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I had held the vision for an organization of "alternative" healing practitioners for several years. In my vision, this organization would network throughout the community, offering education and treatments. The goal was to become "mainstream," and to be considered a valuable partner by the traditional medical community.
I met Teri Hoskins in the summer of 2003, then met Ann Egerton, Robert Rodgers and Deborah Russell that fall. As we became acquainted, we discovered that we all shared similar visions, so we held our first founders' meeting in January, 2004. Also attending was Deborah Baker-Recienello, a longtime friend. At this meeting we exchanged information about our various practices and decided to proceed with laying the groundwork for an organization.
Our next meeting was with a representative of the Tacoma Guild of Healing Arts Professionals, in order to find out about the structure and activities of a well-established group. From there we held several founder's meetings resulting in the finalization of our name, mission statement, logo and goals. The six founders agreed to serve on the Board of Directors, and five of us volunteered to be the officers for the first year.
We sent out invitations to practitioners whom we knew to our first "public" meeting on March 15, 2004. At that meeting, we had a large number of attendees, many of whom joined that night! From there we have continued to hold meetings on the third Monday of the month, and have participated in many community fairs and workshops, including our own PSWA Wellness fairs at the Olympia Farmers' Market and the Olympia Community Center.
It has been a joy and an honor to assist in bringing PSWA into being and to serve as its first president. I look forward to seeing it continue to grow and flourish in our community!
Susan Leland
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This is a community that is unifying health and wellness professionals through dialogue, education, research and outreach. Members come from a wide variety of traditional and nontraditional healing modalities including nursing, energy healing, acupuncture, doctors, mental health counseling, life strategy coaches, massage, reiki, reflexology as well as a wide variety of other professions. Businesses who wish to serve health and wellness practitioners can become trusted affiliate members.
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