The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal - Issue 84

View the article on page 42 in The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal

This fall, integrative mental health practice Reset Brain and Body, is adding an Ann Arbor location at 2725 Packard, in addition to its Plymouth and Northville offices.

The practice is celebrating five years since its founding by Kerry Cragin Biskelonis, LPC, and has grown to a team of over 20 therapists and 15 support staff. Biskelonis did not always know she wanted to be a therapist. She majored in political science in college because she “wanted to save the world.” She ended up working in human resources and recruiting and had a few jobs at startups and Fortune 500 companies. Along the way, she realized that she loved working with people and hearing their stories, but that she would rather be supporting the employees than representing the interests of the business. She went to graduate school to become a counselor, and while there did yoga to manage her stress. She noticed so many connections between what she was learning in school and what she was doing in yoga, but no one was really talking about it.

She spent the rest of her graduate program focusing on the mind-body connection and yoga informed treatment. In her first private practice in Chicago, she worked out of a yoga studio where there were literally no chairs, so she “had to be really creative and integrative.” When they had a baby, she and her husband decided to move back to his hometown in Plymouth, Michigan, where she started Reset in the basement of a professional building. In working on building her clientele, she made some calls to local high schools and let them know she integrated yoga, mindfulness, and somatic therapies with mainstream talk therapy. Her practice snowballed from there, she said. She had not set out with the intention of growing to the practice’s current scale, she said, but the concept of integrative therapy has been very well received. People find it refreshing from traditional talk therapy, she said. Within two years of starting, Reset was able to buy a building in downtown Plymouth. A year later they opened in Northville, steadily adding clients, therapists, and support staff. “We’ve grown with a lot of integrity,” said Biskelonis. “We believe so much in the mind-body connection. It has to be a therapist who really knows how to integrate.” She said that integrative therapy is beginning to move more into mainstream awareness, but “still has a long way to go.”

Margaux Forster, Marketing and Branding Coordinator, was hired two and a half years ago, and came from a corporate background like Biskelonis. She explained that many of Reset’s therapists and support staff come from corporate backgrounds, and that, “This is the something different we wanted to find--a place to do what we’re good at in a fulfilling space and help people.” Biskelonis’ husband Nick Biskelonis left his job at Ford Motor Company last year to join the team as Operations Director, and her sister Heather Buonsante was recently hired as Director of People and Culture. “This is now really a shared vision,” said Biskelonis.

Therapists at Reset specialize in a variety of mindfulness-based practices including meditation, creative expression, therapeutic yoga, somatic experiencing, and more, to help clients in reconnecting their brain and mental experience to their body/physical experience, and “live their most fulfilled, empowered, and healthy lives,” said Forster. They are able to help people with anxiety, depression, chronic pain, stress, trauma, substance use, parenting and relationship issues, LGBTQI+ issues, and there is a team of specialists who work with athletes. On initial intake, explained Biskelonis, the office coordinator gathers a lot of information so the client can be matched with the therapist that is the best fit for them. This makes things easier for the client, so they don’t have to spend a lot of time and energy shopping for the right therapist, and for the therapists, so they don’t burn out working with clients who aren’t a good match. Potential clients don’t have to know anything about yoga, meditation, or anything else, they should just be open to new experiences, said Biskelonis. “They will meet you where you are and challenge you to go beyond what is traditionally thought of, looking at your life holistically, and encourage you to bring your body into the session and connect to it throughout.” Forster emphasized that clients don’t have to do meditation, yoga, or somatic therapies, as the therapists are well versed in traditional talk therapy as well. But if people are open to other techniques, they can benefit greatly.

The Ann Arbor location of Reset Brain and Body is located at 2725 Packard Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48108. They can be reached by phone at (734) 531-8563 or by email at info@ resetbrainandbody.com.Visit their website at resetbrainandbody.com.