LOVE LOUNGE
In 2014, Alan produced a weekly ‘holistic spiritual night club party’ in Berkeley, CA, called the Love Lounge. People LOVED it, and Alan is now sharing the vision for health & spiritual leaders & business people to produce their own version of the Love Lounge parties, and to open cafe/yoga studio versions of the Love Lounge all over the United States & beyond. Below are Alan’s initial notes on this vision.
What is the Love Lounge?
A new kind of community center – part health food cafe/restaurant, part healing/bodywork/music studio. (The Love Lounge can also be a healthy spiritual night club party; however, this proposal is geared toward opening the Love Lounge as an establishment.)
What is the mission of the Love Lounge?
* To bring healing to the people, to the mainstream, to the masses. “We are all healers. We can all give & receive healing energy & healing touch.”
* To provide a space for people to fully express love.
* To encourage healthy eating, and to provide a fun gathering space where people eat & drink high vibe healthy foods.
* To build a diverse, progressive new congregation, a new movement.
What does a Love Lounge space actually look like?
* Colorful, casual & comfortable – a chill zone & a play space. Open space for movement, malleable seating that encourages socializing, cuddling & intimacy. Plants, flowers, local art exhibits, sacred geometry, multicultural, cool lighting at night.
* A Love Lounge ought to have a food service area & 1 or 2 yoga-studio sized rooms for gatherings & activities. If there is an outdoor space, all the better!
* Ideally, the Love Lounge is open 7 days a week, early morning to late evening.
What are the specific activities that go on at a Love Lounge?
High vibe vegan food & drinks, group sound & energy healing sessions, free massage exchange & massage demo’s/instruction, sacred singalong, flow arts, psychic circles, guided meditation, open mic/spoken word/music jam, cuddle/squish/chill, yoga, healing & nutrition workshops, parties & more.
It is also the staff & the community that define the Love Lounge. Everyone is a healer & psychic, so you may receive a mini-reading from the cashier, or a healing from your waiter, or another customer may offer you a massage. Any time you go to the Love Lounge, you know you’re going to get hugs & love & healing.
What makes the Love Lounge profitable for the owners?
* The cheap workshops/activities pull a lot of people, and the people stay to eat & drink.
* The activities/workshops/presentations are mostly co-creative/interactive/participatory, and can be guided by a single facilitator, and the same facilitators ought to be able to lead several kinds of activities, including a sound healing ceremony/session, a community massage exchange, and a sacred singalong — these are all group experiences that can be led by a facilitator who does NOT have extensive training or credentials.
* The activities presented by the Love Lounge can fit a lot of people in the room, charge a little, and make good profit. A one-hour sound/energy healing ceremony, $5 at the door, 30 participants = $150 for the space & the facilitator. One room could have 6 to 8 sessions in a day, just like a yoga studio. Our commitment, though, is to charge a little, give a lot, and still earn a good living.
* Since the Love Lounge will foster a feeling of family and community, the community will treat the Love Lounge like a temple, and there will be an ashram consciousness. Instead of waiters & table service, the Love Lounge has counter service, and the community helps keep the temple clean & tidy. People love the activities so much – and the cheap price – they help set up & clean up, so staffing is minimal.
* The Love Lounge is new & unique & needed by society. There was a time when few people knew what yoga is; now there are yoga studios in most every town in the U.S. Same thing with ‘health clubs’ – prior to 1947, there were only boxing clubs & sports clubs, then someone opened a ‘health club’ in Santa Monica…… now tens of millions of people go to health clubs. Just like yoga studios and gyms/health clubs, our society is now ready to embrace community centers where we engage in all forms of healing modalities, body work exchange, touch & hugs, music, movement & flow arts, & high vibe food & drinks.
Is the Love Lounge a proven product?
* I have not opened the Love Lounge as a daily establishment; however, I hosted Love Lounge parties as a weekly ‘night club’ party in Berkeley for 5 months in 2014. Hundreds of people attended the Love Lounge parties and LOVED it!
* The closest establishment I can think of would be the Soma Center, that was on Lake Ave. in Lake Worth, FL; Soma was raw food, yoga, workshops and music. Soma drew & grew a lovely community, and ran for several years, but it did not have the ‘magical high vibe love touch’ that the Love Lounge will have.
* Cafe Gratitude is a successful raw/vegan restaurant chain; the key to their success is the relationship between the staff and the community, based on Landmark-style distinctions, positive empowering conversation & playfulness, which carries over into the artwork on the walls and the listings on the menu.
* The Ecstatic Dance/Barefoot Boogie/Sweat Your Prayers movement is building healthy spiritual community through movement, sound healing, massage, cuddling & vegan food — very close to the Love Lounge, but dance-based and still existing as weekly parties rather than ‘7-days-a-week-studios’, like yoga studios.
* Progressive yoga studios are becoming holistic spiritual community centers, by welcoming and presenting other activities such as kirtan, trance dance, healing circles, medicine ceremonies, raw food parties & more.
* There is a whole ‘conscious clubbing’ movement, including NYC’s Body Temple, Amsterdam’s Chocolate Club, my own ‘TOUCH’ men’s massage parties in NYC, and much of the ‘tribal festival’ scene, where high vibe food and elixirs (and natural plant medicine) are more popular than alcohol and synthetic recreational drugs, and massage tables and ‘squish/cuddle/chill’ zones are becoming traditional.
Who are the targeted communities/demographics for the Love Lounge?
Sound & energy healers, body & light workers of all paths, people with cancer, hiv & AIDS, & any & all kinds of illnesses, yoga & meditation people, ‘Burners’, festival people & Rainbow kids, vegans & raw foodists, musicians, dancers, singers & theater people, anyone in recovery from alcohol & substance abuse, colorful people & systems busters!
Is the Love Lounge a chain or franchise? Who owns it?
I believe this is a grass-roots movement, rather than a corporate funded/owned franchise or chain. I see individuals or small groups renting existing buildings and opening the Love Lounge with limited overhead. We support each other and build a network of communities online, primarily on existing social networking sites like Facebook.
What does Alan Pratt want out of this project?
My vision is to create a national and ultimately international organization of Love Lounge style healing centers. I intend to be the initial ambassador for this project, working with and empowering local communities to launch the Love Lounge in their city or town. I do not expect to earn money from the opening of a Love Lounge, unless I appear as a facilitator. I am not licensing a logo or product, nor seeking a fee or commission for the use of the name Love Lounge or the vision/concept. This project is still in its infancy — I want to see it succeed!