Be Well Now Open House
-The following first appeared in Floyd Times on October 31, 2025.
Be Well Now, a nonprofit organization that provides Psychotherapy, Professional Development and Mindfulness Retreats, hosted an open-house and a ribbon cutting on October 23rd at their therapy offices, located at the Floyd EcoVillage, 188 Ecovillage Trail SE.
Following a ribbon cutting ceremony with members of the Floyd Chamber of Commerce, The Be Well Now team introduced themselves and described the therapeutic practices they offer. The team includes Licensed Professional Counselors Joe Klein and Jessica Talley Haynes, and Dr. Mary Hansen, an Internal Medicine physician who served as an active-duty physician in the U.S. Navy for 16 years.
Klein, the founder of Be Well Now, specializes in therapy focused on trauma, grief, depression and anxiety. He has a long background in addiction recovery. “I use Internal Family Systems as one of my main modalities, as well as Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR),” Klein said. “EMDR is an effective way to work with trauma to help people reprocess old memories without getting overwhelmed and retriggered.”
A new addition to Be Well Now is ketamine-assisted psychotherapy. “It was used during the Vietnam War to bring quick releif to injured soldiers and is used in therapy to help people relax in their mind and their body, so they can work with what they are dealing with. It’s very versatile,” Klein said. “We can go with very low doses, up to medium or high doses, all subanesthetic. It has a dissociative property that distances someone from pain and emotional shock and it doesn’t compromise breathing.”
“It doesn’t compromise hemodynamics. It doesn’t interfere with blood pressure and heart rate,” Dr. Hansen added before speaking about the neuroplasticity properties of ketamine.
“It causes a significant increase in glutamate, a widely used neurotransmitter. It helps patients to make new pathways in their brain and to build neuro connections,” Hansen stated.
“You can then strengthen those new connections with intentions when you’re working with Jess or Joe, so that those become new behaviors. It helps you get out of old of ruts and go-to behaviors and make new and more lasting changes.”
Jess Talley Haynes, who, like Klein, is a ketamine therapist, specializes in the Bonny Method of Guided Imagery & Music (GIM), a type of music therapy developed by Helen Bonny that uses music programs for creating non-ordinary states and evoking imagery and emotions that go beyond talk therapy.
“I’m also a nature informed therapist and a functional medicine health coach. I try to help people understand how what they’re eating and how they’re living affects their mental health,” Talley Haynes said.
Following a question from an attendee about connecting with the local Drug Court, Klein stated that he’s worked with the Drug Court in the past and plans to reconnect with them. “This medicine, like any medicine can be abused,” he stated. “It won’t be abused in the way we are using it because we only do ketamine assisted psychotherapy. Nobody comes here and gets a prescription for ketamine to go home and take it on their own. Anyone who comes here, we do preparation sessions with them before there’s any medicine. The medicine sessions are done with the doctor, Jess or I present, and then we do integration sessions.”
“So, when you wrap the medicine sessions around with preparation and integration, that’s when you get those long-lasting sustained changes in the brain and in behavior,” Klein continued. “And we’ve been seeing that. We’ve been doing it for about a year now, and we’ve watched person after person have quick relief and a sustained type of relief.”
Klein invited attendees to check out the therapy rooms and listen to some of the playlists used in therapy. Questions, comments and conversations continued as people enjoyed a spread of refreshments. Colleen Redman
Note: Due to generous donors, some pro bono slots for therapy are available for vets, first responders and elders. Contact (contact@bewellnowva.org), call (540-745-2222) or visit the website (bewellnowva.org) for more information on Be Well Now.