By Elizabeth Simpson, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va. Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News
Aug. 19--VIRGINIA BEACH, Va.--As wellness benefits go, you have your Y membership discount. Your company walking club. Your posters near the vending machine urging you to eat more vegetables.
These are the types of things the Hampton Roads Health Coalition has awarded for promoting wellness in the workplace.
This year, one of the coalition's gold rings goes to a place that transcends treadmills and food pyramid fliers.
Here, think peaceful meditation in a room that overlooks the Atlantic. Think discounts on massages and foot reflexology. Did we mention the free almonds -- touted as a cancer preventive here -- or the apple brandy fumes that can be inhaled daily from a charred oak barrel to purify the lungs?
OK, so we're not at Target or the local health department.
Rather, this is the Association for Research and Enlightenment, founded in 1931 by Christian psychic Edgar Cayce. Here at 67th and Atlantic streets head...uarters, even the bumper stickers have a calming effect.
'Peace is Patriotic.' 'Honor All Beings.' 'Visualize Whorled Peas.'
The company also has one of the more unusual slates of wellness benefits to cross the desks of the Health Coalition, a local nonprofit organization that has awarded companies for wellness programs since 1998.
Let's just say they scored high on creativity.
There's also the more conventional: health insurance for traditional medicine; a health fair with cholesterol checks and flu shots; a day off for every six months of wellness.
'A lot of people are so mission-oriented, that it's hard to pull yourself away from the work,' said Toni Romano, who oversees outreach programs at A.R.E.
Most of the employees are followers, to some degree, of Cayce, so they seek balance of mind, body and soul -- one of his main tenets.
'It's hard to balance your desire to do so much for the organization because you love the work of Edgar Cayce, but you can over extend yourself,' said employee Grace Yuksek. 'We have to pull back because we know the body needs rest.'
At the A.R.E. center, it's not about offering what outsiders might consider New-Age perks but rather walking the walk that dates back to the founder.
Cayce, sometimes called the sleeping prophet, gave some 14,000 'readings' while in trances on subjects from health to reincarnation to predictions of world events, such as the 1929 stock market crash. Some 9,000 of them dealt with health.
Some of the ideas seemed ahead of their time in the United States, considering Cayce died in 1945: a diet rich in fruits, vegetables and grains; massage to relieve stress; daily meditation to achieve balance.
Others were more obscure. He professed that two or three almonds a day would prevent 'a tendency toward cancer.' That colonics -- a procedure in which water is infused into the colon -- should be done seasonally to cleanse the system. And about that apple brandy, kept in the lobby of the health and rejuvenation center:
'When the fumes are inhaled, it will act not only as a purifier for the throat, bronchi and lungs but will be a stimulation to the circulation.'
History tells us that not everything that Cayce said was right. According to one documentary, he predicted that the lost continent of Atlantis would rise off the coast of Virginia Beach in 1969.
It didn't.
His colonic advice has been criticized by some doctors as not having health benefits and carrying risks of infection.
Dr. Christine Matson, who chairs the family and community medicine department at Eastern Virginia Medical School, said that while benefits of such techni...ues as massage and acupuncture have been well documented, there's still a wide swath of alternative treatments that lack study. People should consider two things: safety and effectiveness.
She advises caution and study.
All of that said, employees here -- particularly longtime followers -- say the employee benefits improve their lives. Fifty percent, for instance, take advantage of the massage discount. Twenty percent have regular colonics.
Employees say the most valuable benefit is the holistic lifestyle most employees adopt.
'You do more reflecting here,' said Janice Long, who works at the A.R.E. health and rejuvenation center. She said people are more apt to talk things out or meditate rather than argue.
Una Marcotte, who works in public information, said she worked for three Fortune 500 companies before coming here nine years ago.
'I learned ...uickly that people were not to be treated as I treated people in the corporate world,' Marcotte said. 'I was used to thinking about the job, not the person.'
Two years ago, though, five former employees filed a defamation lawsuit -- which was later settled -- saying other employees accused them of being Satan and Judas.
The organization was also reported at the time to have lost thousands of members and millions of dollars in the previous decade.
But the organization has gone through restructuring and cost cutting since then. Discount health treatments, for instance, are provided at cost for employees now, rather than below cost.
For some, the common beliefs keep them on the job. Even those new to the philosophy.
When Mary Hughes saw an ad for a data entry job five years ago, she didn't even know it was at the A.R.E. She thought the benefits were a little unusual when she took the job.
'I told someone, 'I can't meditate, I don't know what to do.' And they said, 'You go there and sit, and then you'll get it.' '
She did. Now she tries to go at least once a week.
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(c) 2003, The Virginian-Pilot, Norfolk, Va. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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