• Who We Are
• History of the Center
• History of the Olde Iona Schoolhouse

We are located in the Olde Iona Schoolhouse.

Who We Are  

Alphabetical by first name

Barbara Damiano-Office Manager

Barbara Lee Hayes LMT #MA42388
Modalities: Swedish Relaxation Massage; Kripalu Massage, Reiki I, & II; Myotherapy

Becky Avers LMT #MA38728
Modalities: Certified Upledger Craniosacral I, II, SER I, II, Advanced, Pediatrics; Lymph Drainage Therapy I, II, III and Advanced; Visceral Manipulation I; Neuromuscular and Myofacial Therapy; Swedish Relaxation; Healing From the Core Modalities

Eileen Slack LMT #MA0012902
Modalities: Esalen Certified; Australian Certified Clinical Massage; Japanese Reiki; Chinese Tiuna

E. T. Love -Yoga Teacher
Experience: Yoga Practitioner since1988. Yoga teacher since1992.Teacher Training Course with Bobbi Goldin, Miami, FL. Membership: Iyengar Yoga Assn., National and Southeast region.

Kandy T. Love,
Owner/Director
lyengar Yoga Level I  Certified Teacher Experience: Yoga practitioner since1976. Yoga teacher since 1989. Teacher training with Bobbi Goldin, Felicity Green and John Schumacher. Primary teachers - Ramanand Patel, Felicity Green, and Bobbi Goldin. Memberships: Iyengar Yoga Assn., National and Southeast region, Gulf Coast Yoga Teacher Assn., and Southeast Yoga Teachers Assn. Modalities: Swedish Relaxation Massage; Integrated Awareness®; Certified St. John’s Neuromuscular; Upledger Craniosacral I, II, SER I, and Visceral Manipulation I; Healing from the Core Modalities; Raindrop Therapy; Reiki I & II

Karen and Neil Kagan-Reiki Masters. Teach Reiki I, II and III. Lead Reiki Nights, second Saturday at 7:00 pm each month.

Kathy Bledsoe LMT #MA47596
Modalities: Swedish Relaxation Massage; Integrated Awareness® Apprentice

Lisa Mitchell-Yoga Teacher

Maggie Tanzer -Yoga Teacher
Experience: Yoga Practitioner since 1989. Yoga teacher since1997. Certified Iyengar Beginners Yoga Teacher. Membership: IYNAUS; Gulf Coast Teachers Yoga Association. Teaches Multi-level Yoga classes. 

Marlowe Bogle LMT #MA33153
Modalities: Swedish Relaxation Massage; Upledger Craniosacral I; Neuromuscular withTrigger Points; Reiki I, II, III

Meredith Davison-Office Manager

Pete Campo LMT #MA37176
Modalities: Swedish Relaxation Massage; Deep Tissue; Trigger Point Myotherapy

Robert Austin, Healing Bowls Concert, Reiki Master.

Scott Helm, LMT #MA 31642 Swedish, DeepTissue Massage, KinesioTaping, Hot Rocks, Relaxation Active Isolated Stretching, Sports Massage, Chair Massage, and House Calls

Sondra Mitchell ERYT-Yoga Teacher
Experience: Yoga Practitioner since 1990; substituting since1992.  Regular teacher since 2002. Membership: IYNAUS; Gulf Coast Teachers Yoga Association. Sondra is an Experienced Registered  yoga Teacher with yoga Alliance with experience in teaching adult and kids classes. She teaches beginners series, basics and private classes at the Center and a class at the Hyatt Regency in Bonita and a restorative class at Yes to yoga in Estero. She is a faculty member of the Florida Yoga Institute which conducts yoga Alliance Registered Teacher Training. Teacher trainings have been with Bobbie Golden at the Yoga Institute of Miami, many trainings at Health and Harmony with Kandy Love and instructor training in Yoga Away’s Viniyoga program with Gary Krafsow. Her strong background in Iyenger yoga includes study with Dean Lerner, Rodney Yee, Felicity Green, Angela Farmer, Victor VanKooten, John Shumacher, and Ramanand Patel. Sondra enjoys teaching the use of props and restorative yoga and has created a Self-Massage program with tennis balls for stress relief. Have fun and don’t take yourself too seriously is her motto.

Susan Carter RYT- YogaTeacher
Experience: Susan Carter is a Registered YogaTeacher with Yoga Alliance and has a B.S. degree in education. A yoga teacher since 2000, Susan is now on the faculty of the Florida Yoga Institute which conducts Yoga Alliance Registered Teacher Training. She has taken part in numerous teacher trainings at the Yoga Institute of Miami both with Bobbi Goldin and Ramanand Patel and completed several trainings at Health and Harmony with Kandy Love. Her yoga is in the Iyengar tradition studying with John Shumacher, Dean Lerner, Felicity Green, Rodney Yee, Angela Farmer, Victor Van Kooten, Aadil Palkhivala and others. Her enthusiasm and sense of humor encourage her students to explore and experience their bodies in a new and different way.

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History of the Center
      
      By Kandy Taylor Love, Owner/Director

          A long journey to the opening of the Center in October 1990 in Ft. Myers, Florida, was begun November 27, 1948, in Little Falls, New York with the birth of Kandy Taylor Love. College and masters degrees, four employment experiences, along with a move from New York to Florida all added to a life of imbalance and achievement. Yoga had been added to the mix in 1978, and a flavor of a focus, a connection to spirituality, and a life purpose fulfillment was born.

            It wasn’t until April 1988 during the annual Sanibel Yoga Retreat with Bobbi Goldin and Sam Dworkis that I was opened to the next level of consciousness. The last morning at sunrise on the Beach looking out on the horizon of the Gulf of Mexico, I stood and shouted: “I want to feel like this all the time!” Thus the seeds of the Center were planted, for I quit my newspaper editor job in Miami and began a study of Iyengar yoga and massage therapy which continues to today.

            When I realized I was slowing my life down and gaining more stability, I knew it would not happen in Miami, so I moved back to Lee County. A three-week yoga retreat to Greece with Angela Farmer and Victor Van Kooten and a week Iyengar Yoga Convention in San Diego with B.K.S. Iyengar in the first half of 1990 led me to the next step of finding a home for my new work. Up until then I had been teaching in five locations around Lee County and doing house calls. A local meditation teacher suggested I look at the Iona Schoolhouse which was empty and owned by a bank. It was perfect and I fell in love! A large room which could be used for yoga and a smaller room which had been sound proofed by a former tenant would be for massage.

            By October I had signed a lease, had many friends help to renovate the space, purchased yoga props, outfitted the massage room  -  and I was off and running on my own, with little business experience and a huge commitment to sharing the feeling I had experienced on Sanibel.  

            Within a short time, other massage therapists started sharing the massage room, and a need to have more space grew. In 1995 the two back massage rooms were added to the Center. In 2000  a third massage room and second restroom and kitchen were added. Then in 2005 we fulfilled the dream I had had upon first seeing the building, we took over the whole building. A new yoga room, expanded retail space, and a fifth massage treatment room were born.

            My dream of a healing center and peaceful sanctuary continues to manifest. Our yoga program has grown to include five highly trained, dedicated and loving yoginis; our massage program includes eight skilled and caring licensed massage therapists, and our office and retail area have two organized and personable office managers. The Center has taken on its true meaning of a “Center” with the addition of the many holistic programs which include a long list of fine teachers of Reiki, meditation, belly dancing, taijiquan, yoga workshops, and so many others.

            There are so many personal and wonderful stories of the incredible people who have been part of the Center since 1990, staff, teachers, therapists, students, clients, patrons, and friends. Gratitude and Love from these people and to these people are the threads which have been the fabric of the Center all these years.

            And now? It feels like it is just another beginning for more laughter, expansion, and healing!  Namaste '  Kandy

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History of the Olde Iona

Schoolhouse

Newspress, Historic Fort Myers Issue, 2003

   The little district of lona, a suburb of Fort Myers, enjoyed prosperity from its simple beginnings as a farming community, with pineapples the major crop, toward the turn of the "other" century.

     Donald Bain, the first settler, arrived from Scotland in 1882, naming the area after the Ionian Islands off the coast of Scotland, as explained in Karl Grismer's "The Story of Fort Myers." He built his first home close to the river about four miles northeast of Punta Rassa. After pineapples in 1885, gladioli proved to be most successfully grown in lona, which is widely known as the most frost-free section of continental United States, due to the protective broad waters of the Caloosahatchee and the nearby Gulf. But this industry didn't come to lona until 1935. Before that there were great tracts of land planted with tomatoes, cucumbers, eggplant, green beans and squash, accelerating during the 1920's, and-helped along by the establishment of a drainage project completed in that decade.

     Truck growing at lona was given a great shot in the arm in 1904 by Dr. Franklin Miles, internationally known founder of Elkhart Laboratories in Indiana (Alka-Seltzer and Nervine). He liked the climate so well that he bought several thousand acres, experimenting with gardens scientifically engineered to control insects and plant diseases, eventually establishing a school through which he passed on his findings to other truck growers.

     With the influx of farmers and their families, came the need for an adequate school. The first pioneer one-room schoolhouse, made of pine with a tin roof, was built in 1909 near what is now Miner's Corner, on land donated by Bain. Samuel Hill was instrumental in getting Fort Myers officials to provide the place of learning for the 13 children who attended that first year. All ages of students sat in the same room, with one teacher, as classes lasted from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.

     By 1924 however, the community had outgrown the simple one-classroom, and the Lee County of Public Instruction built a three-room brick schoolhouse at a cost of $11,600 near the old schoolhouse, which officials deeded back to Donald Bain. The new brick building, erected on a two-acre site donated by Dr. Franklin Miles, served lona and Fort Myers Beach families until the summer of 1949, when seventh and eighth graders were sent to Ft. Myers and younger pupils were transported to Ft. Myers Beach. For a number of years, Iona residents held religious services there after school hours.

     When the school first opened, there was no electricity; each of the three classrooms had a wood-burning stove. November 6, 1929 was an important date in the history of the school, for it acquired a light plant then. After 1949 it was utilized as a storage facility for gladiolus bulbs, an interior design studio and an architectural firm's office space. But in 1986, developers added two buildings for a total of 9,500 square feet of office space, keeping the design in accord with the historic character of the original brick schoolhouse.

     The 1909 structure has continued to play a part in the progress of Lee County, started in the mid-1950's when it was moved from lona to a plot of land on Colonial Boulevard near the corner of U.S. 41. There it served as part of one of the first drive-in churches in America, becoming the fellowship hall of Colonial Boulevard Presbyterian Church (later known as Mount Hope Presbyterian). This new identity lasted until the mid-1970's when development caught up with the Colonial corridor, and property owners wanted to demolish the church and build the Hatchcover Restaurant.

     In 1977, the old lona school with its pine floors and cathedral ceiling, was transported to the Nature Center of Lee County, and given a $28,000 restoration and renovation, funded by The Junior Welfare League. A large, six-sided window was cut to afford the spectacular view of the pine tree and palmetto scrub environment at the center on Ortiz Boulevard. Today, it's used as a community meeting room, and can be rented for various events. It's also being utilized for its original purpose: teaching. But instead of ABC's, children are receiving an education on the environment.

     Meanwhile, the 1924 brick school, now known as the lona Schoolhouse Professional Center, still stands today at 15951 McGregor Boulevard at the corner of Kelly Road, the site of engineering, medical and other offices, nestled amid towering oaks, mangoes and palm trees backgrounding lush landscaping of shrubbery and foliage. It continues to serve the people of lona and Ft. Myers, perhaps the very ones who lingered within its portals in their childhood days (1924-1949).

     Currently owned by Breen & Associates, research division of Engineering Systems Inc., which maintains offices on the premises, the lona Schoolhouse Professional Center has added distinctive design features such as awning-covered entrances, French doors, abundant natural light and high ceilings. Tenants are enchanted with the ambiance of the historical building, and one of the most enthusiastic is Kandy Love, owner/director of Health and Harmony Center.

     "I knew at first sight it was just perfect for my business - yoga instruction and massage therapy - and the feng shui was so right!" says Kandy. "That was over 13 years ago - when I first drove in and saw the lovely trees and attractive greenery. And the interior was airy and light, establishing a relaxed and happy mood. My clients notice the same effect!"

     Serendipitously, the 1,200 square-foot space seemed tailored exactly to her needs. The previous tenant had built a soundproof audio room, which accorded the quiet and privacy required for massage, and the main room's layout was perfect for teaching yoga classes.

     "It's the aura of tranquility and serenity, which I try to teach, that is so evident in every inch of the property. The vibrations here are happy, light, with gaiety and laughter," states Kandy. "It's as if the children's energy is still here!" Love, a former high school teacher and journalist, resonates to such connections with the building's past and its long-ago occupants.

     "And it's easy to find! When people ask directions to the Center, all I have to mention is the little red brick schoolhouse on McGregor!"

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