Infrared sauna, acupuncture, chiropractic care—NuHouse in Easton is a wellness center equipped with all these staples of alternative medicine and more. Founder Janel Lukachek explains her team's unique approach to health and how you can empower yourself to heal.
What is NuHouse?
With esoteric branding and poetic invitations to “align in the alley, connecting mind, body and soul,” the vibe at NuHouse has folks intrigued and inquisitive. What exactly goes on in there? “It's something you don't really understand until you experience it,” Lukachek says.
Maybe this is because it's unusual to have a team of experienced practitioners collaborate on a client's care in weekly meetings. The “house healers” are masters in their crafts, but also benefit by each other's wisdom and perspective, combining into a treatment protocol that's so much more than the sum of its parts. “NuHouse is a home for so many practitioners and a village of clients,” Lukachek says. “Although ‘owner,' ‘founder' and ‘COO' are titles you can place after a name, I can't take credit for what goes on inside our walls.”
Tailored Treatment
NuHouse's therapies complement the medical community's evidence-based and trustworthy treatment, when clients want access to both traditional and alternative. “We don't prescribe the same type of treatment,” Lukachek says, “for two people with an injured rotator cuff or a cold. Different bodies respond differently to the same treatment. Listen to the body instead of a textbook or the back of a bottle.”
In her personal example, according to Chinese medicine, Lukachek's body runs cold, so when she tore her intercostal muscle during a bout of COVID coughing, the received wisdom of jumping into cryotherapy caused her muscles to tense terribly. The infrared sauna, instead, is where her muscles will feel relief.
The Self-Contract
The team at NuHouse is not content simply applying lasers, acupuncture needles or the mind-body unifying Trager massage. “The first step is a self-contract,” Lukachek explains. “We're telling you what we think will help you achieve your goals in an acute situation, but the first contract is with yourself.”
Clients have to be open to healing, and oftentimes do the emotional work of releasing what's pent up inside them causing or contributing to their body's pain. “We all come with preprogrammed ways, thoughts or emotions we might have been born with or developed,” Lukachek says. The emotion called up by a sentimental song or memory can cause the body to tense protectively, and that's the kind of feedback loop that can contribute to chronic pain.
Listen Inwardly
It feels great to get a diagnosis and fill a prescription to knock out an illness that's been bothering you, but when it comes to long-term wellness, it's unfortunately not always so easy. If there's an emotional or spiritual component to our body's dysregulation, no one can identify the root of it but ourselves. In daily life, Lukachek advises, “Listen to what makes your body and mind feel most at peace, happy and good.” Some days she's giving herself dark chocolate and a good cry, and some days it's a cryofreeze followed by sweating it out in the sauna. In trusting our own intuition, we have the power to give ourselves what we need.
Who Can Benefit at NuHouse?
“The only requirement is to be open to accept healing,” Lukacheck says. “We come full circle in that what everyone is usually searching for is locked within themselves.” If you're frustrated with chronic pain, tired of taking pills whose side effects seem to compound your issues or just want to take an active role in limbering your systems inside and out, NuHouse is a whole vibe.
The attitude inside is half the battle. Absorbing the intention to reflect, to dive deep and restore the mind-body connection creates rich soil to grow healing experiences. Lukachek emphasizes that being well isn't a concern just for acute situations: it might mean a mom escaping for a half hour in the infrared sauna, a decadent hour of massage, and a hydrafacial to feel her best, tackle the day and take care of her family.
Join the Village
“Consumers are placing more value on health and wellness than on material objects these days,” Lukachek muses, “and the definition of health and wellness has evolved. The phrase no longer refers simply to a lack of illness and disease, but to a more holistic state of being, where one's mental, physical and emotional health are in sync.”
You'll always be the one noticing when something's out of balance and taking the initiative to feed yourself what's needed every day, and you can enlist the aid of healers like those at NuHouse to walk with you on this journey.
Published as "Ask the Expert" in the January 2023 edition of Lehigh Valley Style magazine.
