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Reclaiming Authenticity with Dr James Houck

School's in Session: Karmic Lessons, Ancestral Healing, and the Path to Soul Consciousness

Dr. James Houck devotes this solo episode of Reclaiming Authenticity to karmic lessons, drawing on Jean Piaget's theory of learning and the Iroquois seven generations principle before leading listeners through a full guided exercise for healing ancestral trauma.

Welcome and the Search for Purpose
Dr. James Houck opens Reclaiming Authenticity with his usual welcome, his call-in number, and the websites where listeners can reach him, then names tonight's topic, School's in Session, Learning Those Karmic Lessons. He reminds listeners this is his seventh year on BBS Radio and restates his ongoing focus on integrating spirituality with mental health inside the relationships people have with themselves, with others, and with God. He says everyone eventually faces questions about purpose, meaning, sickness, and death, and that worldly objects and relationships cannot supply the lasting peace people seek. Houck contrasts conditional human love, shaped by manipulation and shifting emotion, with what he calls eternal divine love. He describes the ego as self-centered and limited, quick to distort perception, yet still worth questioning, since noticing its reactions can reveal exactly where a person's healing and transformation still need to happen.

Uniqueness, Haecceitas, and Back to School
Houck introduces his favorite Latin word, haecceitas, meaning thisness, the irreducible uniqueness each person carries in their gifts, graces, and skills. He says the world needs people willing to honor that thisness in themselves and in one another, and he ties this directly to the courage needed to notice and heal karmic patterns. With students returning to classrooms for a new school year, he pivots to memory and learning, asking listeners to recall their favorite subjects, whether math, English, another language, social studies, history, or a STEM course. He then asks how each person learns best, visually, by hearing, or by doing, quoting the anonymous saying that what I hear I forget, what I see I remember, but what I do I learn. Houck explains that learning styles shape how people interpret experience inside and outside the classroom, and that learning itself builds gradually on what a person already knows rather than arriving all at once.

Piaget, Assimilation, and Accommodation
Houck turns to the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, who studied how children construct knowledge through interaction with their environment and described learning as a two-stage process. The first stage, assimilation, folds new information into existing understanding, illustrated by a small child exploring a magnet by tasting it, hitting it, and throwing it. The second stage, accommodation, requires adjusting those existing mental structures once the object's real properties become clear, which is why refrigerators eventually end up covered in magnetic letters and souvenir magnets. Houck calls this back-and-forth the learning curve, a person's rate of progress in gaining experience or skill. He then applies the same assimilation-and-accommodation model to karmic lessons, asking listeners which lessons were hardest to learn and which ones keep resurfacing because the underlying pattern has never fully been absorbed. He suggests that some of these recurring lessons were not even originally the listener's own, but were handed down from ancestors who were never able to learn them.

Seven Generations and Karmic Wounding
Houck describes the Iroquois principle of seven generations from his book When Ancestors Weep, reciting its call to keep the mind free of anger and criticism while always weighing decisions against the welfare of children not yet born. He extends the principle backward, arguing it also gives people permission to heal wounds carried forward from seven generations past. Quoting George Santayana's warning that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it, he describes counseling teenagers who have been told for years that they are the family's problem, and how he reframes that story, telling them they may instead be the strongest member of the family, capable of healing what their elders could not. He defines karmic wounding as mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual pain passed down through generations, teaching listeners that healing bitterness, rage, and unforgiveness, as in the example of someone who was bullied, transforms pain into kindness rather than repeating the cycle of abuse.

A Guided Ancestral Healing Exercise
After the break, Houck likens karma to shouting into a cave and waiting for the echo, telling listeners that whatever they send out in thought, word, and deed eventually returns to them. He then walks the audience through a full ancestral healing exercise, cautioning that it should never be attempted lightly. Listeners are told to find a quiet, undisturbed space, silence their phones, gather photographs of relatives, and settle their minds through prayer or meditation before setting an intention to release themselves and their ancestors from inherited trauma. He offers a list of reflective questions about family lessons, secrets, unspoken love, and unkept promises, then leads a guided visualization in which the listener stands in an open field facing thousands of ancestors, addresses them as grandson or granddaughter, and speaks words of forgiveness and gratitude to those who step forward, releasing them from guilt, shame, and burdens they have carried across generations.

Closing With Gone From My Sight
To close the healing exercise, Houck recites Henry Van Dyke's poem Gone From My Sight, a meditation his own family reads at gravesides, comparing death to a ship disappearing over the horizon while still fully present on the other side. He encourages listeners to journal any dreams or impressions in the days that follow and to notice whether they treat themselves and others with more patience and compassion. Houck frames the listener as part of a transitional generation, standing in the gap to release both perpetrators and victims from inherited trauma so it is not passed to children not yet born. He closes by reminding listeners that soul consciousness brings ongoing questions about how to live differently, thanks the audience for spending the hour with him, and invites anyone with questions about ancestral healing to reach out through his websites before signing off until next Wednesday's broadcast.

SOS Coming Home with Jennifer Elizabeth Masters

Lydia the Cat, the Open Window, and Learning to Trust Yourself Again

Jennifer Elizabeth Masters tells the story of Lydia, an intuitive rescue cat who spent nine years teaching her to trust her own instincts, and traces that loss back through a pattern of emotionally unavailable men, a painful mother wound, and what it means to keep choosing an open heart.

A Snowstorm Exit From Boulder
Jennifer Elizabeth Masters opens the episode of SOS Coming Home with a story she has been building toward for years, about her cat Lydia. She sets the scene in Boulder, Colorado, on an unplanned snow day when an intuitive hit tells her she must leave for California immediately with her daughter. She is driving the truck that belonged to her daughter's father, who has just died, hauling a trailer loaded with the belongings that still remind her daughter of him. Her tortoiseshell cat Lydia rides on the seat beside her and her border collie Karma sits in back. A neighbor jumps in to help back the trailer out of the snowy driveway, and in the confusion Lydia slips out through the open window unseen. An hour down the road, Masters meets her son Adam, who closes his eyes, tunes in, and confirms the quiet feeling she already has: Lydia is not in the truck.

Back Into the Storm for Lydia
Trusting that confirmation, Masters turns the truck around and drives an hour back into the storm, back to the cul-de-sac in Boulder, now dark and cold. She calls for Lydia near the home she had just left, until she spots her next door, sitting on a neighbor's porch railing exactly where their old life had been. Lydia is not hiding and has not run off; she is simply waiting, as if certain Masters would return. Masters picks her up, presses her against her face, and cries into her fur, flooded with gratitude. She carries Lydia back to the truck and resumes the drive to California, adding two hours onto an already sixteen-hour, twelve-hundred-mile trip. Masters frames the detour as proof of what happens when she listens to her own gut instead of arguing herself out of it, and asks listeners how many times they have rolled the window back up on their own knowing.

Who Lydia Was: Atlanta 2004
The story then rewinds to 2004 in Atlanta, where Masters is in the middle of a divorce and custody battle, running her landscaping business For Heaven's Scapes, and grieving her Siamese cat May Ling after fifteen years together. She does not want another cat, and still refuses when her friend Lynette calls about a special kitten found up in Murphy, North Carolina. Masters drives there intending to prove Lynette wrong, and instead comes home with the kitten curled asleep beside her seven-year-old daughter, Ariel. They name her Lydia. Masters describes Lydia as unusually gifted, sitting up to move her paws in slow circles as if performing Reiki over anyone who needed it, and even over closed doors until they opened. Lydia rules the household, stopping other cats mid-jump with a look, and holds the place of honor on Masters's desk through nine years and eleven moves between Georgia, Colorado, and California, present through every divorce and fresh start along the way.

The Mirror of Not Now, Lydia
Masters explains that cats absorb the emotional energy of their household, and she believes Lydia absorbed nine years of grief and pain from an abusive relationship, aging far beyond her years. Through it all, Lydia climbed into her lap, and Masters kept setting her down with the words, not unkindly, not now, Lydia, not now. Only later does she recognize that phrase as the story of her whole life, repeated with three husbands, her son David, and a string of emotionally unavailable men she says she could spot instantly in others but not in herself. On an ordinary afternoon on a couch in California, Lydia settles into her lap and, in the wordless way Masters says animals communicate, shows her an image of nine years of being set down, and every man she loved while holding him at arm's length. Masters realizes the unavailable men were mirrors, not of her unworthiness, but of her own unavailability to receive love.

The Mother Wound Underneath
Masters traces the closed heart further back, to her son David, conceived in a last effort to save a marriage she already knew was over, and to her own mother. She recalls her mother telling her as a young girl that she would grow fat like her aunts, would never amount to anything, and cared only about boys, three sentences that struck at her mind, body, and desire at once. She describes this as a mother wound, a program installed below conscious thought that later ran her choice of men and her habit of keeping the door only partly open. Masters says she wrote five books, built a landscaping business and a coaching practice, and developed intuitive gifts, all while her mother's voice kept insisting she would never amount to anything. She stresses that understanding a wound intellectually does not heal it; healing, she says, lives in the body, which is why her program, Love Yourself Fearlessly, works at that deeper root rather than at the level of thought.

Losing Lydia and the Work That Remains
Masters returns to Lydia's final chapter, living in the California desert as Lydia grows visibly old. When Lydia becomes dehydrated, a vet urges Masters to leave her over the weekend for fluids, and despite a clear inner no, Masters signs the form and drives home. Lydia dies alone that Monday morning, after days spent sleeping on top of the refrigerator, the warmest spot in the house. Masters admits she has never fully made peace with not trusting herself on that last decision, and offers the story as proof that healing is not linear, that even years of inner work can be overridden under pressure. She closes the hour describing what an opening heart feels like in daily life, from noticing a not now before it becomes a pattern to simply saying thank you to a compliment instead of deflecting it. She leads listeners through thirty seconds of silence, then invites them to her website, her courses including Healing the Mother Wound, and her books, dedicating the whole episode to Lydia.

The Sports Doctor with Dr Robert Weil

Naperville's Fitness Legacy, Youth Mental Health, and Overuse Injuries with Mayor Scott Wehrli

Dr. Bob Weil welcomes Naperville, Illinois Mayor Scott Wehrli to talk community health and mental wellness, then spends the rest of the hour on the US Open, aging Olympians, and the epidemic of overuse injuries in young athletes.

A Doubleheader Begins With Mayor Wehrli
Dr. Robert Weil opens live from Chicago with his usual sponsor rundown, thanking Global Schoolwear, Lower Extremity Review magazine, Bryan Therapeutics, and UK Health Radio, before promising listeners a doubleheader. He welcomes Mayor Scott Wehrli of Naperville, Illinois, noting Wehrli is the third Naperville mayor to appear on the show and framing the visit around his long-running theme of city and county support for fitness and wellness. Weil also tells listeners that Dr. Nathan Bryan of Bryan Therapeutics is expected later to discuss nitric oxide. Turning to his guest, Weil asks Wehrli to describe his path to Naperville and to the mayor's office. Wehrli explains that he was adopted at seven months old and raised there by two loving parents, calling it a duty to give back to a city that gave him so much, a commitment he says began when he started volunteering there at age twelve, long before becoming mayor of Illinois's third-largest city at fifty-seven.

From The Park Police To Mental Health
Weil asks about Wehrli's career before politics, and Wehrli says he spent thirty-five years as a lieutenant with the Naperville Park District police, retiring that December first after learning, in his words, "the good, the bad, and everything in between" about the community. He says he has become especially active speaking out about mental health locally. Weil calls the mental game one of the biggest topics the show has covered across decades, crediting Simone Biles and Michael Phelps with helping normalize the conversation, and recalling a Daoist therapist from the Netherlands who linked twenty-five-hundred-year-old principles of compassion and simplicity to today's locker rooms. He describes twenty-five years of monthly foot screenings at Edward Health & Fitness alongside CEO Pam Davis, and notes that some communities cannot find enough young people fit enough to pass military or police entrance tests. After thirty-five years covering childhood obesity on the show, Weil says the numbers are, in his words, still treading water at best.

Pools, Bullying, And A City That Listens
Wehrli traces Naperville's health-minded reputation back to 1990 and PE teacher Phil Lawler, whom Weil remembers as an early guest on his WDCB radio show at the College of DuPage, explaining that Lawler used heart rate monitors to teach students how exercise actually worked. Wehrli points to the city's neighborhood pools as another legacy, recalling how his son's West Point water polo team would find "Naperville, Illinois" popping up on national rosters beside places like Long Beach. Weil connects this to inactivity and screen time, noting that obesity and weight are, by his account, the leading cause of high-school bullying, ahead of disabilities and sexual orientation, and recalls a 2008 article he wrote called "Let's Get 'Em Walking." Asked how he handled his own kids' sports, Wehrli says he stayed a sideline parent who never spoke to a coach, letting his children learn from good and bad leadership alike, a hands-off approach Weil ties to Naperville's honors as one of America's healthiest and best cities to live.

From The US Open To Olympic Ice
With Dr. Bryan still not on the line, Weil fills the segment with sports headlines, starting with the US Open, where his former guest Mark Kovacs coaches Frances Tiafoe into the semifinals. He recalls a former patient, Tim Smyczek, who years earlier played Rafael Nadal at the Australian Open and asked for a re-serve after a crowd disruption, a moment of sportsmanship Weil says added to his patient's reputation even as Nadal won. He notes Novak Djokovic's rare first-round exit and the retirement of thirty-nine-year-old Lionel Messi from Argentina's national soccer team, pivoting to a running theme of aging elite athletes. Weil celebrates pairs figure skater Danny O'Shea, for whom he built orthotics as a young teenager, winning Winter Olympic gold near age thirty-five after a comeback, and Naperville's own Evan Lysacek, whose skates he fitted with orthotics around age ten before Lysacek won Olympic gold twelve years later, a fact he shares that Lysacek's mother, Tanya, always knew skating was her son's goal, not hers.

The Overuse Epidemic In Youth Sports
Still without Dr. Bryan, Weil shifts into the show's core mission: overuse injuries in young athletes. He cites Yankees orthopedic surgeon Dr. Christopher Ahmad's estimate that roughly twenty percent of Tommy John elbow surgeries today are performed on teenagers, and remembers Lou Vickery, a former Yankees pitcher whose career was cut short by shoulder injuries after training under Whitey Ford and who later hosted his own radio show, Lou in the Morning. Weil repeats the late sports psychologist Jim Vickery's rules for sports parents: do not be a critic on the ride home, and be a good listener about how a child is doing physically and emotionally. He credits psychologists Don Brady and Katherine Snedaker, creator of PINK Concussions, for raising awareness of concussions in collision sports, and recalls financial expert Frances Rahaim discussing the cost of travel teams. He closes with a story of LeBron James's mother telling him to sit down at his son's game, and writer Jim Brown's advice to parents to simply stay out of it.

The Book, A Pearl, And Next Week's Guests
Weil closes with an explicit rundown of his book, #HeySportsParents, co-written with volleyball champion Sharkie Zartman, describing its four sections: sports-parenting challenges, sports-medicine basics like shoes and orthotics, expert contributions from nutritionists and mental coaches, and parents' own stories. He offers what he calls one of his standing "pearls" for coaches and parents: persistent lower-extremity pain in the back, knees, shins, feet, or ankles is almost always foot-related even when the feet themselves do not hurt, which is why it often goes unexamined. He previews next week's guest, Troy Gilb of Sports Performance Volleyball, recalling handing Rick Butler his first volleyball decades earlier, and lists upcoming shows with menopause expert Andrea Donsky, sports pharmacist Jessica Beale Stahl, and Everest climber Sean Swarner, author of True Summit Method. He signs off pointing listeners to thesportsdoctorradio.com for more on the National Fitness Hall of Fame and the book, thanking BBS Radio as the show closes.

Sons of Liberty Radio with Bradlee Dean

As a Fountain Casteth Out Her Waters

Jeremiah's Warning on National Wickedness, UK Terror Arrests, and the Case Against Elon Musk

Bradlee Dean opens Sons of Liberty with Jeremiah 6:7's warning that a nation "casteth out her wickedness," then moves through Supreme Court history, a viral clip of Scottish politician George Galloway on mass arrests in Britain, a Colorado lawmaker's account of lenient sentences for child traffickers, and a lengthy case against Elon Musk over a Minnesota lawsuit and alleged occult ties.

Ten Commandments, Statistics, and a Founders' Prayer
Bradlee Dean opens the broadcast by reading Supreme Court language ruling that posting the Ten Commandments in public schools risks inducing children to obey them, calling this an impermissible state objective. He pairs it with a quote from Constitution signer James Wilson describing human law as resting on divine law. Dean recounts the 1962 Abington v. Schempp decision striking down a twenty-two word classroom prayer, noting the court found only three percent of the nation did not believe in God, and argues the ruling let that minority override the majority. He then recites a string of statistics on rising teen birth rates, sexually transmitted disease rates, and premarital sex since 1962, alongside a decades-long slide in SAT scores that he says has produced a generation graduating less educated than its parents. He contrasts public schools with private Christian schools, which he says score nearly eighty points higher despite less funding, and closes by reading a Thanksgiving prayer he attributes to Declaration signer Elbridge Gerry before the station's standard announcer statement airs.

Back From the Fair and Into Jeremiah
The show's theme fades and Bradlee Dean welcomes "friends and a few enemies" back to Sons of Liberty, reporting that he and his ministry just finished fourteen straight days working the Minnesota State Fair, nine in the morning to nine at night, and pointing listeners to sonsoflibertymedia.com and beforeitsnews.com for photos. He gives out the call-in number and turns to his text for the day, Jeremiah 6:7, reading that a nation "casteth out her wickedness" the way a fountain casts out water, and ties it to violence and grief he says define present-day America. Referencing prophets from 2 Chronicles and Ephesians, he pivots to the United Kingdom, where he says twenty mayors are now Muslim following what he frames as a prior wave of tolerance toward homosexuality. He plays a viral clip of Scottish politician George Galloway describing sixty thousand people arrested in Britain for social-media posts, which Dean uses to argue Zionist interests are directing Muslim immigration to target white Britons, a claim presented here strictly as his own.

Soros, the Silent Church, and More From the UK
After a commercial break, a recorded testimonial from Tom Raymond, who identifies himself as a retired Marine, trooper and postal worker, thanks Dean for years of ministry and radio work; Dean thanks him on air, addressing him once as being from Massachusetts even though the recording names Tennessee. Dean returns to Jeremiah 6:7 and argues that Christians who cite "not justified by the works of the law" to excuse inaction are twisting scripture, insisting Ephesians 5:11 requires believers to expose wrongdoing rather than stay silent. He casts the biblical prophet as the most rejected yet most loving figure in scripture, sent to point out a nation's transgressions before judgment falls, and claims that financier George Soros has purchased 168 conservative radio stations to control the narrative, calling him an "international war criminal." He plays more of the Galloway clip, in which Galloway describes elderly protesters and pro-Palestinian activists awaiting terrorism trials, and Dean argues Britain's government is criminalizing dissent against those he says are conquering the country.

Founders on Free Speech and a Colorado Warning
Following ads for Wisconsin Christian News, booking a Bradlee Dean event, and Alex Newman's Liberty Sentinel, Dean reads passages from George Washington and Benjamin Franklin praising free speech as liberty's "bulwark" and crediting Providence with governing nations. He returns to the UK theme, arguing that normalizing what he calls sexual sin demoralizes a nation before it is conquered, and warns that Germany's parliament is now demanding mass deportations. He then replays a clip of Colorado state representative Scott Bottoms describing a legislative committee hearing in which Democrats, he says, voted along party lines against a bill to jail adults who buy children for sex, arguing offenders were instead receiving probation. Dean says he warned years earlier about Colorado governor Jared Polis, calls the representative's effort insufficient without prosecutions, and cites a news item about a man in Odenville, Alabama, who filmed himself raping a toddler and was later found dead in his prison cell, treating the death as deserved.

The Case Against Elon Musk
Dean turns to Elon Musk, calling him a "lunatic" who wants to implant a chip in people's heads and pointing to a headline reporting that Musk is suing Minnesota over a law banning AI-generated child pornography. He shows the audience images he says depict Musk wearing an upside-down cross and goat imagery at Halloween and repeats claims that Musk's mother and his former partner, the musician Grimes, practice occult "witchcraft," presenting all of this as evidence Musk is not the "freedom fighter" he is marketed as. A female announcer promo for the ministry's Sunday church service airs, followed by a recorded testimonial from Lisa Mead of Surgoinsville, Tennessee, who says Dean's Sunday teaching is a "breath of fresh air" compared with what she calls a changed modern church. Dean then reads a Harry Truman quote crediting Mosaic law with America's legal foundation and delivers a station identification describing BBS Radio's history, founders Douglas and Donald Newsom, and its reach into 46 countries.

Judgment, School-Board Arrests, and a Closing Warning
Dean returns to the Musk-Minnesota lawsuit story, then argues that Muslim candidates running for American office are constitutionally disqualified because their oath conflicts with the Constitution, citing Thomas Jefferson's study of the Quran as justification. He warns listeners that ignoring these trends amounts to abandoning their children and invokes Hebrews 9:27 on judgment after death. He plays a clip of commentator Sara Gonzales reporting on a Cazenovia, New York school board member and drag performer named Longo, arrested on child pornography charges, alongside further cases she cites involving a British adoptive couple and a transgender former state legislator, using them to argue LGBTQ-linked officials pose particular danger to children. Dean rejects blaming "the left," arguing the right's failures created it, and closes the hour warning that mainstream media and politicians are inciting civil war, citing an unverified claim that Musk once told an ex-partner he needed "a legion" of children before conflict comes. He signs off quoting 1 John 3:18 and thanking listeners for tuning in.

Beverage Chronicles

Inside Oakwell Beer Spa's Craft Beer Taproom and Hydrotherapy Suites with Jessica French and Damien Zouaoui

Gary Monterosso runs through the latest sales rankings across seltzer, energy drinks, craft beer and ready-to-drink cocktails before Katie Johnson sits down with Oakwell Beer Spa co-founders Jessica French and Damien Zouaoui, who explain how a rainy day in Poland turned into a Denver taproom-and-spa concept now expanding nationwide through franchising.

A Rundown of Recent Beverage Sales
Gary Monterosso opens the show with a rundown of recent beverage sales figures covering data through roughly the end of June. In the non-flavored sparkling water category, San Pellegrino leads, followed by Topo Chico and Maison Perrier, while Sparkling Ice tops the flavored seltzer market. Red Bull remains the top-selling energy drink ahead of Monster, and 5-Hour Energy leads energy shots. Gary notes that Starbucks cappuccino sales topped two billion dollars over the past year. In craft beer, New Belgium leads, followed by Sierra Nevada, Blue Moon and Sam Adams. Gatorade dominates sports drinks with more than seven billion dollars in sales, ahead of BodyArmor and Powerade. AriZona narrowly leads canned and bottled tea over Pure Leaf and Gold Peak, and Gary mentions Pure Leaf's new Mental Focus line, a sparkling brewed iced tea with naturally occurring caffeine. He closes the segment by noting BuzzBallz has driven roughly half a billion dollars in ready-to-drink cocktail sales.

Meet Oakwell Beer Spa's Founders
Katie Johnson introduces the interview segment, noting that Gary Monterosso has prepared an edited version of a longer conversation available in full at beveragechronicles.com. Jessica French and Damien Zouaoui, married co-founders of Oakwell Beer Spa, introduce themselves and describe their business as a social day spa that pairs private spa suites with a craft beer and wine taproom. They explain that Oakwell currently operates two corporate locations in Denver, Colorado, after opening a little over five years ago, and that the company has recently begun expanding nationwide through franchising. Asked to define the concept for listeners who have never heard the term beer spa, Damien describes Oakwell as combining an urban jungle taproom featuring ten taps of beer, wine, cider and nonalcoholic drinks with four private spa suites. Each suite includes a sauna, a rain shower and a hydrotherapy tub, giving guests ninety minutes of private access built around beer-inspired relaxation.

From Corporate Careers to a Rainy Day in Poland
Jessica French and Damien Zouaoui trace Oakwell's beginnings to their years working corporate jobs in New York City, where they met, married and began plotting an eventual business together over pints of beer and glasses of wine. A month after their wedding, the couple decided to take a risk before responsibilities like children and mortgages arrived. They quit their corporate jobs, sold their belongings, packed two backpacks and set off on a round-the-world trip, vowing not to return home until they found a business idea worth bringing back to the United States. About halfway through more than a year of travel across twenty-five countries, they reached Zakopane, a town in the Polish Alps, and ducked into a beer spa on a rainy day after spotting it on TripAdvisor. Soaking in a tub of hops and malt beside a free-flowing keg of cold Polish beer, Jessica says they knew immediately they had found the idea they wanted to scale back home.

What Makes Oakwell Different From Other Beer Spas
Jessica French explains that while a handful of other beer spas exist in the United States, most simply copy the Eastern European model, complete with shared bathing rooms and a bed of hay for guests to lie on after their soak, a feature she says she never found relaxing. Oakwell, she says, is built differently: it pairs an expansive taproom and lounge, where guests can relax without ever booking a private suite, with individual rooms featuring an infrared sauna, a rain shower and a hydrotherapy tub. Jessica also points to Oakwell's zero-gravity massage chairs, high-tech robotic seats that deliver a full massage without human touch, as a distinguishing feature that appeals to first-time spa-goers, particularly men, who might otherwise feel intimidated walking into a traditional spa. She describes other American beer spas as smaller, single-location operations often aimed at tourists looking for a novelty photo opportunity rather than the fuller taproom-and-suite experience Oakwell offers its guests.

A Guided Walk Through the Spa Experience
Damien Zouaoui walks listeners through a typical visit. Guests check in to music ranging from bossa nova to French and Japanese pop, show identification since alcohol is served, and are led into the taproom to sample beer, wine or cider poured from the ten-tap wall while conversation cards on the table encourage couples and friends to talk instead of checking their phones. A staff member Damien calls a beertherapist then helps each guest choose a seasonal hydrotherapy bath infusion, from an energizing IPA blend with lemongrass to a calming amber infusion with eucalyptus. In the private suite, Damien recommends a fifteen-minute sauna session followed by a cold shower before soaking in the hops-and-barley tub, which he describes as acting like aromatherapy. Guests can call for room service, then cool down with water before finishing with a zero-gravity massage chair session, backed by NASA-derived technology, that scans the body and targets pressure points for fifteen to sixty minutes to close out what Damien calls a three-hour staycation.

On Tap: Local Beers and House Brews
Jessica French describes Oakwell's house beer, Spa Sidekick, a cucumber lemon gose made with in-house pressed cucumbers, real lemon peel and Utah rock salt, which she jokes is basically cucumber spa water. Beyond that year-round pour, Oakwell keeps five rotating taps sourced entirely from local breweries, drawing on Colorado's more than four hundred craft producers to always offer something light, something fruity, something sour and something hoppy, with malt-forward porters and stouts added in winter. Five additional taps cover cider, a wine spritzer, and a red and white or rosé wine. Jessica notes that every beer on tap stays at seven percent ABV or lower, a deliberate choice given Denver's altitude and the number of tourists arriving from sea-level states before sitting in a sauna or hot tub. She recalls one early day without an IPA pouring drew enough complaints that Oakwell now makes sure an IPA, and a full variety of styles, is always available.