ that interfaces with the mind, but the mind and the brain are completely separate. We focus across three different aspects of wellness: mind, body, and spirit.”

         “If somebody comes in with severe back pain and they can’t get to work, our first goal is to help them to alleviate some of the symptoms so they can restore a normal lifestyle. We might have them do a treatment called Kati Basti. That’s an ancient ayurvedic treatment, and it’s very, very effective. So they can return to work in a somewhat normal lifestyle,” advises Ray.

         “It’s a curated experience, so we really focus on everything from symptoms to root cause to long-term relief,” he elaborates. “Lets say that if they had gone for reiki, they might get some symptom relief, because energy healing is good for one or two weeks, but then that becomes part of the normal self-care which they’ll have to carry for the rest of their life.

         It’s not much different than taking pills. We take an unbiased look at what’s really best for the client, because we offer everything. If we only offered reiki, then everything has to be a reiki client; but we can take a really client-centered, client-based approach that is going to be effective for them through the long term. The philosophy is quite a bit different.”

          Much depends on the motivation of the patient. “If I’m working with a client for hypnotherapy who has as their goal to be a better public speaker and is having a hard time being clear on what the emotions are, I might have them see one of my holistic nutritionists who can really work on their gut health to get those emotions leveled out,” states Ray. “Or, if a reiki practitioner is working on somebody and they keep seeing the same part of the body that keeps creating tension throughout the whole body, we might take them to a massage therapist or to a hypnotherapist, so we really work as a team. For every client who comes in, we have a team of experts looking at the symptoms, the progress and curating their journey and their wellness program.”

Lotus Genesis Wellness Center is located at 7000 JFK Blvd. E., Ste. M15, in the Galaxy Mall, in Gutenberg, NJ. For appointments, call 201-210-4764 or email [email protected]. For more information and workshop signup, visit LotusGenesisWellnessCenter.com.