Nyack-Based Practitioner Who Helps NYC Ballerinas & Professional Athletes Turns Her Talents To The Community

By Tina Traster

Bianca Beldini understands trauma. She escaped one of the burning towers on 9/11. She’s seen bottom. But the Nyack-based physical therapist, acupuncturist, and wellness influencer who owns Sundala Wellness also gets how important it is to use healing to combat emotional and physical pain.

During those dark days two decades ago when New York City was ground zero for international terrorists, her studies at Tri-State College of Acupuncture, where she learned a unique “needling’ technique, Trigger Point Dry Needling, that releases pain from muscles, was a life raft for her. Healing others kept her focused, allowed her to move forward, to feel useful.

Bianca treating patients Nyack Acupuncture

“I had been on the 22nd floor,” recalls Beldini, who like so many New Yorkers, speaks about the trauma of the World Trade Center attack as though it were yesterday. The healer distinctly remembers running down the street, covered in soot, walking up the FDR Drive to find shelter with relatives on the Upper East Side. “Everything was falling from the sky.”

In the aftermath, Beldini suffered PTSD, panic attacks, and agoraphobia but her calling to help others pulled her up, again and again, until she built a successful practice over many years healing ballet dancers, Broadway actors, and professional athletes.

Now, with the coronavirus pandemic shuttering Broadway, Lincoln Center, and many professional sports events, Beldini finds herself once again at a difficult crossroads. Covid has not been a one-time violent and shocking event, but rather a slow deterioration of our sense of normal and an erosion of reliable assumptions about how we earn a living.

While some of the healer’s New York City clients have rented ZIP cars to seek treatment at her 271 South Broadway office, the healer has used this time of retrenchment to build a local clientele in Nyack and beyond, in the county and the suburban region.

“My belief is that when you get diverted, it means it’s time to jump on a different path,” said Beldini.

When Covid first shut us in, the healer thought the hiatus might be a short haul, and she welcomed some down time. But as the weeks stretched on, the lights on Broadway dimmed and artists and athletes were benched, a familiar panic crept back.

“This time I was 20 years older,” said Beldini, who like so many small business owners, has felt unmoored as Covid made clear that previous assumptions about generating revenue were going to be tested.

Beldini stepped outside her comfort zone and started a TikTok channel with the handle Wellness Guru, posting videos about health, fitness, nutrition, and self-acupuncture. Within months, she amassed 130,000 followers.

“I knew people were searching for answers,” she said. “I knew this was a young person’s platform, but I think TikTok started becoming popular with people who are 40 and over. The platform opened my world to scientists, nutritionists, chefs, and other practitioners.”

Beldini began offering tele-health consultations, which opened a new avenue for revenue.

“So many of us are in a high state of stress,” she said. “We can’t sleep, our minds are racing, we’re having digestion problems. Again, in the midst of a crisis, I’m being called upon to help people heal through meditation, breathing, digestive advice.”

For so many, 2020 will be a financially punishing year – the healer expects revenue to decline by 50 percent – but it is also a transformative one. A time for a reset, a time to re-evaluate how to grow one’s business in new ways.

It was a decade ago that Beldini discovered Nyack. Living in the city, she was invited to visit a friend’s house in Congers one oppressive summer day.

“I fell in love,” said Beldini, who grew up in Jersey City. “We rode through Nyack and I thought it was a slice of heaven. Over time, Beldini rooted herself in the community. The healer refers daily to a quote that hangs above her desk: “Every Adversity Carries a Seed of Greater Benefit.” This is certainly a time for tending to that planted seed.