This weekend the Dragonfly Wellness Center, located in the newly renovated Red Cross building in Devens, will officially kick off its grand opening celebration with a ribbon-cutting ceremony and open house. This new business, which just started offering classes and workshops after Labor Day, looks to provide Harvard and surrounding communities with a dedicated place to learn, explore, and practice long-term wellness for the body, mind, and spirit.
“This is a holistic health center, where we offer a variety of wellness modalities to strengthen and optimize health and well-being,” said owner Anne Ferguson, a nurse and critical-care educator with 30 years’ experience providing bedside care to patients. “And I hope we have a huge variety of people that feel this is a place they can come and find some peace.”
Finding peace is easy at Dragonfly, where the light-filled studio and small practitioners’ offices feel restful, full of vibrant color, and free from cluttered, ambient noise. From the soothing green walls to the hand-painted mandala hanging in the studio, the center offers intentional spaces to cultivate healing and self-reflection. Ferguson feels the Red Cross space was “meant to be.”
Dragonfly Wellness is in the former Red Cross building at the corner of Jackson and Barnum roads in Devens. (Photos by Lisa Aciukewicz)
The main room is used for yoga and other classes.
“When I first saw the building, I knew how it would flow,” said Ferguson. “I saw a café on one side, practitioners on the other side, with a natural, big studio in the middle. It’s perfect.”
It may have been perfect, but it was not available. Another buyer had made an offer on the building, and though Ferguson tried to secure a lease, the financial piece did not work out. Instead, she purchased a church in downtown Ayer and started renovations. But she kept an eye on the Red Cross building, and when no improvement work had started after months of waiting, she approached MassDevelopment again. The previous offer had fallen through, and Ferguson jumped at the chance to purchase and renovate the historic space for her business.
“Inside it was in such disrepair, there wasn’t much to keep,” said Ferguson, whose renovations took six months. “We tried to restore the building to its historic structure. We raised the ceiling, tore up floors, but kept the flow and the outside the same.” The process was expensive because of the historic registry requirements. But, she said, “My investment wasn’t to make money or to flip the building. It’s an investment in my business, in bringing wellness to the community.”
Wellness partnerships
Ferguson’s passion for community wellness has led to partnerships with a variety of holistic health practitioners who now operate their practices out of the center. Their specialties include massage therapy, shamanic healing, sound therapy, myofascial release therapy, craniosacral therapy, reiki, and meditation. “All the practitioners have a sense of peace about them,” said Ferguson. “They are very kind spirits and good teachers, very altruistic. We all collaborate on different programs.” The center also offers a variety of classes and workshops, including a 5K training group, wellness coaching, nutrition workshops, and movement classes such as yoga, tai chi, and dance.
One of several practitioner rooms at Dragonfly Wellness.
While these services are considered nonmainstream, they are intended to be complementary, or offered in conjunction with conventional medicine, rather than replacing it. “I don’t believe in no medication at all,” said Ferguson. “I believe there’s a balance to eastern and western treatments. [These practices] that have been around for thousands and thousands of years and have been shown to help, I feel like we should use those.”
Ferguson herself has benefited from the sometimes transformative effect of holistic health practices. For example, she said, “I did an eight-week meditation course. I went into it wanting to learn more about mindfulness. What I got out of it was so personal and such a change of perspective, I feel like what I expected to find and what I found were very different. It’s open to your experience.” But whether the experience is in meditation, nutrition, or reiki, the thing Ferguson appreciates about complementary health practices is the sense of well-being they foster. “You feel like everything is OK physically and mentally,” she said.
Having worked at the “bedside end” of health care, Ferguson has spent the past 10 years dreaming of partnering with clients in preventive care, instead of illness. “I always thought about holistic treatments, had the belief the body is meant to heal and protect itself. I feel like a holistic approach strengthens people’s bodies and minds,” she said.
Inspired by loss
But it was not just her own conviction about the benefit of holistic health practices that made Ferguson ready to step away from nursing to own her own business. In 2009, she lost her brother Jim after just eight weeks of illness. As she mourned the suddenness of his passing, Ferguson realized she needed a break from bedside care. “I was given the opportunity to leave with a severance package, which was like a gift to go do what I wanted to do,” she explained. And she was inspired to take the chance because of Jim: “The way he lived, he helped me. He did so many high-risk things to benefit others. This path opened up because of his support.”
Though her business is just opening, Ferguson is still dreaming big. She hopes to one day offer acupuncture, drumming workshops, art therapy, and more: “We want to have something for everyone here. And we want it to be affordable so people can have the opportunity to optimize their own physical and emotional strength.” Currently, Dragonfly offers discounts to seniors, students, and veterans and may be able to offer a sliding scale to clients who need but cannot afford the center’s services. Ferguson is also looking into the role that grants and insurance reimbursements might play in making holistic health services more affordable.
The Natural Cafe is open and ready for business.
For now, though, Ferguson’s focus is on the grand opening celebration Friday, Oct. 2. There will be a short ribbon-cutting ceremony at 3 p.m., followed by an open house with raffle prizes, refreshments, and free gifts. The open house runs from 3 to 7 p.m. on Friday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday. The Natural Café will offer smoothie samples and sandwiches, and Dragonfly’s health practitioners will have tables set up to highlight the classes, treatments, and workshops the center offers. “It is about having people come in and take a tour and see what we’re about,” said Ferguson. “Workshops and classes are just starting. They are definitely picking up, but we can fit a lot of people in there. We have lots of room.”
