Moncton's The Oneness Centre offers a holistic approach to living.

Lise Elsliger

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There's a lot of talk these days for the need of a spiritual way of looking at life. The smashing success of books promoted by Oprah Winfrey such as author Eckart Tolle's New Earth or The Secret illustrate the need for some sort of spiritual guidance. Moncton's new Oneness Health and Wisdom Centre seeks to answer that need by providing holistic services in areas such as massage therapy, yoga, and meditation. It will also offer as of May 8 spiritual therapy by certified instructor Joanne Rolfe-Cogger such as "Awakening Your True Self," a course she offers with fellow therapist Michèle Nadeau.

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From left, Michèle Nadeau and Joanne Rolfe-Cogger will hold a spiritual therapy course May 8 at the Oneness Health and Wisdom Centre.

What's a holistic approach to life? For most practitioners, whether you're talking about massage therapy, detox treatment, yoga or meditation, holistic health is an approach to life that combines body, mind and spirit. Rather than taking a pill and just waiting for the results, wellness doctors believe in combining modern medicine with methods of calming the human psyche through methods such as healthy eating, positive thinking, yoga, relaxation and meditation.

Shivaraj, founder of the Oneness Centre, said it's all been part of a long-term vision for a retreat where people can come and visit or take a break from the world. It's somewhere people can do some cleansing, or just be alone for a while if they want.

"Part of this plan has also included putting together the Wellness magazine, and Moncton's Wellness expo," Shivaraj explains. The centre was put in place so as to create somewhere people could get treatment such as massage and reflexology and counselling. This includes the sessions being offered by Joanne Rolfe-Cogger.

Rolfe-Cogger obtained her training at the Transformational Art College in Toronto where she became a psycho spiritual therapist. At this point in her career, she became fascinated with the concept of co-dependency.

"Co-dependency is a loss of self-hood," she explains. "It's a habit of always looking outside of ourselves for things to fill the void within ourselves that we all have. We basically develop so many false selves when we are growing up that our true self goes into hiding. So as adults we don't know ourselves and we don't feel complete. We're looking outside for a better job, for material things. Everything is about what's outside of ourselves. We're looking at other people to blame, other people to judge." She became so fascinated with the subject, having read hundreds of books on the subject that she decided, as a therapist, to give a course specifically on the matter through Moncton YWCA.

This is where she acquired most of her experience as a counsellor, for which she has received positive feedback.

"One of my clients," she explains, "told me her partner had said he has seen more of a change in her during her time with me than in years of psychotherapy together." The course she'll be giving at the Oneness Centre with Nadeau deals with the subject of "Awakening Your True Self". Nadeau, who has studied psychology at university says she has always felt there was something spiritual, a force guiding her life. "Recently I noticed that more people are talking about spirituality and about finding your inner voice." She wants to help people learn from their past experiences and follow their passions through her workshops.

Rolfe-Cogger hopes the course will allow people to question the validity of their past conditioning and to question the validity of their beliefs.

"I had an 'Ah ha' moment myself while I was giving a course," she says. "I brought up the idea of all good things coming to an end and I realized I'd been living by that belief myself. If we live with this then how do you think we live our life? How do you think we conduct our relationships? We conduct them with the end in mind. What do we do when good things come into our lives? We automatically think 'It's not going to stay anyway'. It made me realize I'd been living my life thinking that all good things come to an end and that I didn't want to live like that anymore."

Interested in knowing more about the Awakening Your true Self Course? visit http://www.theonenesscentre.com/ or call 388-4100.