The Onyx Therapy Group’s mental health fair held its second annual festival at the Union Market car shop site on Sunday.
Music, food and yoga took over a corner of northeast DC this weekend – all in the name of mental health.
THE Onyx Therapy Group Mental Health Lounge kicked off its second annual festival on Sunday at the Union Market Auto Shop site.
Onyx CEO and Founder LaNail Plummer said the fair’s goal was to connect the black community to mental health services.
“It’s about making sure that we allow the community to properly access mental health,” Plummer said. “A lot of people don’t know where to get mental health services, or even mental health normalization. They don’t necessarily know that there are people who look like them, who speak like them, who come from cultures like them and who do this work. ”
For Plummer, mental health does not only translate into a psychological crisis or depression. A person’s mental health extends to all aspects of their life.
“It’s about how we raise our children,” she said. “It’s about how we love our partners. It’s about how we love each other or how we engage in friendship. It is about how we spend our money or how we view money.
For Plummer, limiting counseling to moments of crisis can be risky.
“We all need therapy, just like we all go to the dentist, we all go to the doctor, we all go to get a haircut or get our hair done,” Plummer said.
“So even if you’re the thinking person, I really don’t have anything major going on in my life right now. You probably don’t have any major dental issues either. But you’re going to have your checkup every six months.
And therapy doesn’t just mean sitting on a coach with a professional. Plummer said it also means connecting with your community through dance, yoga and song.
“Our brains are designed in sensory experience, but the tactile piece is important from a community perspective because our brains activate in a different way when we’re touched than when we’re around people,” said said Plummer.
“So when people are feeling sad, depressed, just being able to touch someone triggers the brain in a different way to allow blood flow, to allow pathways to open, to allow us to to feel differently, from feeling in terms of emotions in our amygdala, to thinking differently based on our prefrontal cortex.
Plummer said the pandemic has suppressed this type of community therapy, making it important for people to re-engage with their communities and themselves.
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