NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — Optimal Healing was opened in 2019 by Ashley Benson, who wanted to help people receive quality mental health care with access to other wellness and healing services.

 

"I realized there was a real need and market for something beyond typical mental health like the sterile environment of going into therapy and working with kids and families," Benson said. "The need for that to me was just an absolute necessary and the environment that I wanted to create for my clients."

 

Benson is a licensed social worker and therapist who works primarily with children. She has more than 20 years experience in therapy and consulting and holds postgraduate degrees in clinical social work and advanced practice with children and adolescents.

 

A few years ago, she purchased the former carriage barn of the Sanford Blackinton Mansion on East Main Street, bringing a number of other wellness practitioners under the Optimal Healing umbrella.

 

Optimal Healing provides different types of mental health support for people, a goal Benson said she wanted to bring to the community so that they could have services easily accessible. That was important to her own healing journey, she said.

 

"That combination of wellness and healing and doing talk therapy but also getting to the yoga class and getting inside my body and learning how to breathe were all imperative to my own journey and healing. So that parallel process, along with my practice, just brought to light that real need for people to be able connect those things, and our communities are difficult due to geography, to different silos in the community, and so bringing that under one roof was important to me just to give people access," Benson said.

 

"Talk therapy is not for everybody but a yoga class might be and so putting that all in one place — you don't have to do all the things, you can just pick one or you can do several, maybe eventually you start with one and it grows into something more."

 

Optimal Healing has a range of services addressing mental, physical, and spiritual needs. Some of these services include yoga, massage, reiki, individual and group therapy, and halotherapy.

 

The space recently brought on former North Adams Yoga instructor and owner Devin Raber to the team.

 

"I'm very excited that I will have a space for my clients to continue their own healing methods to continue their practice to branch out and to work with other professionals." Raber said.

 

She had owned and operated North Adams Yoga on Holden Street for a little over eight years. She wanted a career change but knew she still wanted to teach yoga — now she will be teaching at Optimal Healing five times a week.

 

Benson is still expanding. She plans to open a full-service spa in May and also plans to bring on more mental health clinicians.

 

To celebrate the addition of Raber, and tarot reader and teacher Annalyse Stys to the team, as well as honor reiki master Danielle Girard's new role as a yoga instructor, Optimal Healing is hosting a series of events from Thursday to Sunday, titled "Intentional Acts of Loving Kindness."