What's a wellness buddy - and why the best ones aren't on any app

People don't usually ask strangers online where to find a good somatic practitioner.

They ask the one person in their world who gets it.

The friend who's been going to breathwork for two years. The colleague who quietly mentioned TRE changed something in them. The person in your phone who, when you text "do you know anyone on the south side who does somatic work?", actually has an answer.

For a while now, we've been those people.

Between the three of us: Ann, Paul, Cam - we visit studios, meet facilitators, try modalities, and talk to practitioners constantly. Not as a job but as a way of life. It's been part of our healing and growth journeys and now part of how we understand the world we're building Plaece for.

And somewhere along the way, we became the ones people message when they're trying to find their next thing.

Paul is someone who deeply understands that loneliness you feel even when surrounded by people.

Why it gets lonely

When you start stepping into wellness, the people closest to you often don't follow.

Your friends are still operating under the same conditioning you started questioning. Your family doesn't have a reference point for what you're exploring. The colleagues you used to confide in are still running the same patterns you're slowly untangling.

And so you start doing things on your own, stop sharing what you’re up to when all you get are yawns and blank stares. A personal growth journey can become quite lonely and isolating. Not because people don’t care, they’re just on a different path to where you are.

All three of us came into this through some form of grief or loss or a moment where the life we'd built stopped making sense. For Paul, it was losing someone to suicide, then a pandemic, then a motorbike accident that left him with tubes in his lungs. For Ann, it was burnout after reaching a corporate peak, a broken hip, and a long recovery in Thailand. For Cam, it was watching her father's Alzheimer’s diagnosis arrive on the same day as a visa that was supposed to be everything.

When you're in that kind of reshaping, you need people who are doing it too. Not people who understand it theoretically. People who are in it.

We found each other. And through Plaece, we've found more of them.

Now you know why Ann is also known as the “ice queen”

Introducing: Wellness Buddies

We decided that rather than simply answering the question of “do you know a good breathwork coach in bayside?”, we’d actually invite people to come along with us and try a session together!

Think of us as the person who stands next to you as you try something new and are not sure if it's for you. The one who says, "I know someone who does that work well - do you want to go together?”.

We’ve been going to breathwork, yoga and fire and ice sessions on weekdays and weekends: different styles, different facilitators, different studios - even different countries. We meet somatic coaches through our community and we try sound healing studios and yoga spaces.

And now we're making that more intentional.

Because if we know someone who does Spinal Energetics well, and there's someone in our community wondering whether it's right for them, the most useful thing we can do is close that gap.

Wellness is still confusing to most people

Not because they're not curious but because the landscape is overwhelming.

Instagram is full of coaches with beautiful feeds who may or may not be the right fit for where you are. It's hard to know who's done the real work, who leads with integrity, who is trauma-informed. It's hard to know if somatic experiencing is what you need right now (or even what it is), or if you'd get more from going deeper into a breathwork practice you've already started.

We've been on the receiving end of both. We know the difference between a practitioner who changed something in us and one who left us more confused and, in some cases, more traumatised. Yes, that does happen!

We're not here to review everyone or do paid sponsorships to promote anyone. We're here to be the person who knows the landscape — and can help you navigate it without the noise.

Our first Wellness Buddies session at No Name Studios in Brunswick. Ann & Cam in the back, if you haven’t met us - yet!

What this looks like practically

Through our coffee meetups, we’ve met curious people looking for an introduction into a modality. We often try these places out ourselves first to know who the right fit is.

We also look for places that are intimate so that your first introduction to something isn’t in a noisy, crowded place. This means spots are limited because we like it that way.

We're also on WhatsApp, where the real conversations continue. Not highlights and aesthetic grids. Voice notes. Questions. "Has anyone tried this?" Real talk from people on the same kind of path.

If you want to know what's coming before it's gone, the email list and WhatsApp community are the best places to be.

Just a community of people who get it, and a few of us who've made it our business to know what's worth trying.

If you've been exploring or want to, but don't have someone to ask or go with.

Ask us.

We’re Ann, Paul & Cam

Join the Plaece community email list to get access to our community WhatsApp to hear about upcoming events first.