Healing Body And Mind

Yemaya Renuka Duby at her Sacred Waters Healing Arts sanctuary in Kapa‘a. Amanda C. Gregg photos

Tell us about your business. Sacred Waters Healing Arts is a small sanctuary serving the local community and the visitors to our gorgeous island. We offer highly professional therapeutic healing bodywork, somatic therapies of the body and mind, and nurturing, rejuvenating massages, as well as a small selection of hand-picked healing gifts. The business includes two other practitioners I was very fortunate to attract: Laura Espaillat and Tatiana Bianco, pearls who have joined my mission.

This little sanctuary is the root of a much larger vision. I came back to Kaua’i in 2010, after a three-year “walkabout” in Canada, California and Mexico, with a refreshed vision of my contribution to the sustainability of Kaua’i. I termed it my “inter-generational sustainability project.” My first step as I opened Sacred Waters was to offer a low-cost kupuna clinic. The second was to create Kaua’i Empowered Youth, an organization providing holistic programs for teenagers, which will run its first two-week program this summer. It will include yoga, qi gong, organic farming, nutrition, rites of passage and the creation of a music video.

How did you get started in this business and how long has it been going?

Sacred Waters Healing Arts is my second “child.” I moved from Northern California in 2001, after running Mana Luna Healing Arts, a larger healing center/meditation hall/ art gallery in Marin County for seven years. I also have worked to continually create cutting edge body-mind-spirit workshops and retreats centered around dance as medicine, traditional yoga practices and emotional and spiritual freedom.

Where are you from originally, and what role does that play in your business? I was born in France and was raised by an emotionally wounded single father. I left home at 16, with wings on my back and a determination to heal myself and be free from my emotional baggage. From my country I gathered a respect for tradition coming from my academic education and the understanding that before being able to create freely with success, one would be better off mastering the roots of a craft. I always applied myself to this belief in my fields of studies. I also embodied a fierce passion for transformation and justice because of my radical and traumatic childhood. That is the fire that moves me to keep creating containers for others to heal themselves.

What are your specialties? Being real, compassionate listening, heartfelt support, envisioning healthy communities, inspiring through dance and storytelling, hands-on therapies and advanced therapeutic bodywork.

What is your educational background? In France I studied philosophy and art, followed by three years in a drama school in Paris. I graduated from the Rosen Institute in Berkeley, Calif., in 1995 after a four-year training, and became a somatic therapist. I also underwent several years of advanced yoga and vedic studies, meditation, dance and bodywork modalities. I have since organically expanded my studies to include a wide array of modalities, from deep Swedish and sports massage to lomi lomi and Ayurvedic techniques. I have always been fascinated by the power of emotions, either as a tool on stage to pass on a message, or as a healing method toward freedom and change.

What sets your business apart? The love we invest in our services of healing work. We are not a spa, we truly are a healing center. We believe in the preventive value of what we offer as well as its highly therapeutic effects with clients in crisis. We come from a place of deep listening, trusting in the wisdom of the body and its relationship to the emotional and spiritual aspect of our clients.

One thing that ties together all of us working at Sacred Waters Healing Arts is that our strength comes from our yoga and spiritual practices. It keeps us centered and available to hold space for our visitors.

Why do you do what you do? To contribute to our community. To empower, inspire and facilitate freedom from pain on all levels.

What motivates you to get up and go to work every day? I look forward to human connection, to be able to be real and exchange on a level of “being-ness” with another. I thrive on being of service and inspiring others – I know that is my path and purpose. That, and I like a “job well done.”

Do you have a business motto or philosophy for doing business? Integrity and heart. Relaxation is the gateway to awareness, awareness the gateway to healing. Like in yoga, firmness and focus of intention is married to peaceful relaxation. It is the means to attaining the embodiment of wisdom.

What is the most challenging aspect of your business? Last-minute booking. I like to prepare my flow. But thank God some of our other practitioners are really spontaneous and save me when it’s too much for me.

What is your business plan for the future? Our team is growing so that we can offer more outcalls, provide wedding organizers with special packages, but all in the spirit of high-quality standards we provide. In a couple of years, I would like to find a North Shore location (I live in Kilauea), and have a larger space to start teaching yoga and dance again, as well as more space for the Inter-Generational Sustainability Project and Kaua’i Empowered Youth programs.

If you weren’t doing this, what would you be doing? Traveling to foreign places, meditating in sacred places, playing with kids.

Where can people learn more? Sacred Waters Healing Arts is located at 365 Papaloa Road in Kapa’a (inside Kinipopo Shopping Village). You can learn about us at sacredwaterskauai.com, or by calling 651-0558.