Come for the candy, stay for the SIMRA at Amethyst Mind Body Synergy.
Amethyst is a locally owned healing and therapy business at 7050 Barstow St. across from the Cherry Hills Library. ReVassage therapist Velina Vassar and certified nutritionist and healer Michelle Croft explained what the business offers during a tour of the building.
“We used to have yoga and Pilates and barre and all of that, but right now we’re just doing Qigong and Tai Chi, and some sound healing classes,” Vassar explained while in the classroom studio portion of the business. She said the building Amethyst is in used to be a preschool and that a new preschool is slated to be built next to her business sometime soon. Amethyst opened after the old preschool became vacant a few years ago.
“The dentist next door, her father bought this building and built that side for her. I lived in this neighborhood, and I was on a walk one day and, oh my gosh, there was nothing here. It was completely gutted,” Vassar said. That’s when Amethyst came to fruition.
In addition to the Qigong and Tai Chi classes, Amethyst offers social services, play therapy, massage, brain training, a halotherapy salt room, and a shop with chocolates and other products made with honey from the Shoshone river valley. Vassar said clients with PTSD or some who recently had COVID find the brain training exercises to be beneficial.
She said the loss of taste and smell, as well as “brain fog,” from COVID make it difficult for patients to feel normal again. That’s where the brain training becomes useful. A flyer provided by Vassar says neuroptimal brain training, or neurofeedback, is form of biofeedback “designed to monitor, quantify and train brain waves in real time in order to help individuals increase their ability to regulate brain function.” Using special equipment, the brain’s electrical activity is recorded, which therapists use to help “promote positive brain activity and/or identify and address any brain areas that may be experiencing dysregulation.”
A neurofeedback session can last 30-60 minutes and has been used as complementary therapy in the treatment of PTSD, emotional issues, anxiety, depression, stress, anger, addiction, learning issues, ADHD, athletic performance, fatigue and other sleep disorders. Likewise, SIMRA healing helps to resolve emotional wounds and can increase mental clarity.
Croft, who is also a registered play therapist and licensed clinical social worker, explained in more detail. “SIMRA is a form of energy work,” she said. “Energy work uses universal energy and allows that energy to flow through somebody that’s trained as a healer. So, it’s not the person that’s their energy per se. It’s the flow of that. It’s like connecting two energy sources. Some people would say connecting to God, connecting to the universe, connecting to a higher source, somebody that’s called as a healer to do that.”
- Croft said SIMRA is like sound therapy, which is also offered at Amethyst. “Sound therapy is just the vibration of sound,” Croft said, explaining that just as some sounds at the right frequency can shatter glass, other sounds can provide benefits to the body. “So that frequency causes a vibration in another product, which is the glass, and it’ll burst, right? So same thing if we use certain frequencies, whether it’s with somebody’s body, or whether it’s tuning forks or singing bowls or things like that, and we can raise the frequency in somebody’s body. A higher vibrating frequency is a healthier person,” Croft said.
Down the hall from the sound therapy room is a halotherapy Himalayan salt room, which Vassar said is a recent addition she is proud of. “Salt therapy is very popular in Europe,” Vassar said. “This machine disburses the salt throughout the room,” she explained, pointing to a rectangular device outside the room. According to one of the flyers at Amethyst, salt therapy has a calming and detoxifying effect that “can support the immune, nervous and lymphatic systems.” Salt therapy also helps reduce stress and headaches, increase energy, and improve sleep patterns in addition to helping resolve skin issues such as acne, eczema and psoriasis. “Pure Himalayan mineral salts have natural moisturizing properties and support the skin’s water balance and barrier functions by attracting moisture to the skin,” the flyer reads.
Across from the sound therapy room is a separate space for ReVassage, Vassar’s specialty. ReVassage is a combination of traditional massage along with manual and energetic therapies Vassar has developed for more than three decades. According to Amethyst’s website, “ReVassage™ is a system of resetting the muscles and connective tissues of the body where areas of tightness and pain are located. This gentle way of setting the body has helped hundreds of Velina’s clients over the years.”
Also at Amethyst is a play therapy room with toys, a whiteboard to draw on and very realistic-looking baby dolls. Vassar said the dolls can help when dealing with grief from a miscarriage or the loss of a loved one. Amethyst also offers animal companion therapy, oracle card readings, nutrition classes, and Reiki.
For those who only came for the candy, Amethyst can show you where to get the good, healthy stuff. Inside the studio, at the east end of Amethyst, is Queen Bee Gardens, a shop full of chocolates and taffies that use honey as the sweetener, although sugar is added to some of the products. The assortment of taffy flavors includes blue raspberry, strawberry lemonade, mint, and caramel, among others. Honey-infused chocolate truffles include cherry, sea salt, coconut almond and many other flavors. The shop also has candles, lip balm, cuticle cream, salves, bee pollen and, of course, honey.
