By Susan Slack
You might miss Reset Brain and Body while cruising up Packard. Next door to the Cobblestone Farm, the business lives in a cozy brown building nestled back among the trees. Kerry Biskelonis, Founder and Managing Director, explained, “All of our offices are located within green space. It’s very important to have trees, to have natural light and access to outdoors, because connecting to nature is how we feel better; It’s always quiet, like an oasis, so you won’t find us in a high rise.”
I visited the Ann Arbor location where Biskelonis gave a tour of the six restful rooms available for individual sessions with a practitioner and one larger room in the process of becoming a workshop space. The building is clean and bright and everyone smiles.
We settled onto her cushy office carpet and Biskelonis explained the mission at Reset Brain and Body. “We aim to redefine the mental health experience. Traditionally, mental health has been about talking. And we have always felt that we have to get into our bodies. It’s more than what happens from the neck up. We look at your mental health as a whole, considering stressors, trauma, fitness, diet, sleep patterns, work/school, physical ailments, relationships, and life transitions.” She pointed to an image on the wall. “That’s why we have these five pillars: Rest. Breathe. Connect. Move. Nourish. They all work together to bring clarity to clients’ mental health.”
She continued, “Holistic mental healthcare asks, ‘how are we sleeping? Are we moving? Are we slowing down? How are we nourishing ourselves with food, with digital consumption, pollutants?’ It’s much, much more than just a diagnosis. It’s an entire lifestyle that we look at.”
With this broad approach, many issues can be addressed in a very individualized program. Who might benefit from what Reset Brain and Body offers? Those struggling with anxiety, depression, stress and burnout, sports performance, grief and trauma, chronic pain, postpartum issues, ADHD, and eating disorders.
Deep healing modalities available at Reset Brain and Body reach beyond conventional talk therapy to access and transform the root causes of challenges. These powerful approaches, in addition to yoga and dance, include Clinical Hypnosis, Trance Meditation, Internal Family Systems (IFS), Inner Child Healing, and Psychedelic Integration Therapy. Each offers a unique pathway to address core wounds, release trauma stored in your body, and reconnect with parts of yourself that have been disconnected or suppressed.
Biskelonis is originally from Chicago. “I started my career in Human Resources, then earned a BA and M.Ed from DePaul for counseling. Working full-time, living in downtown Chicago, I started practicing yoga to manage the stress of everything. I realized what I was experiencing in yoga had so many congruences with what I was learning about in psychology. Mind-body yoga-informed psychotherapy was fresh. I practiced yoga-informed psychotherapy and mindfulness-based psychotherapy until my family, my husband and baby, transitioned to Michigan.”
That was seven years ago. She opened her first location in Plymouth, and another in Northville, and now an office in Ann Arbor. She has a team of over thirty-five professionals, each one skilled in at least one of the modalities. Her Human Resources background aids recruiting the right clinicians.
“More people are integrating techniques, are yoga-trained, and are also therapists. Half of our team is that way. We meet our clinicians through networking.” Biskelonis enthusiastically considered, “We get a lot of referrals from existing employees who tell friends in the same field, that this is a great place to work. When we say we want to redefine the mental healthcare experience, that’s also for providers.”
“If you’re working with somebody in distress, it’s intense,” Biskelonis shared. “We believe in creating a sustainable work environment where clinicians are able to be themselves—to be fully playful and authentic in how they do the work. That is why we offer so many different modalities. We also are meeting the clinician where they’re at, and so we’ve become a really attractive place to work.”
And if there are financial concerns? Biskelonis reassured: “If someone comes in who can’t afford to do this every week, I could maybe do it every other week or once a month. In reality, our mental health concerns go like this [a little roller coaster] throughout our lives, right? It’s what we choose to do with it. It’s how we grow our capacity to be more resilient. Maybe there’s an acute issue. For example, I had a client who said, ‘I’m afraid of flying. I have a 40th birthday trip. I need to get on the plane.’ Well, we had three sessions. We did somatic work, we did clinical hypnosis work, and she was able to get on that plane, and I never saw her again.”
“But most of the time, we’re working through lifelong habits,” Biskelonis noted. “Lifelong narratives that started when we were a child, that get re-triggered with every new event. My goal is for every client to get to maintenance mode—I’ll see you every month, every three months, every six months, maybe we go two years and then you pop back. I’m going to be a steady resource for you, as long as I’m alive. And you tell me when you need to come back in, once you get to a stable place where you can be self- reliant. But you never have to go without care. You’re never wrong or broken for asking for help again.”
She wrapped up, “When people really get here and start to get deeper into the work, it becomes more of a spiritual journey to human connectedness, to a greater sense of purpose, to that remembering that we’re just passing through. How does that change how we stress out about things, how we engage with people and how we judge so much? When we’re able to let all of that go, we can come back to ourselves with so much more kindness and compassion and therefore offer it to other people and to the earth and to mother nature and make this world a better place.”
To find out more, visit their comprehensive website. Cruise around a bit, sign up for a free weekly newsletter at the bottom of each page for resources, practical tips and tools, all written by Biskelonis. You’ll also get notices of public workshops and talks offered around Ann Arbor.
If you’re not ready to fill out the form on the website, you are welcome to call a real live person at (734) 531-8563 who can explain the modalities that are on the form and discuss fees and insurance. If all is well, a client will be teamed with a practitioner. A lot of manpower goes into finding the right placement between therapist and the client. Reset Brain and Body is located at 2725 Packard St. #101 Ann Arbor 48108. Or visit them online at resetbrainandbody.com.
Susan Slack is an author, musician, and leads Dances of Universal Peace.
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You might miss Reset Brain and Body while cruising up Packard. Next door to the Cobblestone Farm, the business lives in a cozy brown building nestled back among the trees. Kerry Biskelonis, Founder and Managing Director, explained, “All of our offices are located within green space. It’s very important to have trees, to have natural light and access to outdoors, because connecting to nature is how we feel better; It’s always quiet, like an oasis, so you won’t find us in a high rise.”