The Center for Enlightened Learning, in Roswell, can be likened to an incubator. It’s a place where people that need assistance or treatment for a variety of issues can go to try new modalities and solutions that would be hard or impossible to find in one place. For the practitioners, it’s a place to put down roots without going into massive debt, which often steers the dynamic away from an original intent of sharing and healing into the money game.

Owner Beth Rennie says, “My business is a heart-centered business. It’s really built around the idea of empowering other people, and that’s where my heart is. It is very personal to me and I don’t make a profit on it. It’s strictly for helping people who are trying to get their holistic practitioner business started because it’s so cost-prohibitive.” One prime directive is to maintain strict confidentiality about clients at the center.

“Not everybody out there is just in it for the money,” says Rennie. “There are a lot of us out there that have lived our lives trying to function in a “normal” society in an abnormal way. We’re trying to figure out how we fit in this world and what our purpose is here, because obviously we’re not bank tellers, we’re not CEOs, we’re not firemen; what do we do with this information, how do we live our lives? Everyone deserves to be able to make a living. If it was up to us, we would just give it all away.”

Rennie opened the center in November 2013 at the Roswell Office Suites as a practitioner of energetic readings. She recalls, “I looked at the office and something in my spirit said, ‘This is the place you need to be. You need to go ahead and rent four offices.” I thought I was losing my mind and I left, but the feeling that I needed to do this just wouldn’t stop. I came back the next day and signed a lease for four offices. At that point, nobody had yet signed up to help me. I put it out there on Facebook to my practitioner friends, and within an hour I had seven people. It went from seven to 13 practitioners working out of the center and we have five offices now, with another one I am about to sign a lease on.”

She sees the center as an opportunity to really touch the mind, body and spirit of each person that comes in. “You may come for a Reiki session and the practitioner may decide to recommend you over to our hypnotherapist, who can help you then go back and change some of the things in your life, and you may need to go to another therapist to talk about that. It’s a very synergistic arrangement.”

Rennie’s own path has been difficult in some ways. “I grew up being able to communicate with spirits,” she says. “My family really doesn’t understand and they don’t really support me in any way, so for a long time I suppressed it. I thought I was crazy because that’s what my parents told me. As an adult, I started to experience more things and I thought, ‘Well I can’t be the only one.’ I decided to try to network and reach out to find a support group. In doing that, I found that I’m not crazy and I can see these things and I can hear these things so I would be able to share this with other people. It’s a gift. It’s not for entertainment, it’s for healing.”

Board members Stephanie Walent, in charge of finance and event announcements on Facebook, Calendar and Meetup; Glenda Emory, in charge of alternate multimedia advertising; Andrea Bagby-Swearington, in charge of event planning; and Ahsaki Kai, in charge of mainstream multimedia advertising Facebook and Google+, all have important roles to play in getting the word out about the Center for Enlightened Learning. Volunteers Becky Arrington, (print advertising) and Kathleen Robinson, (administration) both help make it happen.

Monthly meetings are held at the center called The Gathering, with vendors, energetic readings, life coaches, hypnotherapists, shamans and Reiki practitioners, intuitive artists, massage therapists, chairs massages and food. Practitioners charge $1 per minute for their services with a 20-minute minimum.

The Center for Enlightened Learning is located at 760 Old Roswell Rd., Roswell. For more information, call 770-609-1975 or visit TheCenterForEnlightenedLearning.com.

Martin Miron is the editor of Natural Awakenings Atlanta.