Steeped
The tea garden has had its roots in herbalist traditions of health and wellness, today local entrepreneur, Prima Burney, is dedicated to supporting the mind, body, and soul, through these centuries-old traditions.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY EMILY MAGDICS
To be in good health is to be in good standing with your body, mind, and soul. Obtaining an optimal level of wellness requires attention and focus on your needs, which can be hard to prioritize amidst the ups and downs of everyday life.
Winter Haven native, Prima Burney, created her business Open Door Wellness with you in mind. She believes that you are truly deserving of a nurturing, healthy relationship with yourself and that you are capable of achieving one as well.
Open Door Wellness began as a way for owner Prima Burney to give back to her local community and support those around her in the ways she best knew how. “Open Door Wellness is my offering to the community, and the goal is to support the mind, the body, and the soul,” says Burney. “We do that through our handcrafted herbal products and our yoga sessions. I am a certified 200-hour yoga teacher, but I was a certified culinary chef for over 15 years and a certified dietary manager. So I rely on that a lot within my approach to blending and mixing the herbal remedy and offerings that I make for Open Door Wellness”, continued Burney.
Burney wanted to build a business where she could utilize her skills to benefit the community around her. With those goals in mind, she leaned into her previous life experiences and knowledge, including her practice In Ayurvedam, a natural system of medicine.
“Open door wellness is my offering to the community, and the goal is to support the mind, the body and the soul.”
Shop loose leaf teas, spice blends, herbal extracts and steams through the Open Door Wellness online store.
Ayurveda originated in India more than 3,000 years ago, and the term Ayurveda derives from the Sanskrit words ayur (life) and veda (science or knowledge). Thus, Ayurveda translates to knowledge of life. “I was pursuing some training with one of my teachers, Alex Smith, and she introduced me to Ayurveda, which is the sister science to yoga,” explains Burney. “The whole basis of it is that they use spices and herbs for their traditional healing system, which originated out of India. I was fascinated by it. I had this light bulb moment where I knew where I wanted to go and what I wanted to do with my business, and so I started testing out teas within my yoga community, and it was very well received. So by January of the following year, in 2020, I was looking to transition professionally. I decided to focus on teas, there was a great demand and following for tea already in the community, and I felt like it was the easiest vehicle to get herbal wellness directly in people’s hands.”
Along with her handcrafted herbal products, Burney attributes yoga as being a significant contributor to her wellness journey. Yoga, which is a practice that attempts to bring harmony between the body and the mind, is something that Burney offers through Open Door Wellness via private group classes or one-on-one sessions. “Yoga has been instrumental in my wellness journey,” says Burney. “It is the modality that I connected to when my life was in this sort of upside-down energy. And I found this place on the yoga mat where I could quiet my mind that I had not experienced anywhere else before. I found this place of stillness, and I was blown away?
Burney also quickly realized in her yoga journey that as a black woman, she wanted to help bring this healing practice to her community. “Being a woman of color, I was often the only person that looked like me in this space, and I just thought, “This should be reaching way more people. I hope to make it a safe space for other people who look like me to feel welcome. Because we all deserve wellness, we all deserve to have something in our life that takes us from surviving to thriving.”
Open Door Wellness first opened shop in 2020, right before the pandemic. After making some noise at local markets, when everything shut down in mid-March, Burney was forced to not only pivot but rely on her local community for support.
“Once everything began closing down in 2020 due to the pandemic, I dedicated a lot of effort to show up to markets that were no longer happening. I had to figure out what was next for the business, and soon after, the few connections I made locally and the people I now call friends and family began to show up and support me during that time”, tells Burney.
That support carried Burney and Open Door Wellness throughout the pandemic and into a new season of markets. One that brought her to Lakeland, where she was met with an overwhelming amount of support. “When the markets started to open up again, I was able to get into Buena Market in Lakeland. And they were amazing. I was literally blown away at how the community was showing up and shopping in Lakeland, and it opened my eyes up to what was happening in Polk County, a movement. And I’m so grateful and proud to be a part of it.”
“Being a female of color, I was often the only person like me in that space and I just thought “This should be reaching way more people.”
Yoga Class offerings include Yin Yoga, Chair Yoga, Classic Yoga and Yoga for Pain Relief.
Not only was the Lakeland community so supportive of Burney and Open Door Wellness, but she has been able to find support from other entrepreneurs and creative leaders by joining Catapult, which has been fulfilling in more ways than one. “I joined Catapult, and it has just been amazing to be a part of the community there,” says Burney. “I feel like it’s been such a symbiotic relationship, anything that they can do to pour into myself or the other Catapult members, they’re stepping up to do that. So it’s just been a blessing, and I’m grateful.”
“I was literally blown away at how the community was showing up and shopping in Lakeland, and it opened my eyes up to what was really happening in Polk County, which is a movement.”
Throughout the whirlwind of the last few years, Burney is just grateful to be here still, thriving and making a difference with Open Door Wellness. She doesn’t take those early days at the markets for granted, sitting and talking with community members as they pass through. All of it has been important o Burney and instrumental to the relationship she’s grown into with her local community here in Polk County. No matter what the sales reflected, Burney was available to have conversations with the community. She is grateful for those days when she would pop up at markets and share her passion for what she was doing to let people know that this is so much bigger than simply placing herbs in a bag. “I’m infusing this with every intention for all good, for each individual I come across through Open Door Wellness,” says Burney.
Looking forward, Burney wants to continue to grow in possibilities with Open Door Wellness, evolving the way she offers her products and services to reach even more community members. She’s excited to grow Open Door Wellness to a mobile retail space that offers drinks. Since testing their drinks concepts at Catapult pop-ups and markets, they have had a great response, and so this next step would be a natural evolution for Open Door Wellness. “But our long-term goal would be to own some land and grow a majority of the herbs that we’re using to make our products. That is really where I see Open Door Wellness going long term”, says Burney.
