Consider this: The average Westside woman wakes up an hour early to make it to yoga in the morning. Then, during a short lunch break, she squeezes in a quick acupuncture session.
After work, she books it across town to Pilates or personal training and makes it home after dark.
On the weekends, she’s dehydrated and sore. She schedules a massage and visits her nutritionist – another day gone.
Now, visualize doing all of that happening in the span of three or four hours and in one place.
Whole Life Balance with Drip IV Therapy has opened in Santa Monica to serve that purpose.
Just two months old, the boutique yoga wellness center is designed to treat the person, not the symptoms. So whatever you need, from nutritional consulting to IV vitamin-drip therapy to aerial yoga, is going to be addressed specific to you.
The Whole Life Balance storefront, a quaint brick-and-mortar across from Whole Foods and two blocks east of Third Street Promenade, is designed in a way that projects glamour and style. Glowing artwork from Hawaii hovers on the concrete walls. Stainless steel lights match the Apple products.
But it’s the front desk that takes you in with the warmest welcome. From there, getting started is a matter of answering a few questions to determine which modalities are best for your body.
Services offered include IV vitamin drip therapy, nutritional consulting, fascial stretch therapy, massage therapy, acupuncture, personal training and small classes of yoga and Pilates.
Founder and Certified Nutritional Practitioner Shane Griffin is perhaps his own best example of how his methods can help you.
“I’m holistic, but I’m far from Zen,” he said in his office last week.
At one time the biggest independent nightclub owner in Toronto, Griffin has spent his life serving others – be it shots of Patron in the past or wheatgrass today.
“It was when I got out of the nightclub business that I realized that my normal, was not normal,” Griffin said. “What was normal for me for well over a decade of living in the fast lane was not going to be conducive to a healthy life. So I put myself into treatment to Passages in Malibu.”
At Passages, Griffin learned about the concept of a holistic life, the guiding principle for his new fate to come. From there, he enrolled at the Institute of Holistic Nutrition, “and I swear to you on every ounce of me, I had absolutely no idea that I was going to do anything with the program.”
But six months into school and six months out of treatment, Griffin still wasn’t happy. He couldn’t derive joy from his straight A’s in class. He was numb.
“I knew that I liked my life, I just wasn’t feeling it,” Griffin said.
His therapist broke it down for him: During 20-plus years of using drugs and alcohol, Griffin’s body had used up the serotonin in his body and no longer knew how to reward the brain naturally and without substances.
“And I thought about people in treatment with me who were going back to criminal charges, who were going back to children they hadn’t talked to in 10 years because of their addiction,” he said.
No wonder relapse, he said to himself.
“So I started working on protocols for people in addiction recovery. That’s how Whole Life Balance started,” Griffin said of the yearlong journey.
From neophyte to valedictorian, Griffin graduated early with the highest honors and moved to California last June. He designed his own nutritional protocol software, a composite of holistic and nutritional libraries designed to recognize a person’s top 10 imbalances. From a 45-minute questionnaire, Griffin and his team of CNPs and coaches handpick an individualized protocol of foods that support your homeostasis, lifestyle changes and supplement support (where the drip IV therapy comes in).
Or you could just stop by for a massage or Pilates. Griffin has maintained his same goals as when he was a nightclub owner: to make people feel at home.
Though his original goal was to help others in early addiction recovery, Whole Life Balance is here to help everyone.
“I’m a little bit different, for lack of a better term,” Griffin said.
See what makes Whole Life Balance with Drip IV Therapy different from the rest at 507 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 101, in Santa Monica. For more information call 888.540.5714 or visit wholelifebalance.com.
