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Tucked at the end of Main Street in historic Folsom, Mind Garden welcomes the community into an outdoor oasis flush with greenery, tables for two, a fountain and a hearth surrounded by plush seating.

The garden invites the public to enjoy a quiet moment to relax or reconnect. Inside, an acupuncturist and naturopathic doctor see patients. Soon, the yoga room with floor-to-ceiling windows looking onto the garden will fill with people stretching and moving their bodies, focusing on their breath and calming their minds.

Opened in June by Leo and Sabine Martinez, Mind Garden is a holistic health and wellness center emulating a practice the owners found in Thailand where they met training as therapists. There they found multiple modalities under one roof and a strong sense of community that fostered healing.  

Holistic health considers the whole person — physical, mental, emotional, social, intellectual and spiritual — a view well understood by ancient medical systems such as traditional Chinese medicine and India’s Ayurveda.

Similarly, the approach of Whole Health, a movement led by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs is, “Let me understand who you are as a person. … What matters to you as opposed to what’s the matter with you,” says Dr. Michelle Dossett, an internist who specializes in integrative medicine at UC Davis Health Point West Clinic in Sacramento. “I think eventually it’s going to transform what we do in conventional medicine in this country more broadly.”

Today, there’s a growing awareness and demand for alternatives to conventional medicine that has historically focused on treating disease and still relies heavily on pharmaceuticals. The shift is changing how the American public, physicians and businesses perceive and address health. 

Alternative therapies 

“Most of us in the western world have grown up with Descartes: ‘I think, therefore I am.’ There’s the mind and there’s the body, and they’re these two totally different things,” says Dossett. “What we have increasingly recognized over the last few decades is that, no, the mind and the body are intricately intertwined, and that our state of mind can impact our physical function.”

Major health care systems in the Capital Region, including UC Davis Health, Dignity Health and Sutter Health, have integrative medicine programs that offer evidence-based therapies, complementing conventional medicine to treat the body, mind and spirit. Alternative therapies can include acupuncture, Chinese herbs and qigong, reflexology, energy work such as reiki, meditation, yoga, osteopathic manipulation, supplements, special diets and naturopathic medicine.

“When we get real rest or we have real, true relaxation, then we just feel better. … If we’re not slowing down, and we’re not relaxing, and we’re not having meaningful experiences and present moments with people and ourselves … our body is responding to that by being stressed, and our body is forgetting how to relax.”Cori Martinez, owner, Asha Urban Baths

Naturopathy is a medical system that combines science with non-toxic, holistic approaches to treat the root problems of disease and strengthen the body’s natural ability to heal itself.

At Mind Garden, all the practitioners share a holistic mindset toward wellness. And while each works for themselves, the Martinezes designed their offerings with the ability to cross refer to one another.  

“I have definitely seen that the collaboration gets better results than just one thing — just doing yoga or just doing acupuncture, just going to therapy. Really getting all of those pieces together is holistic health at its best,” says Caitlin Fanning, Mind Garden’s naturopathic doctor.

Mind Garden also offers massage therapy, hypnotherapy, Pilates, multiple therapy modalities including somatic therapy that integrates mind and body, therapy for couples or substance abuse, and meditation, which can improve mental and physical health.  

Research shows meditating for 20 minutes a day for eight weeks creates visible changes on an MRI scan of a person’s brain, says Dr. Dossett, who adds that meditating for that same length of time “can change expression of over 1,500 different genes in white blood cells of the immune system,” leading to benefits such as decreases in inflammation, improvements in how the body uses insulin and increases in mitochondrial energy production.

No one is immune to stress, but how we deal with it is a determinant of health. Stress is linked to chronic inflammation, which is linked to prevalent chronic diseases in the U.S. Overeating, consumerism, self-medicating with alcohol or drugs, and binge watching are common trends to cope with stress in the U.S. that provide immediate, temporary relief but compromise health.   

Small businesses in the Capital Region have responded with holistic alternatives to help people destress. Urban Baths Folsom opened in June as the first franchise of Cori Martinez’s Asha Urban Baths in Sacramento. Folsom’s only bathhouse provides space to completely unwind, relax and rejuvenate the body and mind through hydrotherapy and heat — a practice embraced by cultures for thousands of years for health, healing and community.  

“When we get real rest or we have real, true relaxation, then we just feel better. … If we’re not slowing down, and we’re not relaxing, and we’re not having meaningful experiences and present moments with people and ourselves … our body is responding to that by being stressed, and our body is forgetting how to relax,” says Cori.

Bathhouses under the Urban Bath franchise are designed to be unpretentious, accessible and relatable. To support everyone who enters the communal gathering space, a culture of acceptance and respect for every person and their experience is central to the bathhouse’s framework and is expected of staff and patrons alike.  

“We do a lot to cultivate a very specific vibe, which allows people to settle and connect more intimately,” says Cori. “And that’s what you get with quiet voices, all devices prohibited, at a slow pace.”

The Jacquelyn in Midtown Sacramento also built holistic health and wellness into its inclusive women-focused club. The club provides the time and space to relax, making it convenient for members to take care of themselves, says CEO Maren Conrad. 

During her research, Conrad found the simple pleasures of a bath and a nap are key to how women relax, but often their homes aren’t conducive to that, she says, with shared spaces, small children, tub toys, Amazon deliveries, barking dogs and roaring leaf blowers. At The Jacquelyn, members can soak undisturbed in a private tub or take a 45-minute nap in a private room complete with a bed, weighted blankets, provided pajamas and no outside noise or interruptions from mobile phones.

Members can also try floating meditation, swaddled in a silk aerial yoga hammock while an energy healer performs a chakra restoration — aligning the body’s seven chakras (energy centers) — using crystal bowls to create healing musical sound and vibration. 

“Reiki and other biofield or energy therapies are probably on the frontier of integrative medicine,” says Dr. Dossett. She likens it to acupuncture when she was training as a physician, which was considered placebo by those in conventional medicine. “Now we have really robust, randomized, controlled trial data showing that acupuncture is more than placebo.”

Chi, or energy, is fundamental to traditional Chinese medicine, a medical system practiced for thousands of years. According to that system, chi is the life force that flows through the body along pathways called meridians, and it’s responsible for the health and well-being of the intertwined body, mind and spirit. Practices such as acupuncture, the use of Chinese herbs, tai chi and qigong promote the flow of chi in the body to maintain health or restore function.

When the body is emotionally weak, it becomes stressed, contributing to illness and disease, says Tian Li, owner of Tian Chao Herbs and Acupuncture in Sacramento, where she treats a range of health conditions, including pain, digestive disorders, insomnia, anxiety, depression and infertility. When people are ill, she encourages them to question what in their life may be contributing to poor health and what needs to change.

Happiness and reducing stress is key. So is common sense, says Li. She acknowledges there’s a time and place for conventional medicine, but instead of popping a pill, she wants people to ask themselves, “Why am I sick?” 

“There are many things that can heal us,” she says. “The dog can be a medicine, the flower can be a medicine … or a river walk.” 

Traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes living in harmony with nature and its seasonal rhythms. The human body is meant to walk. It’s supposed to sweat in the summer and rest and conserve energy in the winter. The body’s circadian rhythms are aligned to rise with the sun and wind down when it sets. But modern society has made it easy to disregard natural rhythms. We no longer need to walk, and we can stay comfortable all four seasons inside, explains Li. 

Walk, eat, rest, connect

In October, The Jacquelyn introduced its Surprise and Delight Walks, shifting people’s focus outdoors while they move naturally. Walks reveal hidden gardens, murals, art and fun surprises you wouldn’t necessarily know about Midtown, says Conrad, creating opportunities to observe everyday commonalities with a new perspective. Members can also join Pilates and yoga classes. 

To keep the practice of movement accessible, Mind Garden offers free yoga classes in its garden every Saturday morning. Yoga Moves Us, a local nonprofit, also offers free yoga in several communities throughout the Sacramento region. 

Working in tandem with how people move their bodies is how they fuel them. UC Davis Health’s integrative medicine program often works with variations of the anti-inflammatory diet, says Dossett, which may be a vegan diet for some or a shift toward a Mediterranean, more plant-based diet for others. The Jacquelyn’s restaurant, The Cellar, is also based on a Mediterranean diet. And Li recommends eating seasonally.

For example, watermelon is not a winter food, she says, but you can buy it all four seasons. “So every time I see watermelons … out of season, I think, oh gosh, OK, I wish people knew the health impacts of eating this out of season.”

In late 2024, Li will open the Violet Wellness Spa in Fair Oaks Village. The region’s first traditional Chinese medicine spa will feature Chinese-inspired spa services as well as seasonal living and lifestyle education, such as how to eat seasonally. Li’s second book, “Stay Healthy With the Seasons,” is expected to be published in the first half of 2025. 

And central to holistic health are social networks that shape and support healthy behaviors. That sense of community is fundamental to The Jacquelyn,  where supportive, positive interactions and space to process emotions such as grief are built into its culture. It’s encouraged at Urban Baths Folsom with a quiet space to truly connect with the people in our lives. And community building is key to healing, says Leo Martinez at Mind Garden. 

It’s about “the importance of showing up for yourself and for one another. … There’s such power in just showing up and then holding space for one another, connecting with one another,” says Sabine Martinez. “That is the essence of Mind Garden.”