I am consistent in my lack of deadline hitting and timeliness. True to that fact, this interview was conducted nearly one year ago, but seems appropriate as the women of Third Space Wellness have now just opened their space which is the subject of this interview. In that time, they’ve expanded their wellness community with local events, local partnerships, and the Silver Spring Inc produced podcast, #WellnessUnlocked. Read on to find out more about the latest wellness leaders in Silver Spring.
I originally found out about Third Space Wellness from an Indiegogo campaign they ran nearly two years ago. Coming from different backgrounds, Joy Andrews, Rachel Brumberger and Samantha Dublin found common experiences and perspectives on health, and a home in Silver Spring. Joy shares some of the reason that she identified with the area:
“I moved here 8 years ago and I lived in the Blairs. I remember my first day stepping out and I counted five languages, and I knew I was home because I grew up in Guatelamala. Culture is important to me and having a influx of a lot of different people, so I haven’t left.”
Going further, Joy mentions the opportunity that the three recognized in the area:
“Silver Spring is ripe for connecting people. That’s our vision.”
The idea of a wellness community is a somewhat novel concept that is an extension of other collaborative models currently. As members of the greater wellness industry, they saw some problems in the way discussion occurs around topics as sensitive as health and wellness.
Rage-filled Sam points out:
“What kind of blows my mind is that there are websites of people talking about their treatments and sharing information that way. Instead of relying on their doctor for whatever their diagnosis is, they’re turning to the internet to find other people and find out, “Well, what treatment have you gotten for this disease?” We can have that in person with people that we trust like, ‘Oh, I have that same problem. How did you fix it? What worked for you? What didn’t work for you?”’We need that, and these websites are thriving and hundreds of thousands of people turn to them with their symptoms, and are googling it like, ‘Well what did this other person do?’ We can do that in person. Weird! With people that are experiencing it.”
Third Space Wellness will fill that gap by keeping wellness at the center of other traditional ideas, models, and mechanisms around community. Rachel expands on that idea:
“How can we create a connector between [people], so that they have stuff in common, so we can throw a topic out there, whether it’s yoga happy hour, or how to brew your own beer, or how to shop at the farmer’s market and eat local, seasonal food. There are other people that will come and be attracted to that topic, and then those people will have someone to drive them to the hospital when they get sick, or bring them soup, or go running with them on Sunday morning on Rock Creek Parkway [#SSRunClub], or go to the grocery store together because they both decided they don’t want to eat as much sugar and they have no idea how to shop and they don’t want to go alone.”
You can find the new Third Space Wellness location at 8001 Kennett Street, suite B, right next to Space 88. True to their word, Third Space Wellness offers a host of community events, happy hours, run clubs, a vision board and other ways to involve the community. Be sure, also to check out #WellnessUnlocked.
Finally, when asked what they love about Silver Spring, Sam shared a comment dear to my heart:
“It’s not DC, and it’s not Bethesda.”
