The Deep Well of Jackson Hole

Photo: Stephen Shelesky

Sometimes you have to take on a posture to create a pose. A posture, in addition to being the unconscious way we hold our bodies, is an approach to something, whereas a pose is a way of posturing that is done for effect – and often used to teach others.

As a yogi and as a freelance journalist who has covered wellness in the Tetons for eight years (and now working on a mindfulness app called Six Minutes Daily) let me say that I know firsthand

how impressive the wellness community in Jackson Hole is. What you see here in the Best of Jackson Hole Locals Guidebook is just the beginning when it comes to the amazing healers we have in our community. While the number of wellness practitioners per capita in the valley has never been officially measured, it is vast, and what makes it even more interesting is it has a grassroots component that has helped bring mindfulness into our schools, businesses, and even into the operations of our local government.

Photo: Matteo Steiner / St. John's Medical Center

The Wellness Department at St. John’s Medical Center

Connie Kemmerer’s wellness posture began 15 years ago when she started the Teton Wellness Institute, a non-profit organization that has helped the local hospital’s wellness program develop. The pose was affirmed when the Wellness Department was featured in the American Hospital Organization’s 2016 Ideas & Innovations for Hospital Leaders. Kemmerer, who is part of the family that owns Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, has been quiet about her involvement with the Wellness Department, but she has been an integral part of it from the beginning.

Later this summer, St. John’s Medical Center will be transitioning to St. John’s Health, a change made in response to the results of extensive surveys of both patients and community members. Respondents emphasized that a core quality they valued in St. John’s was its commitment to community wellness and preventative care. St. John’s Wellness Director Julia Heemstra sees the rebranding as opening a new chapter for wellness in the community.

“I never would have predicted we would be here when I first began eight years ago,” Heemstra says. “We see the community support for wellness as a real endorsement of the approach we have taken. Sometimes it’s hard to know if you are on the right track. But this rebranding effort has shown that we’re offering exactly what the community wants.”

Heemstra attributes the success to Kemmerer, who was “ahead of her time,” and courageously advocated for the wellness programs at the hospital for years. Now the Wellness Department, located in a glass office straight ahead from the hospital’s main entrance, is a vital part of the services at St. John’s. Their programs include the Words on Wellness speaker series, healing touch for patients, pre- and post-natal yoga, certification for wellness coaches, dieticians, science-based stress relief programs that encourage exercise, laughter and sharing vulnerability, and mindfulness programs within the Teton County public schools.

The speakers, curated by Heemstra and her team, are vetted based on the readiness of the community. “I’ve always maintained that with our speaker series we are not just bringing in worldclass speakers, the goal has been to create a conducive culture for change,” and strengthen the glue between wellness programs, the community, and the schools, Heemstra says.

“We recently starting putting a wellness champion in each location in the school district, even at the bus barn where they are encouraging each other to work out,” Heemstra says, adding that their wellness partners are growing every day. “We see it as all boats rising together. It’s how we catalyze change in the community.”

And while change takes time, the impact is more evident now than ever before. In addition to the schools, the Wellness Department is beginning to work with local businesses that want to implement their own wellness programs, and with former Jackson Mayor Sara Flitner on a civic initiative called Becoming Jackson Hole. The Becoming Jackson Hole conference they held this spring featured Dr. Amishi Jha, an associate professor of Psychology at the University of Miami, who helped raise some important questions.

“How can we address stress? What could a toolkit look like with social, emotional learning and mindful-based interventions? How can we use science to test it?” Flitner asks.

“It has been a long road, but the cool thing is I’m still excited,” Kemmerer says. “I see a new evolution coming… the next step is really changing the community in the civic arena and in business.”

We want to use wellness as glue to connect with people on a different level.

Wellness as a Business

Chelsea Kmiec, a Los Angeles-based wellness consultant, became the Chief Wellness Officer for Jackson Hole Real Estate last year. This year, she began working with traditional fitness studios like Pursue Movement and Inversion Yoga (Gold– Best Yoga Studio, pg. 106), along with forwardthinking healers like Tanya Mark, a nutritionist who talks about the taboo subject of emotional eating, and Vera Iconica Architecture, a firm which specializes in designing spaces for wellness. Kmiec sends out a “Wellness Wednesday” post that is designed to help realtors reduce their stress and provide content to clients like “The dangers of home cleaning products,” and “The benefits of beeswax versus soy candles.”

“We want to use wellness as glue to connect with people on a different level,” Kmiec says. “The buying power is soon to be in the hands of millennials who value experiences over things and lifestyle over wealth.”

The Global Wellness Institute, a large non-profit organization with a mission to empower wellness worldwide, says the wellness economy is worth $4.2 trillion and is growing rapidly, giving rise to the term ROW (return on wellness).

Photo: Jared Spieker

Home of the Medicine Wheel

As a self-described “healthcarepreneur” Francine Bartlett has gone through her own transformation in the past seven years. She’s a physical therapist who started Excel Physical Therapy and now owns Medicine Wheel Wellness, a wellness collaborative with 20 alternative medical practitioners under one roof in downtown Jackson.

By providing the back-end booking and billing support for an expert in Chinese medicine, a chiropractor, sound healers, core strength trainers, a shaman, and physical therapists who are all independent contractors, she helps healers heal by taking away the administrative headaches.

“Doctors are bad businesspeople,” she says. “They went to school to save lives.”

The wheel, an idea that came to Bartlett during a yoga training in Hawaii (and is the subject of her book, “The Way of the Medicine Wheel”) hit home when she realized how close Jackson Hole is to the Bighorn National Forest where the prototypical Medicine Wheel is located. The Wheel is an ancient ceremonial site built by the indigenous people native to this region. Indigenous people also built similar structures in South Dakota, Montana, Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Bartlett’s version of the wheel incorporates the cardinal directions with colors, seasons, and Earth elements to encourage patients to integrate modern medicine with ancient wisdom when it comes to preventative care.

“In Jackson, our dominating force is physical activity,” Bartlett says. “Everyone is tough and wants to be in the mountains. But we lose a lot of people in the mountains too. We have to hold space for the emotional, mental, and spiritual along with physical.”

No one knows this better than Medicine Wheel’s ambassadors, including Jimmy Chin, Travis Rice, Kelly Halpin, and other local athletes (read more about Jackson’s athletes on pg. 123). The reason Bartlett thinks they chose Medicine Wheel is because they are mature athletes who are looking to center themselves when they come home. In return, they help her by bringing cutting edge healing modalities that they are exposed to in their travels back to Jackson.

Being an athlete participating in extreme sports takes a mindset that requires practice, precision and an ability to be in the present—much like healing and wellness.

Photo: Stephen Shelesky

Mindfulness in Schools

In Alta, Wyoming, on the other side of Teton Pass elementary school kids from kindergarten through fifth grade come together for a weekly circle to practice calming their bodies, a routine they’ve come to know well. They take mindful minutes before standardized testing, and this spring they’ve implemented a breath-a-day program, an initiative that fifth- and sixth-graders started.

“The momentum that it has created is amazing,” says Alta Principal Jennifer Beck, who was initially introduced to mindfulness through St. John’s Health. She is also certified in an online program called Mindful Schools that is based in California. “The kids are internalizing strategies and beginning to use them when they are riled and when they need to get calmed down.”

“What I’ve seen is a real change in behaviors,” Beck says. “Kids aren’t hitting each other. They are able to walk away, identify their feelings and say what they need.”

When they began the program three years ago, Beck says they engaged the parents. “At first it seemed foreign and kind of woo-woo—but sitting down and going through the curriculum with them helped make them supportive for the program.”

Was there pushback? Of course, she says.

“We have pushback on math too, but kids still have to take math class,” she says. “That’s how I’ve handled it.”

Civic Engagement

Photo: Ryan Dee

In her four years as the mayor of Jackson, Sara Flitner said she saw lots of really committed people who nonetheless struggled to engage positively, which made solving conflicts difficult. In an effort to help the town come together, she introduced 100 people involved in local government to The Four Constituents of Well-being, a program of mindfulness and meditation designed by the founder of The Center for Healthy Minds, Richard Davidson. The program is intended to show people that well-being is a skill that can be trained. Davidson is a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin, who has visited Jackson to participate in the Words on Wellness series.

Flitner and Kemmerer also recently travelled to Flint, Michigan, to participate in the Mindful City

Project, an initiative that helps communities encourage awareness, compassion, and generosity in their residents and businesses. The pair have plans to bring the program to Jackson at some point in the future.

“When I swore out of office I was committed to seeing this through,” says Flitner. “I think we will get there. We don’t need to be afraid of asking any question, that’s the posture I’m adopting. Let’s keep trying stuff and then asking, are we getting it right? People are ready. We are all human beings who want more connection, less stress and to become more relevant.”

- Julie Fustanio Kling