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5 Questions: Sybil Harmon

Posted on: Thursday, 22 September 2005, 21:00 CDT

GREENSBORO -- Talk to Sybil Harmon, and she seems like the eye of a hurricane. You can hear other phones ringing in the background. She interrupts a conversation briefly to take a call from a client. Upon returning to the conversation, she chooses her words carefully as if shes picking out notes on a piano, one key at a time. She finds harmony in every sentence, constantly balancing whats going on around her and paying attention to the conversation.

Harmon is the president and founder of Art of Well Being, a homegrown magazine that highlights Greensboros growing alternative healing community and sponsors this weekends alternative health exposition.

1. Art of Well Being was first published in March 2000. What inspired you to start it?

I was inspired through my own experiences with natural health and healing, and I decided I wanted to refocus my energy to serve alternative healers in the community, to provide education and awareness to those in the community who knew very little about holistic health.

2. What is your role in the magazine?

I wear a lot of hats. I help with the sales. I do all of the layout and design work. I take care of it being printed and being delivered to distributors. I load my trunk up. (She laughs).

I am on the computer, e-mailing -- a lot of the communication. I function as a conduit also. Art of Well Being provides a free community calendar on the Web site, so we get that information in and post it. So theres a lot of information being provided, not just by people who are advertising in the magazine.

The Expo also functions as a wonderful venue for businesses to come together and network with each other.

3Did you see a need for that kind of networking?

Definitely. I had seen in the past that there had been publications representing some of the alternative health practices, and I felt the need for that to be represented in a bigger way. It needed to be provided and expanded. I came from a background of graphic design and art direction. I saw the need for a piece to be well-defined and well-designed -- to represent the community effectively, I would say.

4. What was your introduction to holistic health practices?

Im a certified tai chi instructor. Ive been doing tai chi for seven years, so thats my love, as well as an interest in a healthy life.

It was interesting because in college I was very much interested in nutrition. I dont know if you remember, but in the 70s there was a movement toward what they called hippie food.

The first book I ever bought was a book called The Super-market Handbook, which gave you an idea of how to find healthy food at the supermarket. I veered away from that by getting into the corporate world, getting married, having a child. It was a gradual transition (away from the corporate world), and it took about three years between the idea of Art of Well Being being birthed to the first magazine coming out.

5. Have you encountered any practices that made you think, What in the world are you doing?

Ive had questions of how people (articulate) what they do. Art of Well Being has been helpful in presenting their services.

There are some of these things that are a bit way out, and it isnt something that everyone is ready for. We tend not to represent things that are a little too far out.

My commitment when I started Art of Well Being was to bring something that the general public could feel comfortable with.

Its important to note that what this community is representing is a complement to whats going on in the medical community -- its complementary alternative medicine.

Its not that Im against pharmaceuticals. Im in favor of people taking care of themselves so they dont reach a chronic condition and need pharmaceuticals, which are so toxic, to get them back on the path to wellness.

This is what is needed because the lifestyle today has become so highly stressful, its become more imperative than ever that people take time to learn to listen to their bodies and their emotions, and find a way to relax, and a way to be happy and healthy.

-- Compiled by Meghan Davis,special to Go Triad

Source: Greensboro News Record

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