Ashlee Lusch Opens Fort Wayne’s Grounding Center for Overlooked Clients

Ancient Roots opened at 212 East Collins Road on February 7, 2026 as Fort Wayne’s first grounding center. Founder Ashlee Lusch, a licensed massage therapist and former paramedic, used the launch to ask for a feeling more than a treatment menu.

“My hope is that people feel safe, seen, and at ease the moment they step into Ancient Roots,” Lusch said. They added that years of chronic illness, and a healing path they had to find off the clock, pushed them to build a room where other people could get the same care.

The Clients the Opening Story Did Not Name

The launch language was broad: body, mind, spirit, a space “designed for deep connection and restoration.” The people Lusch actually names in their professional materials are narrower, and they are not the usual spa customer walking in for a birthday massage.

On the center’s site, Lusch is a wellness practitioner, massage therapist, energy worker, and herbalist who left Western medicine after autoimmune disease. They blend Ayurvedic therapy, herbal medicine, energy work, and trauma-informed care, and they have written a protocol so touch therapy can be adapted for neurodivergent clients with different sensory needs. They are also the parent of a neurodivergent child.

An affirming-provider listing from April 2025 already put that same Collins Road address on a national LGBTQ health directory, months before the grand opening. Lusch describes themself there as a queer, nonbinary practitioner offering in-person massage plus remote Ayurvedic and energy sessions, private pay, tailored to LGBTQ clients. The phone on the listing is 260-369-4054.

Those are not decorative identity notes. They are the business model. Fort Wayne already had Swedish massage, salt caves, and chain-spa Shirodhara. What it did not advertise, on the same block, was a treatment room built around sensory load, trauma, and the clients who bounce off a standard spa intake form.

WHO THE ROOM IS BUILT AROUND

• Neurodivergent clients: Lusch says touch therapy is adapted to diverse sensory needs rather than run as a fixed script.
• LGBTQ patients: The OutCare listing is written as inclusive, trauma-informed care for people who want an affirming practitioner in the room.
• People after chronic illness: The center’s own origin story starts with Western medicine failing the founder, then herbal and Ayurvedic work filling the gap.
• Remote clients: Ayurvedic and energy sessions are offered at a distance, not only on the table in 46825.

A partner listed on the same site, 3Rivers Wellness, makes the same bet in counseling rather than bodywork. The Jefferson Boulevard clinic calls itself an LGBTQIA+ and neurodiversity affirming practice and stacks EMDR, Reiki, trauma-informed yoga, and vagal toning under one roof. Ancient Roots is the bodywork half of that idea, not a second Woodhouse.

East Collins Road Already Sells Wellness

The “first grounding center” line is a local first, not a claim that Fort Wayne lacked hands-on care. East Collins Road in the 46825 ZIP already functions as a small wellness strip. Massage Experience sits at 132 East Collins Road, in building 4, with therapeutic massage and a Himalayan salt cave the shop says holds more than 5,000 pounds of Pakistani salt. Wellness With Alyssa is at 154 East Collins Road, selling hour-long massage and facials. Ancient Roots is at 212, on the same street, not across town.

FORT WAYNE WELLNESS NEAR ANCIENT ROOTS

Southwest Fort Wayne already sells the luxury version. Woodhouse lists a 50-minute Shirodhara-style treatment at $270, with longer slots at $400 and $540. Vital Living, a nurse-owned clinic on North Bend Drive, markets medical massage and HSA billing. The hole Lusch is trying to fill is not “a place to lie down.” It is a place that says, before the first appointment, that the nervous system in the room might not be typical.

What Sessions at Ancient Roots Include

The center’s public site does not sell conductive earthing mats, grounding sheets, or a barefoot garden. It sells a return to “ancient herbal traditions” after medicine fell short, and it tells visitors they can healers listed on the collective page rather than one celebrity founder with a waiting list.

Booking runs through a Vagaro widget labeled “Schedule your Session.” The site did not publish a public price list on the pages retrieved for this story, so the only honest figure is that care is listed as private pay. That matters in a city where Census figures put the uninsured share under age 65 at 11.0 percent.

THE ANCIENT ROOTS COLLECTIVE

• Ashlee Lusch, LMT: Founder; Ayurvedic therapy, herbal medicine, energy work, trauma-informed and sensory-adapted touch; former paramedic.
• Meagan Thomas, LMT: Swedish and deep-tissue massage aimed at muscle function and everyday movement, with sessions described as fully personalized.
• Lesa Rae Vartanian, PhD, RYT 200: Gentle hatha yoga with breath and alignment; a developmental psychologist with extra work in death education, planning grief and loss workshops.
• Joe Brothers: Sound baths after training at the Center of Sound in St. Louis; he came to Ayurveda, yoga, and vibration work about three years before joining the room.

A June 26, 2026 post from the center’s Facebook page put Thomas in front of the brand: sore muscles, stressed body, Swedish plus deep tissue, “Come as you are. Leave empowered.” That is ordinary massage copy. The distinctive inventory sits with Lusch and Vartanian: sensory-adapted touch, grief yoga, and energy work a former medic is willing to put next to an autoimmune story.

When Western medicine failed, our founder turned to the wisdom of ancient herbal traditions. What she found wasn’t just remedies, but a way of life, one that nurtures the body, calms the mind, and restores balance.

Ancient Roots, about page

The “she” on that homepage sits beside “they” on the collective bio. Lusch’s OutCare profile is explicit: queer, nonbinary, they/them in the professional copy. The mismatch is a small-business website still using older language, not a second founder.

Ashlee Lusch Built the Room After Getting Sick

Fort Wayne is a medical city. Census QuickFacts counts 275,203 residents as of July 2025, up 4.3 percent from the April 1, 2020 estimates base of 263,918. The 2020 census count was 263,886. Health care and social assistance receipts in 2022 were $4.2 billion. Under age 65, 10.7 percent of residents have a disability and 11.0 percent have no health insurance. A retired paramedic opening a cash-pay herbal and energy practice in that market is not a random career change. It is a worker from the ambulance side saying the hospital side did not finish the job for them.

FORT WAYNE ON PAPER

• Population: 275,203 as of July 1, 2025, still Indiana’s second-largest city.
• Disability under 65: 10.7 percent of residents, a large pool for anyone selling nervous-system care.
• Uninsured under 65: 11.0 percent, which tracks with a private-pay studio that never lists a copay.
• Health receipts, 2022: $4.2 billion in care and social assistance, the industry Lusch walked out of.

Lusch’s own sequence, as they have told it in public listings, is short and specific.

HOW THE COLLINS ROAD ROOM TOOK SHAPE

1. Before the studio: Works as a paramedic in Western medicine, then leaves that track after autoimmune and other illness.
2. April 29, 2025: Publishes the 212 East Collins Road address on OutCare as a Reiki master, energy healer, and LMT offering telehealth and private-pay, LGBTQ-affirming care.
3. February 7, 2026: Holds a Saturday grand opening and presents Ancient Roots as Fort Wayne’s first grounding center.
4. June 26, 2026: Promotes Meagan Thomas’s massage work to keep the calendar filled after the cameras leave.
5. September 24, 2026: Still posting from the same Facebook page, asking where people feel most at peace.

The April listing is the tell. The “now open” story in February was a public launch for a practice already attached to that address. Lusch did not arrive from another city with a franchise kit. They scaled a solo affirming practice into a four-person collective and gave it a name that sounds older than the lease.

The Storefront Word Outruns the Studies

Grounding, in the national wellness trade, often means earthing: bare feet on grass, or a conductive mat snapped into a wall outlet, with claims about inflammation, sleep, and blood viscosity. Cleveland Clinic psychologist Susan Albers, PsyD, splits the words. She describes earthing as direct skin contact with the Earth. Grounding, as she uses it, is a wider set of mindfulness tools that can be as simple as feet on a floor or a mantra in a chair. “I think grounding and earthing are similar concepts, but earthing is more specific and based on a particular school of thought,” Albers said.

Earthing is about having direct skin contact with the surface of the Earth, whether it’s your bare feet, your hands or other parts of your body.

Susan Albers, PsyD, Cleveland Clinic

Ancient Roots, on its own pages, is closer to Albers’s wider word. The copy is safety, ease, herbal tradition, Ayurveda, sound, and yoga. It does not walk a client through a grounding-rod setup. Calling it a “grounding center” still drops the shop into a louder argument the founder did not pick a fight with on launch day.

WHERE EXPERTS DISAGREE

• Proponents: Small trials report better sleep, calmer night cortisol, less red-cell clumping, and lower pain after contact with the Earth or a conductive product.
• Clinic view: Albers says time outside can help mood and health, and that earthing should sit beside evidence-based care, not replace it. She notes that a lot of the published work is small or weakly designed.
• Independent reviews: A 2025 scoping review of human experiments found 19 studies, sample sizes 10 to 84, median 28, with no follow-up past three months, and said large sham-controlled trials are still required.

The best-known older papers are tiny. A 2004 sleep-and-cortisol study by Ghaly and Teplitz followed 12 people. A 2013 blood-viscosity pilot by Chevalier and colleagues measured 10. A 2025 randomized, double-blind trial from South Korea assigned 60 adults to a grounding mat or a sham mat for 31 days and reported better sleep scores in the grounded group. That is the largest independent-style sleep trial in the pile, and it is still a 60-person study of mats, not of a Fort Wayne treatment room.

None of that makes Lusch’s massage table a fraud. It does mean the marquee word carries medical claims the studio does not have to prove in order to book a Swedish session with Thomas. Outdoor earthing, Albers notes, can be free. Indoor products are a cottage industry. Ancient Roots is selling time with people, oils, sound, and yoga, billed in the language of a trend that usually sells hardware.

Booking Stayed Open After the Cameras Left

Local television put three photos of the space on X the afternoon of February 8, 2026. The post drew no public argument. The national earthing fight, with its mats, physicists, and sleep scores, never came to Collins Road. The live channel has been the center’s own Facebook page, AncientRoots.2026, which was still asking, on September 24, 2026, whether people feel most at peace in the woods, by water, or under the stars.

That is a small signal, and it is the one that matters for a cash-pay studio. The cameras left. The Vagaro link did not. Lusch’s bet is that Fort Wayne has enough people who need the room the salt cave next door will not build: quieter intake, adapted touch, a nonbinary former medic in the doorway, a grief-yoga teacher on the calendar, a sound bath for clients who cannot stand a bright spa playlist.

Whether “grounding” is the right word for that work is a branding choice. The clients named on the paperwork were never a mystery. They were the people Lusch had already been trying to treat at that address, and the February opening was how the rest of the city heard the door was unlocked.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do you book a session at Ancient Roots in Fort Wayne?

The center’s website runs a Vagaro widget labeled “Schedule your Session,” and each practitioner on the collective page is presented as someone you book directly rather than through a front-desk chain. There is no walk-in menu on the public site, and hours are not posted as a standard retail grid, so the working assumption is appointment only.

Does Ancient Roots take health insurance?

The OutCare profile lists the practice as private pay and does not name any insurer. 3Rivers Wellness, the counseling partner linked from the same site, separately reminds cash clients of their right to a Good Faith Estimate under the federal No Surprises Act. Anyone hoping to use an HSA or FSA would need to ask the practitioner before booking; that is not advertised as a default.

Is grounding the same thing as earthing?

Not in clinic language. Earthing is skin-to-earth contact, or a product that claims to copy that contact indoors. Grounding, as Albers uses it, includes those physical tricks plus mental ones such as breathwork, mantras, and simple sensory tasks that never touch dirt. Walking barefoot on grass is free; mats, sheets, and patches are the paid indoor version, and that is the version with the thinnest independent evidence.

Who else works at Ancient Roots besides Ashlee Lusch?

Meagan Thomas handles Swedish and deep-tissue massage. Lesa Rae Vartanian, who holds a Ph.D. in developmental psychology and an RYT 200 yoga credential, teaches gentle hatha and is planning monthly workshops that use yoga for grief and loss. Joe Brothers runs sound baths after training at the Center of Sound in St. Louis. 3Rivers Wellness appears as a collaborating clinic, not a fourth bodyworker on Collins Road.

Disclaimer: This article is news reporting and analysis of a local wellness studio and of published research on grounding and earthing. It is informational only and is not medical advice, a diagnosis, or a recommendation to start, stop, or replace any treatment. Readers with autoimmune disease, chronic pain, mental-health conditions, or other medical concerns should talk with a licensed physician or other qualified clinician before changing their care. Figures, hours, services, and scientific findings reflect the public sources available on the dates those documents were issued and may change.