After years of work in psychiatry, friends and business partners Eve McCann and Maureen Moynihan have opened a new practice in New Hyde Park offering a path to holistic healing through alternative and traditional treatments.
Open Path Therapies, located at 901 Second Ave., integrates holistic practices and evidence-based therapy practices that are more common, according to McCann.
“We both aligned with so many of the practices in the mental health fields. They work, but only to a point,” she said. “It’s more about going inward.”
McCann is a therapist with a background in psychiatry who is also a Reiki practitioner. In addition to more common therapy practices such as psychotherapy, she offers Reiki, which is a non-invasive, energy-based form of treatment.
“It’s a universe life force, that’s what Reiki means, but it’s so much more than that,” she said. “It’s the energy that’s already there, and it’s a beautiful experience.”
She said anyone is welcome to seek Reiki treatment, and that most people experience stress reduction and relaxation. She said she hopes mothers who are empty nesters, or women in fertility treatment or who are pregnant or anyone dealing with stress can seek the practice to promote relaxation.
Moynihan practices hypnotherapy, in addition to her more standard therapy offerings. She said she sets a goal with each patient and uses it to guide the hypnotherapy.
She said the patient is awake during therapy and while in a relaxed state communicates with one’s subconscious mind. People seeking help for weight loss, anxiety, depression, sport performance, confidence and achieving goals can turn to hypnotherapy.
“We do hypnosis on ourselves every day,” she said, bringing up highway hypnosis as an example. “You’re not asleep, it is not ‘brain training.’ It is accessing their own mind in order to allow for shift and change.”
The two originally met while working in psychiatry at Nassau University Medical Center. The two became friends and began walking to discuss spirituality and their practices.
“The walks became one mile, then five miles,” McCann said, “and we would talk about everything and anything.”
“It wasn’t talking about the mundane stuff of everyday,” Moynihan said. “It was talking about the otherness, about thought, about karma.”
“Maureen could be a spiritual teacher,” McCann said. “She’s somebody that’s very easy to talk to, who you can just say anything to.”
The two said they are hoping to build community and hold space through events and sessions at their practice. They said they offer workshops, meditations, sound bowls, neurographic art and more, so that there are options for people seeking holistic care.
“You don’t have to reach for a pill all the time, or alcohol all the time,” McCann said. “There are other things right within us where we can get a sense of calm and find a little peace within ourselves.
