The healing power from within: wellness proprietor ready to go the corporate route.

• Author: Ross, Ian
• Position: CONFERENCE & CONVENTION

It doesn't surprise Rod Kelly that modern society has people turning in droves to spiritual teachings to find a deeper meaning to life.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

After all, stress is built into everyone's daily work, home and over-scheduled personal lives. It's why books and lectures by lifestyle gurus like Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer and Eckhart Tolle are so popular for those seeking to find the mind-body balance to health and success.

Some people do well in dealing with stressful situations and get energized by the pressure of deadlines. Others buckle under a stream of negative thoughts.

"When it comes to stress, the situation is not the problem, it's your response to it," says Kelly, owner of the Eye of the Eagle Retreat and Wellness Centre in Pointe au Baril.

He's trying to get the message across that stress and negativity is not just a contributing factor to illness but is "in itself a disease."

Through simple calming techniques like deep breathing, people can change their lives for the better.

"Once you can understand the magic in the world around you, you begin to start changing your perspective. We create our own reality, our perspective. Once you change that, you change the world around you."

For seven years, Kelly has run a bed-and-breakfast woodlands retreat near the Georgian Bay resort town between Parry Sound and Sudbury.

Thanks to the power of the Internet, and the visitors arriving at his place from Vancouver, Ohio and Denmark, the business focus is shifting more to a full-service healing retreat.

A trained hypnotherapist with expertise in Reiki, he always helped teach clients on how to heal their own bodies from ailments as severe as cancer.

Now he's taking his message on learning the art of self-healing out to the masses.

While waiting for his book, The Empowerment of Self-Healing, to hit store shelves this summer, Kelly wants to create an outreach program this fall with stress management services for corporations. "With the understandings I've gained it's important to reach as many people as I can."

His seminars cover a wide range of topics from stress man-agreement to increasing one's metabolism, and also self-healing techniques, a complex topic which stretches into a two-day workshop.

"The biggest thing is teaching people they have absolute and total dominion over their bodies."

Currently he uses meeting space at a lodge up Highway 69 in Byng Inlet for seminars. But he's contemplating building an addition to accommodate small...