When we moved Advaya Healing Bodywork from Paekākāriki’s Beach Road to the back of our property we knew we took a gamble. Without heating and running water, and furnished only with threadbare carpet tiles and curtains, the new space was less than an ideal alternative. Yet, we decided to give it a go nonetheless with the promise to make improvements along Advaya’s ways.

Now, three years later, and with many of hours of renovation work already behind us, we are mere weeks away from finishing our practice’s upgrades. Much has changed since..

For most of us the years 2021 and 2022 will forever be associated with the COVID pandemic – and all that came with it. Here in New Zealand we remember two lockdowns, that wearing of face masks was made mandatory, and that we all were expected to scan posterised QR codes to log our whereabouts. During those years, while being banned from public transport and our offices, we relearned how to work from home, how to meet through video conferencing, and to wait patiently in queues before being allowed to enter supermarkets. We stockpiled toilet paper, disinfected whatever we brought home, and taught ourselves to wash our hands properly after touching anything and everything. We learned how to be close with each other at a two-meter distance.

For us, these years will forever be memorable for other reasons. For one, they hallmark the opening of our first-ever ‘commercial’ practice, which followed two years of working in a backyard hut. Memorable more so because Advaya’s brand-new road sign went up mere hours before New Zealand moved into its first pandemic lockdown.

Some who knew what we were doing believed this to be ominous. Others saw it as auspicious. All we felt on that marked day was excitement. Lockdown or not, the mounting of that sign signalled the manifestation of a dream we had nurtured and fostered since 2017.

When it went up, Advaya’s first true commercial practice at 6 Beach Road in Paekakariki became finally a reality.

Beach Road – Advaya’s renaissance

Despite all that COVID brought during these years we will remain grateful to our time at that little practice at Beach Road. Although we had been practicing for some time at another location it still feels that Advaya became a true practice in that rented room. All of a sudden, Advaya felt very grown up and on its trajectory to full maturity. There was a reception, a kitchenette, and a toilet – all the facilities we once hoped to have. It was located opposite busy cafes, among other businesses, and close to our local train station. During spring and summer everything seem to be buzzing in and around our treatment room. All at a 15-minute walking distance from our home.

It was here where Advaya saw its renaissance. As the few clients we saw weekly became many we opened up more booking slots in our paper-based calendar. That manual calendar became digitised and was soon transferred to a full fletched online booking system. We had a treatment bed designed and made for us to our own specifications and imported it from Australia. To constantly improve our bodywork services we invested prudently but gradually in ever-better treatment tools and equipment. Finally, to promote ourselves, we ordered our very own business cards and had Advaya’s brand printed on a first-ever run of ten t-shirts.

Advaya grew and expanded quickly to an almost unmanageable pace. For a while we did struggle to manage our bookings effectively. Administration, including the creation of invoices, became a late-night activity. In order to stay on top of things, time needed to process client notes and to personalise their next treatments had to be fitted between sessions. Meanwhile, we also held onto our other jobs – I, for one, continued to accept consulting contracts, which required me to commute around the Wellington area almost daily.

Although it was not without its challenges we came to love the balancing act our life had become, with twelve-hour working days, six days each week as a matter of normality. We did what we loved doing and relished the excitement that comes from manifesting a dream. Yet, it was around the end of 2022 that we realised that something was missing about Advaya – something that had been so essential to our practice-building vision. We wanted Advaya’s energy closer to home – literally. In fact, we wanted all the goodness we created with our clients at home. We wanted Advaya to be more than just place to work. Instead, we wanted to feel, breathe, and sense its energies all the time and to be able to move fluidly and seamlessly from our home life in that of Advaya’s.

Advaya had to come back home to us.

Tilley Road – bringing Advaya home…

Our property, like so many others here in Paekākāriki, features a second building that was originally destined to serve as a garage. Ours went through a several inceptions – it was mostly used as a storage facility when we moved in; became and office space sometime later and was then turned into a framing studio. In December 2021 we begun to rearrange things to open up a space for Advaya’s practice. We completed its move from Beach Road a month later.

We knew that by relocating Advaya to our ‘backyard’ we had set ourselves up for many hours of extra work. The space was nothing more than that; a space. A mountain of work lay ahead of us to convert it into a bodywork practice. There was no bathroom. Lighting was bad. Carpet was threadbare, curtains more than just tired, and the walls and ceiling were in dire need of some paint.

After playing with several ideas to upgrade the space we eventually settled on gradual renovation. We planned with a two-year outlook with the ambition to do it once, and properly. And so we did.

Any client who visited us for more than a year has seen the drastic transformations Advaya went through. The first stage was reconstructing the building’s bones. That stage was quickly followed by a complete exterior makeover – from tin cladding to dark grey baton-and-board. The long awaited toiled became a full-fledged bathroom with shower. Finally, with all that out of the way, we put our hands onto the practice. In record time, we replaced the ceiling with finished plywood, and insulated all walls whilst at it. We added new lighting, which is now exactly as we wanted it to be. What’s left is the painting of the interior walls which, to be honest, is sort of the exciting part. We are nearly, nearly on the home stretch.

There’s one last thing to complete. Furniture. Tools, materials, and books will be given new homes but we haven’t found the perfect solutions yet. We know what we want; we just have not yet fallen in love with anything yet. With a little luck we might find something before Christmas this year.

What’s next?

Anyone who reads our journals knows that there is always a ‘what’s next’ part at the end. Not different this time because, well, there are plenty of other things percolating away for Advaya in the background. Most of these next things had to wait until we finished the practice’s renovations. Once that’s out of the way we will be swiftly moving onto launching a few new things, some of which were suggested by you, our clients.

Not to be divulged now; you’ll just have to wait until these things become ready for launch.

In the meantime, we are excited about welcoming you to our ‘new’ Advaya Healing Bodywork practice. We are confident that you will like what you’ll see. It will be nice to celebrate our next iteration with you before we move into 2024.

We couldn’t have hoped for a better year’s end….