Once upon a few months or so ago, Heidi contacted a designer she’d long admired about making a logo and a new web-design for Heidi’s Table. Secretly, she feared that a logo that captured the essence of it all was not possible, but if anyone could do it, she had a feeling it would be he.
She and the designer exchanged a couple of e-mails and had a phone conversation in which she tried to put into words what Heidi’s Table is all about:
“I love body,” she said.
OK. She may not have blurted it out exactly like that, but it’s true: she loves body. She is fascinated by the straight-up, say-it-like-it-is truthfulness of bodies. And she is in love with how vulnerable and strong, how soft and how hard they are, all at once.
Heidi listens to bodies. She listens for how they express things for which people don’t have easy words, or, sometimes, words at all. That pain in the neck, that tightness in the jaw, that rumble in the belly? At Heidi’s Table people can get curious —in a friendly and not-in-your-face kind of way— about how their bodies express, as best they can, what otherwise isn’t getting expression or understanding.
Heidi is also fascinated by minds. The stories we tell in our minds. The thoughts that appear and pass through our minds. The endless ways that our minds interpret and give meaning to things, and the way we then feel and sense these mind-things in our bodies.
In short, what she was trying to tell her designer was that she wanted a logo to get at the whole “mind-body connection thing” in a playful way, without ever having to say anything like those tired words themselves.
Presence, listening, curiosity, grounding, comfort and ease are all qualities that Heidi wants you to receive when you come to her table –actual massage table or her new website (in the works!)– for a visit.
As if that all wasn’t elusive enough for a logo, she went on to tell her designer that she loves mixing and concocting things like essential oil-based potions… Things like the organic body butters and balms that she uses in her massage practice.
Lastly, though so not leastly, she told him that words are her paint, her clay, her instrument. Sometimes she writes to remember, and sometimes she writes to understand, but mostly she writes to connect, be it to herself, to you, or to our dear world, in this amazing thing we all call life.
Thank you, Richard Miller of Calyx Design. Heidi could not be more tickled. The new logo speaks a thousand words, but in short this is what she hears it say:
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