Tom Rathbun, Ryan Taylor and Rebecca Kolssak are among the professional therapists and clinicians who offer their holistic mental health services at the Acorn & Owl, headquartered in a Mongolian yurt behind Stoney Creek Garden Center, just north of the village. (Photo by Reilly Dixon)
Inward and out at Acorn & Owl
- Published: November 20, 2024
Something new is growing behind Stoney Creek Garden Center, and it’s not a plant.
Headquartered inside a Mongolian yurt — a round canvas tent, adorned with myriad spiritual symbols — a new health and wellness practice has sprouted from the ground up.
Acorn & Owl opened its yurt earlier this year and offers holistic healing services, clinical therapy, guided meditation, yoga and more. It’s a circular, four-season space for the mind, body and spirit.
Acorn & Owl is the latest branch of the Dayton-based mental health counseling practice, Empowering Wellness LLC, which area resident and licensed professional clinical counselor Ryan Taylor first began in 2020.
With the ongoing success of Taylor’s two brick-and-mortar Empowering Wellness practices over the last four years — one in Kettering and the other in East Dayton — Taylor told the News in a recent interview that she wanted to try something new with her third practice. Naturally, Yellow Springs came to mind.
After striking an agreement with Stoney Creek owners and master gardeners Steve and Karen Reed late last year, Taylor raised her Mongolian yurt on the far eastern side of the garden center’s property last December. After spending the subsequent months clearing and tending the land, Acorn & Owl is now a kind of therapeutic sanctuary — equal parts indoor and outdoor — for clients to commune both with themselves and nature.
“This isn’t just your regular therapy,” Taylor said. “It’s a place to be in nature, to have the unexpected happen and to intentionally work on yourself.”
Taylor works alongside a team of six other clinicians who split their time between Acorn & Owl’s yurt and the other two Empowering Wellness locations — each with their own therapeutic specialties and professional accolades, and several of whom call Yellow Springs home.
One such clinician is Rebecca Kolssak, a licensed professional clinical counselor who specializes in eye movement desensitization and reprocessing, or EMDR, a psychotherapeutic technique that helps with processing trauma. Like some of Acorn & Owl’s other clinicians, Kolssak provides EMDR intensives in the Mongolian yurt — sometimes over the course of several day-long intensive sessions.
“EMDR is a modality with mechanics that can act as a translator between what we know intellectually, and what our body remembers about our experiences,” Kolssak explained. “It’s like an advanced, extended therapy session — a kind of psychoeducation.”
Unlike more traditional mental health counseling practices, Acorn & Owl doesn’t linger solely on the head-space of its clients. As licensed professional counselor Tom Rathbun put it, Acorn & Owl takes a “holistic approach” to mental health — one that prioritizes talk-based therapy to the same degree as reconnecting with the body, and reinvigorating a relationship with nature.
To that end, Taylor’s yurt isn’t just for one-on-one therapy sessions with Acorn & Owl’s clinicians. It also hosts group yoga sessions and sound baths — both of which are open and often free to the public throughout each month.
Of the sound baths — a meditative experience in which one relaxes themselves to the hypnotizing hum of crystal bowls — Rathbun said they are, at their core, mindfulness exercises.
“A chance to take the time to really be with the sound, to be present and grounded, and to take a little break from the crazy world around us,” he said.
As for the bi-weekly yoga events, village resident Wendy Bird turns the soft rotunda of the yurt into a cozy studio. Mats and balance braces line the space and are available for use for each of Bird’s sessions every other Tuesday evening.
Other villagers have also gotten involved with Acorn & Owl’s therapeutic goings-on. Lead chef at Antioch College will sometimes prepare whole meals — to be eaten outside of the sacred space of the yurt — for the practice’s clients who book day-long counseling or EMDR sessions.
“This space just has so much potential, and we haven’t even begun to scratch every possibility,” Taylor said. “You see this kind of thing out west, in Colorado or California, but not Ohio. If this kind of therapy — the kind that’s blended with nature, that kind that’s internal and external at the same time — were to happen here, it should be in Yellow Springs.”
Rathbun echoed the sentiment: “There’s a sign in town that says, ‘Find Yourself Here,’ and for us, Acorn & Owl, we can help to give people the tools to truly find themselves — here.”
Acorn & Owl’s services range from $150 for hour-long therapy sessions to up to $2,200 for two-day-long intensives that include food and other amenities; free 15-minute consultations with licensed counselors and therapists are available. For more information, including about upcoming events, go to http://www.empoweringwellnessllc.com or http://www.facebook.com/acornandowl.
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