Your Best Life

Building Balance

tHe empower House’s uNique approaCH to selFimprovemeNt

Left: James Retarides practices EMDR Therapy. Bottom: Joey Schnople.

by Thomas Simonson | photography courtesy of Empower House Center for Self Efficacy

We often hear about the important role balance plays in leading healthy, fulfilling lives. Working toward balance, however, is an all too familiar challenge. Fortunately, the counselors and trainers at the newly opened Empower House Center for Self-Efficacy in Cornelius have made this fundamental to the center’s services. Their uniquely multi-pronged approach to wellness has been designed to assist clientele in defining and achieving a personal balance that is fundamental for self-improvement.

As owner James Retarides explains, this means that at its core the center pursues “a true mind/body/soul approach,” unlike fitness centers or counseling centers, which are often tailored to one aspect of wellness. The Empower House is where these needs are seen as linked, and where employees seek to assist their clients excel as they define distinct, personal goals for growth.

For his part, Retarides embodies this principle, practicing as both a licensed clinical mental health counselor and personal trainer. Joey Schnople, a mental health counselor, works with Retarides to offer the Center’s Adult ADHD group meetings on Thursdays at 8 p.m., as well as his own 30-minue mindfulness and meditation sessions on Mondays at 2 p.m. Schnople points out that his approach is always to work with clients “on all aspects of their life and how they might become more engaged with all that they do.” gym, the center offers a weekly Writers’ Group meeting on Monday evenings at 8 p.m. Future events include quarterly seminars that will boast well-known authorities from diverse fields, such as comic book artists and Olympic weightlifting coaches. First, however, National Champion arm wrestler Derek Smith visited on July 25 for a training event, while an MAS wrestling seminar with John “The Viking” Mouser follows later this month on Aug. 29.

Retarides notes that achieving the strength and balance necessary for self-efficacy is often made complicated by not knowing where to begin. For this reason, he developed a handbook for clients designed to facilitate their first steps in personal improvement. As he explains, progressing through the handbook with a trainer will “help you discover the goals you want to aim at in your life and the elements of your attitude or mindset that may have held you back.”

Whatever your objectives, Retarides encourages prospective clients to remember that “being well-balanced comes with a sense of sustained, long-term, positive emotion.” In this way, taking a mind/ body/soul approach is much more than a cliché or slogan: it is an approach as truly empowering as it is rewarding.

Empower House Center for Self-Efficacy

20468 Chartwell Center Dr., Suite N, Cornelius. theempowerhouse.net 704.997.8273