About

Based in the Venice/Port Charlotte area, Whole Life Wellness offers workshops, classes and individual private consultation on making lasting changes for optimal health. Alice Gilmartin, MA has been teaching about nutrition and whole foods for over 25 years. With a background in education, psychology, rehabilitation and mental health, Alice’s approach to counseling was influenced by her experience in both education and case management. After years of study and research, she noticed that the process most of her clients went through in overcoming emotional obstacles and psychological roadblocks was made comparatively effortless when health and physical well being came first. Small, simple adjustments to nutrition and daily lifestyle moved things forward quickly in other areas of their lives, which previously had seemed insurmountable. To Alice, this was part of the gift of a plant-based diet and the daily practice of being connected via nature to rhythms that best served health and well being. She began teaching about making the transition to a healthy diet and lifestyle and eventually Whole Life Wellness Seminars was born in 2009.

Since then she has led groups in hands-on workshops and juicing classes at several venues in and around Sarasota and Charlotte counties. A founder of the original ongoing contra dances in the Sarasota and Venice area, she has closely collaborated with the Florida Friends of Folk and the Tampa Friends of Old-time Dance community in bringing callers and dancers into the area from cities as far away as Atlanta, Gainsville and Ocala. The old-fashioned “Social” is a vital part of Alice’s 12-Week health program for maintaining healthy lives in every sense, not just for fitness but the almost-forgotten face-to-face activities of not-so-long-ago. Alice completed a year teaching at the Waldorf Sarasota school in 2014, working with the first- and second-graders as their class teacher. Currently she maintains a private consulting business as part of the new West Coast Health Coalition Initiative, and is teaching her Whole Life Wellness Workshops, formerly located at Warm Mineral Springs and Cafe Evergreen in North Port, and more recently in Nokomis. She was heard on the radio weekly on  Saturday mornings from 10-11:30 am talking on-air with host Gene Vaccaro on The Natural Wellness Experience broadcast from Cafe Evergreen at the Springs (WCCF in Punta Gorda 10-11 am, WENG in Englewood 11-12 pm  and WLSS in Venice 1-2 pm). Alice will be publishing her first book based on the twelve-week protocols of her health workshop in June 2015.