Located in the heart of NYC Suzanne Hill founder of OHM is truly a community center with heart. People hang out in the lobby and know each other and. This is not a “yoga studio” with over….classes a week both online and in person
What was the inspiration to create the OHM Center?
In 2017, I was getting ready to move out of NYC, with the plan of reducing my workload as an acupuncturist down to 3 days a week. Then, one day I woke up and had the overwhelming feeling wash over me that I needed to open up a meditation center. The words literally came out of my mouth, “It’s time.” For years, I had been teaching 3 meditation classes a week out of my home, so I realized it was time to get them out of my apartment and reach a community beyond my acupuncture patients. It took 6 months to find our location, and after a 9-month buildout, Ohm opened its doors in October 2019. So at the time of this publishing we will be about 5.5 years old!!
OHM center is more than a meditation center. From the moment you walk there is a strong feeling of community and you can’t help but notice how people spend time before and after classes hanging out on the couches in the lobby and seem to know each other. Was this part of the vision?
Yes! From the get go, I wanted people to feel like Ohm is a good 3rd space (after home and work), where they can feel safe, secure and welcomed…especially in a large city like NYC, where we sometimes feel like not enough people acknowledge or care about us. At Ohm, we care! We also want people to be able to meet others on their journey of self-development, and share experiences. At the end of class, I go around the room and ask people to briefly discuss what they experienced for 2 reasons: 1) to ground people back into their bodies through speaking, and 2) to help people connect to a group energy. If you only show up for class and leave in your own private cocoon, then you don’t experience the relating and connection that comes through verbal sharing. As humans, when we feel whole and balanced, we naturally want to share; other people learn from our experiences, so we all help each other grow. This leads to people being friendly with one another before and after class. A community naturally formed, without feeling forced, and without the sense that there are insiders and outsiders. We hope that everyone leaves our space feeling included and welcomed! (And by the way, I called it OHM to stand for Open Heart and Mind, but lately I’m writing it Ohm, so that people don’t call it the O-H-M Center!)
What are the most popular offerings at OHM center? (ie: soundbaths? trainings?)
By far our most popular classes are Sound Baths; we have them every day at least once! People love the sounds and vibrations of the singing bowls, and we often incorporate them into the end of other classes like Yoga Nidra as well. Most of our
Sound Baths are 45-minutes or 1-hour long. The other 2 popular classes are Breathwork & Sound Healing and Gentle Hypnosis & Sound Healing. These classes are well-attended because they are 75 minutes long, and people feel like they have journeyed, so they’re deeply restorative. It usually takes people 15 minutes to sit up after the class is over!
In early 2024, we added training & certification programs and the response has been enormous! We have trained a lot of people! Ohm currently offers a 25-Hour Level 1 Sound Healing Certification, which includes in-person weekly classes & lots of practice time. By the time our students complete the course, they’re able to give mini-sound baths for their friends & family. We also have 4-Hr. Energy Healing Training that is very popular. As we move into the Age of Aquarius, we believe that everyone should learn how to be an energy healer!
The theme of this issue is “celebrating age.” What advice or practices would you recommend to someone who is interested in improving wellness as they get older? (optional question more about Suzanne if she wants to answer)
By now, most of us know that there are many things that accelerate our biological aging such as: stress, living in a city, mental and physical toxins, trauma, chronic pain, etc. While none of us will live forever (as yet), there are indeed antidotes to this accelerated aging such as: good sleep, no sugar or toxins, drinking enough water, working at things we love, forming relationships with people who support and nurture us, etc.. Furthermore, from the spiritual perspective, the KEY antidote to aging is to release our natural reflex of responding to situations by becoming tense, worried and upset. Everything works out one way or another, and whatever situation that arises won’t be any different. It will ALWAYS work out. As we can uplevel our response to acceptance, trust and faith through regular meditation and spiritual practice, we will absolutely age more gracefully. The practices we teach at Ohm like mantra chanting, breathwork and meditation, all help you uplevel, thereby relaxing you, and decelerating the speed at which gray hair, wrinkles and arthritis appear.
You originally worked in finance before changing careers to become an acupuncturist and then eventually open the OHM center. What advice would you give to someone considering a career change to work in wellness?
There is wellness and then there’s spirituality, and ideally they should overlap, but sometimes they don’t. For sure, the skills that are always immediately transferable from other industries are hard work, responsibility and follow through. From corporate into wellness, I think that people have to learn not to be attached to their patients’ or clients’ outcomes. We are only ever the guide, not the doer, and it’s
really up to the patient how “well” they want to be. You can’t push others up the mountain; it’s too exhausting and inefficient. This non-attachment is tricky for some people coming from corporate, because it goes against the corporate mindset, where you are meant to “get things done”. But even in corporate, you will find that if you evolve past attachment to outcome, you will have a better experience and greater success overall.
Coming from corporate into spirituality, the main lesson is patience, so that you’re able to let things unfold naturally. Divine timing has its reasons for things taking as long or short as they do, and it’s always for the greater good of ALL, not just us as individuals. Again, these lessons
