BodyOm Wellness Center:
Get Rubbed The Right LEFT Way!

By Maria De La O

You may be surprised by the sheer number of worker cooperatives doing business locally. The Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives, formed in 1994 and jokingly referred to as NoBAWC (pronounced "no boss"), counts about 30 member businesses in its current ranks. These co-ops aren't simply counterculture holdovers from the '60s and '70s—a healthy number of them are new businesses or old enterprises that have been reorganized as collectives.

Almost any kind of business can be organized cooperatively, with workers also serving as owners and managers of the company. From a cheese shop (the Cheese Board in Berkeley) to a movie theater (the Red Vic in the Haight- Ashbury) to a strip club (the Lusty Lady in North Beach), Bay Area collectives run the gamut.

Among the most original offerings is BodyOm, a massage and bodywork collective started just last year.

"Spas have this exclusive, luxurious, clean aesthetic, while the word 'co-op' conjures up opposite feelings: Co-ops are for the people and politically correct; co-ops are do-ityourself," says Marissa Bollong, one of the founding members of BodyOm. "We thought we could put the best of both worlds together, that we could have a wellness center that's as beautiful as a spa but is also sustainable as a business for its workers."

The original members of BodyOm met each other as massage students at the World School of Massage in San Francisco; they all loved what they were learning and wanted to figure out how they could make it into a business. They then realized that many of them had a common history being members of a cooperative: two had lived in housing cooperatives while students at Berkeley; one was currently living and working at One Taste, a community, café and yoga/massage studio in SoMa; one was living in a TIC; another ran a bed-and-breakfast that was part of a regional B&B association.

Since then, they've been joined by other bodyworkers who are drawn to the collective aesthetic, including a former worker-owner at Arizmendi Bakery. BodyOm is now much more than the sum of its parts, offering a wide assortment of massage modalities that include shiatsu, Swedish, hot stone, Vibrational Healing™, deep tissue and Rolfing. Partnering with a business-minded artist has helped BodyOm put its beautiful space to work by lending its walls to emerging artists and photographers, and showcasing their art by way of quarterly open houses.

There's no question that relationships are at the heart of a co-op's business model. Not only do co-op owners need to share a common vision but business decisions must be made by consensus—or not at all.

"We've had experience with co-ops before. And one thing that can happen is that one person can bog everything down in a discussion," says Mark Mekaru, who lived in a studentrun co-op while an architecture student at Berkeley. "So far we've been really lucky in that we agree on most things. But when we don't agree, we don't spend a lot of time arguing about it just to argue. If it's something we need to decide on right away, like our name, we'll take a vote. If we don't need to decide the issue right away, we'll just table it till later and see if we can come closer to agreement along the way."

There's no doubt that democracy is messy. But for the members of BodyOm and other democratically managed businesses, it's a mess they love. Together, BodyOm workers have forged friendships and learned new business skills, occasionally disagreeing along the way. They've improved their bodywork techniques by engaging in massage trades with co-workers and they've given back to the community by volunteering at progressive events like the Power to the Peaceful concert in Golden Gate Park. Not only do they love what they're doing now, they believe that they are building something that will allow them to continue doing what they love for a long, long time.

"I don't think that I'm going to get burnt out as a body worker because I don't have to do five massages in a row, like I might at a spa," says BodyOm member Monica Welty. "And I receive the money for every massage I do here, unlike at a spa, where my employer would take a huge percentage of the massage price and pay me the difference. At the same time, I'm not working in isolation, like a private massage therapist out of my home. I get a really great, professional space and can learn new techniques from my co-workers, plus we can pool our resources to take on bigger projects. It's way more than I could manage on my own."