50 | APRIL 29 • 2021
connection to,” Ohana says.
“That really helps to elicit
a certain emotion from the
client and gives me a certain
point of how to put together
the session.”
From there, Ohana devel-
ops a suggested menu, pro-
vides the recipes and creates
a shopping list. Then, she
cooks with her clients.
Before the pandem-
ic, cooking sessions were
in-person. Now, she’s pivoted
to virtual sessions held over
Zoom that typically run an
hour long. “In every ses-
sion, we always start with
an opening dialogue about
expectations and an intro-
duction to what this is all
about,” she explains of her
program.
FOOD AND GOALS
Then comes the cooking,
which is often followed by an
eating element. “People put
together something beau-
tiful and delicious and that
gives them a chance to taste
it for themselves and really
celebrate what they’ve done,”
Ohana says. She closes the
session with a summary
discussion that wraps every-
thing together, from goals to
the food that’s been created.
With food having such
a strong connection to
memories, Ohana says the
power of cooking can have a
tremendous impact on men-
tal health and wellness. “I
think specifically for Jewish
people, we tend to be more
aware of the power that
food has in our world,” she
explains. “Even with some-
thing like this, people can
be amazed by food and they
underestimate the power
that it holds.”
She always tells her clients
that the smell is the strongest
of the senses, giving people
an opportunity to reminisce
and recall things from the
past. From sourdoughs
to challah, to dishes that
require chopping, mixing
and stirring (Ohana’s favor-
ite), she says there is no limit
to what people can make.
“I think as long as some-
body has an openness to
something a little bit dif-
ferent and out of the box,
and has an interest in being
creative, this could poten-
tially be for them” she says
of Culinary Art Therapy.
“When you give somebody
a task that makes them feel
more at ease, it’s much easier
for them to open up and
put themselves in a place to
make connections.”
Learn more at culinaryarttherapy.com.
“PEOPLE PUT
TOGETHER
SOMETHING
BEAUTIFUL
AND
DELICIOUS.”
— JULIE OHANA
continued from page 48
COURTESY OF JULIE OHANA
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