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When one walks into La Boheme, one feels a bit out of place. In a culture more accustomed to super centers and synthetic fragrances, the quaint little building and the hundreds of herbs, nutritional supplements and aromatherapy products that crowd its shelves seem, ironically, unreal. That's before one meets the owner.
Gail Doorenbos spends much of her 80 to 100 hour work weeks teaching customers about aromatherapy, herbal concoctions and natural therapies. "Most of the diseases we have in America are lifestyle related," she explained. "The body is designed to bounce back - to heal itself and to handle an awful lot punishment. Herbs help give the body what it needs to take care of itself." La Boheme's shelves hold essential oils of everything from cedar to lavender for uses from potpourri to hot aromatherapy wraps. Natural soaps, healthy snacks and antique postcards add to the shop's eclectic mix. Herbs are part of the native lore in most cultures, Doorenbos said, and were also a major focus in western medicine until the late 1800s. Despite her expertise - from extensive training at the East-West School, countless conferences and years of self-study - she is careful not to intimidate natural-therapy novices. "Everybody should really be kind, because we're all still learning," she said. "We don't preach to people. We just want to help them to feel better." In season, Doorenbos grows more that 300 varieties of herbs on the little acreage around her shop near the end of South Lamar Boulevard in Oxford. "I've learned more from growing the plants than I ever could have from just reading a book," she said.
Much of Doorenbos' time is also invested in washing and styling hair with natural products. She came to cosmetology through the back door. Shortly after high school she spent a year in London studying theater. (She still works behind the scenes on local stage and film productions.) "I had taken a stage Âmakeup class and wound up really enjoying it," she said. "With all the education in our family, my parents about flipped." (Her six siblings professions range from oil company executive to attorney to neurologist.) "With me going in the direction of natural therapy, though, I convinced them this was just an extension of that," she said. On a recent day Rob Shepard of Indianola sat in the shop, having his hair cleaned with a white grapefruit based shampoo, (before his hair cut). "This is really tingly," he said. "But it's so relaxing too." Doorenbos opened her first shop in a tiny rented space a dozen years ago, when friends had her pick a business name. "We knew it was going to go in several different directions," she recalled. "We didn't want a name that would pin it down just to natural products, or just hair, or just body work." "La Boheme has the connotation of something creative, a little off-beat, a desirable underdog kind of name." |
From
pharmacy...
In addition to xtensive education in herbalism and other natural therapies, Doorenbos comes by her alternative health orientation naturally. Her Japanese-American mother "was a pharmacist back when there just weren't any women pharmacists," Doorenbos said. "She always wanted to go to medical school." Instead Fume Ikemore-Doorenbos made the trip between Oxford and New Albany nearly every day for 20 years to operate her own drug store. Generations removed from Japan, the Hawaii-born woman maintained some Oriental approaches to life even in the Deep South. "When I was a child, she used to wake me up with massage," Doorenbos recalled.
Gail Doorenbos' father, a Dutch-heritage pharmacognosy professor originally from Michigan, was the first director of the marijuana program at the University of Mississippi. Shortly after the family moved to Oxford, he bought a small farm outside of town to raise cattle - and kept buying land as it became available. "He eventually bought more then a thousand acres," Doorenbos said. "He taught us all how to work hard." Dr. N.J. Doorenbos still sets the same example, continuing at age 70 to teach toxicology and plant medicine courses at Auburn University. Weekday afternoons and most Saturdays, the seven Doorenbos children put in long hours on the farm. "We did it all - dusting, putting the boluses (of medicine) down their throats, fencing," Doorenbos recalled. The exertion paid off with muscles and mettle, though, when she successfully challenged her fourth-grade class bully. Doorenbos also put that work ethic to the test five years ago when she and her husband, Bobby Ingram, and two friends built her shop from the ground up.
Ingram, a degreed forester, certified emergency medical technician, land surveyor ½ and first-aid instructor, also has a certificate in herbal studies from the University of Canada in Calgary. He recently completed a year long sabbatical from his own business to help Doorenbos full-time. "We've just been growing so fast," Doorenbos said, "I had to have his help." "We both believe in this," Ingram added. Soon, they'll be building again, creating a bigger structure just up the hill. The new one will have more space and room for two therapists to work. Additional kinds of therapeutic massage will be new offerings in the healing arts center, and a website will soon offer herbals to consumers around the world. The expanding enterprise will be a chance to make new friends and help more people, Doorenbos said. The La Boheme t-shirt espouses her reason for being in business: "Maybe you can feel even better."
**Article by Errol Castens writer for Northeast
Mississippi Daily Journal Printed Sunday, January 17, 1999 |
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© 2000 Gail Doorenbos. All rights
reserved. |
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