November 22, 2011
Denise Dobbs found yoga through yachting. Now she returns yoga back to yachting with Hands Om Crew Healing House in Ft. Lauderdale.
A former yacht stew who is now a massage therapist and breathwork coach, Dobbs offers a crew house, courses and more for crew from a modern, quiet condominium near what crew call yachtie central, just off Southeast 17th Street near Port Everglades.
"Yoga, it is a life-long journey," Dobbs said from the white, spacious main room of Hands Om. "It's the science of life, the spaces between the moments. I teach how to enjoy those moments more."
Dobbs said her purpose for teaching yoga is to create more of a community for yacht crew. She wants the Healing House crew house to be a sacred space where people can meet and support each other on the journey she calls life.
Dobbs is peaceful and reflective, like the crew house she started a year ago. But her life has not always been tranquil.
In the late 1990s she was a waitress in Boca Raton, Fla., immersed in the nightime lifestyle and mentally to a low point, she said. Her positive transformation began when she was invited to yachting as a guest of a customer. She day worked and began dating a first mate.
If life is a journey, Dobbs said yachting gave her the first steps out of what she calls darkness.
"Yachting saved my life,” she said. “It got me out of restaurants and bars."
Dobbs is a slight, smiling, 37-year-old who often seems to be reflecting. Suffering with the death of her mother and her own chronic back pain, Dobbs struggled toward health and positive outlook. Her contemplation led her to S/Y Kaori, a 126-foot Palmer Johnson, to be with her boyfriend aboard. The pair enjoyed a two-and-a-half year relationship.
Her journey continued to get more positive as she moved home to Deerfield Beach, Fla., to be with her father and to work as a stew/cook on a 115-foot Benetti for a season.
"It was good to be able to come home each day," Dobbs said.
Next on her journey, she reunited with a friend needing a break from yachting and together they backpacked around Europe until she landed a job as chief stew on M/Y Arms Reach in 2004. She spent the next year travelling the U.S. west coast and Panama as her life continued to brighten.
"The [Arms Reach] owner was very intuitive," Dobbs said. "Even though I hadn't said I wanted to go to school, he knew I did. He sent me to massage school."
That is where Dobbs studied yoga, massage therapy and breathwork. Breathwork traces complex personal issues to the origins of the subconscious mind and helps find solutions and resolutions, Dobbs said. She said she healed her chronic back pain.
"Part of me wanted to get away from yachts but part of me wanted to share," Dobbs said. "And I didn't want to lose what I had with yachts."
Through her contacts she placed 10 massage therapists with jobs on yachts and realized the next step on her journey. She began to specialize in these connections.
"Yoga people generally get labeled as more airy, more ... out there, mentally," she said. "In a private home, it doesn't matter, just coming in for an hour then leaving. But it is very different on yachts. You need your feet planted on the ground to work on a yacht."
Because of her experience as a crew member, she easily recognizes therapists who can survive onboard.
The crew she worked with began to ask where they could stay, so that helped her onto the next step in her journey: securing an office and thinking for the first time about opening a crew house.
"This way I could get to know the crew to place them better," she said.
Now she and co-founder Graham Alexander guide crew through Hands Om with crew quarters, classes and events.
"This is a good place to keep motivation high," 3rd officer Kylie Norman of M/Y Sea Pearl said. "I think crew should know it isn't a typical yachtie crew house. There is a curfew during the week, no TV and no smoking, and no alcohol unless it is an event."
Dobbs and Alexander live in the house, too, sharing the kitchen, living areas and rooftop courtyard.
"With crew houses you have different experiences, it depends on which house," Stew Soo Bae said of her stays at Hands Om. "I think Graham and Denise set the tone. They are respectful with the shared space.”
Former stew and cook Tara Findlay works with Dobbs as a massage therapist and yoga instructor, and she works on yachts and in marinas to share a common philosophy embodied at Hands Om.
"When people know their bodies and feel comfortable in their own skin, they can move and breathe better in the world, and in doing so, we put our best selves forward," Findlay said. "I love the space Denise has created for yacht crew."
To learn more, visit www.handsomcrewhealinghouse.com.
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