BY JENNIFER CROWLEY
Earlier this spring the window at no. 10 Main Street, Scottsville, got a makeover. What was once a lawyer’s office had a new tenant with services aimed at helping clients maximize their potential. In other words, previously clients would emerge from the storefront likely either concerned or satisfied with the tangible legal matters impacting some facet of their life. But with Joy A.E. Dennis establishing residence, clients now emerge from no. 10 with newfound insight about themselves and ongoing strategies for how to achieve the things in life they want most.
Dennis is an Integrative Healing Arts Practitioner. She has trained to be a Consulting Clinical Hypnotist, holds certification in Transpersonal Life Coaching and is also a Certified Reiki practitioner. In speaking with the petite and engaging Dennis it becomes evident that her life’s story and calming demeanor have combined forces with her professional pursuits to put her on a path to helping others find enlightenment.
“Life coaching and hypnotherapy are two very different yet complementary services. Life coaching is very broad spectrum and forward looking. From professional concerns to relationship issues and parenting challenges, my approach to life coaching is to find and equip clients with the tools to help them get where they want to go,” Dennis explained. She went on to describe hypnotherapy (hypnosis) as primarily focused on looking inside to find what is blocking someone from achieving true potential, and then how to remove that obstacle.
It isn’t that surprising to learn that as a child, Dennis was exposed to a variety of cultures. She was born in Southern California but then moved overseas with her missionary parents. After spending time in the Philippines, Dennis returned to the US and eventually met her husband Griz when they were both art school students in the Los Angeles area.The couple married and had five children that today range in age from 11-19. The family settled in the Pacific Northwest on an island off of Seattle. It was during this time that Dennis got a taste of entrepreneurship, opening a small bakery/coffee shop business that also showed art, highlighting some of her creative talents and her husband’s custom framing skills.
From the Pacific Northwest the family moved to Chicago so Griz could complete his MFA degree at The Art Institute of Chicago. The Dennis’ ultimately ended up in the Rochester area because of the strong arts programs at surrounding colleges, particularly RIT (though Griz ultimately took a job teaching art history at GCC). Dennis placed an ad online looking for a home near RIT with a number of desired attributes. A homeowner in Scottsville responded with a home in the village for rent that fit the bill and the family landed here last August, sight unseen.
“I’ve moved a lot but I have to say the ease of the transition here really confirmed our decision to make this area our next home. We got plugged in so fast here, in this progressive community, it just felt like home very quickly.”
Dennis has spent the last 15 years refining her skills as a life coach. She has been able to deliver many consultations virtually, over the phone and Skype, but is excited to finally have a brick-and-mortar location because she expects that face-to-face engagement will bring about faster transformations for her clients. “Combining life coaching, hypnosis and reiki in my work with clients makes rapid growth and transformation possible, I believe that it is essential to engage the body, mind and spirit of my clients, treating them as a whole being.”
Beyond the life coaching and hypnotherapy, which she explained is more about creating a new story in order to tackle deep seeded issues, Dennis also offers a very unique service: toe reading. She went on to explain, “Our bodies have cellular memory – any traumas, beliefs, thoughts we have, well, believe it or not, our toes hold the archive of that information. My reading is purely observational to identify where blocked potential may be and from here I take that information to identify paths to move a person forward.”
Not surprisingly Dennis is today quite focused on building up her business. She has been receiving client referrals from Therapeutic Massage & Bodyworks, a medical massage business in Gates, but would like to augment that via strong word of mouth buzz backed by her social media presence. She is hopeful that when her neighbor at no.12 Main, iKON ice cream opens, there will be more opportunity to meet local residents and talk about the types of challenges her services can help individuals overcome.
Dennis is using a series of unique events to allow those who are curious about life coaching to experience her unique blend of therapeutic services. She is currently running a six-week workshop,
“The Love and Care of Your Energy System,” on a variety of topics with the goal of helping educate potential new clients around the tools she uses to help those ready to take a “journey into themselves,” as she put it. On July 8th Joyful Life Intuitive Guidance will host a Vision Board workshop aimed at connecting participants with their internal creativity and vision for what they would like to achieve in life. Fall workshops planned include a 12-week journey through “The Artist’s Way” for anyone who feels lost creatively and seeks to re-engage with who they are. Groups for meditation and anxiety management are also in the works.
“So much of what we do as adults goes back to something from our childhood, usually a wound that hasn’t healed. It is my desire to guide my clients into a self healing process, so that what hasn’t been healed can be resolved and to best equip people to live in the present.”
Anyone interested in learning more about Joyful Life Intuitive Guidance should take a look at https://www.joyfullifeintuitive.com, or as Dennis notes, walk-ins are always welcome, especially those eating ice cream.
