The woman behind Madera Wellness perfects the art and science of wellness.
While it’s common knowledge that health has a strong correlation with beauty and wellness, it’s quite rare to see someone who commits to practising it every single day. What’s even rarer is to find someone who passionately advocates for it.
Meet Ivana Hadzic: an entrepreneur, fitness coach, health buff, and life coach in the making, who founded Madera Wellness, the first Maderotherapy wellness centre in Oman.
“Maderotherapy is a type of massage that uses wooden rolling pins, which actually help you boost your metabolism,” she explains, saying it’s an effective technique for weight loss. “It is well known in Europe and most especially in South America because it originated there.”
A fan of maderotherapy herself, Ivana always had dreams of bringing it to Oman and introducing something new to the place she calls home for the past nine years. “The idea was in the back of my head for some time. But there had been COVID, so we couldn’t manage to have it,” she recalls.
Today, Madera Wellness welcomes wellness seekers in Muscat and offers a holistic approach that promotes one’s well-being from within. While it may be a beauty and wellness centre at its core, Ivana envisions it to be a place where the body and mind can detoxify—and the one thing that will tie all of it together is massage.
Madera’s holistic approach
The 40-year-old founder trained her therapists to recognize what a person needs through the service they’re trying to get. “Madera Wellness has a mission to help,” she says. “When ladies go to the salon, I really want them to get more than the treatment they asked for.”
Before the service even begins, they take time to analyze their clients’ needs. “When ladies tell us they want a massage, we ask them: How do you feel? What do you need?” she shares, saying it’s important to identify what causes stress and understand what the body truly requires. “A lot of times ladies come to the salon to get our speciality, Mother of Therapy, but it’s not fit for them,” she adds.
Once they know their clients better, they can recommend a service that fits the comfort their clients are looking for. This way, they get to offer a personalized approach to everyone who walks through their doors.
“Many ladies come to Madera just for comfort because that’s the only time they think about themselves. We want to acknowledge that and give a little bit more,” she says. For Ivana and her team of therapists, the job is to help their clients ease the stress and offer fitness and nutrition advice that will support their well-being even after they step out of the salon.
From the very beginning, Madera Wellness is more than just a massage place.
In fact, even during the conceptualisation of the salon, one of Ivana’s main priorities is to have a space where she can have nutrition consultations with her clients.
“When working with my clients, it’s not just, ‘I will help you lose weight.’ It’s also, ‘I will help you recognise what potential you have that someone from the outside can see better,’” she says as she tells us how Madera Wellness ensures they deliver a holistic approach at all times.
“Madera Wellness is all about improving health first. Then, beauty comes next.” This is what Ivana strongly believes in, and she plans on amplifying that message through Madera Wellness.
Commitment to wellness
One would think that the whole process of needs analysis, treatment, and post-care consultations for each client may be a lot to handle. But this all comes naturally to Ivana, who’s also been working as an instructor at Ali Al Raisi Karate Club for seven years.
Being a fitness coach allows her to help people harness their physical strength through exercise and nutrition. And now, as the owner of Madera Wellness, she’s able to marry her passion for fitness with her advocacy to promote the value of mental and social wellness through massage.
Ivana defines wellness as “being in connection with your body first—your mind, your emotions, and your physical, mental and social side.” To her, wellness means we balance all of these aspects. “If we get too much of one, that’s not wellness.”
Practising what she preaches, Ivana makes conscious efforts to achieve wellness every day. “I wake up, and I meditate for around 10 to 20 minutes, depending on how I’m feeling in the morning,” she says when asked about her daily routine.
Her normal day involves training in the gym, preparing healthy meals for herself and her family, and managing her business. As someone who wears multiple hats—a mom, a mentor, and a business owner—she’s learned meditation works wonders in fulfilling her roles satisfactorily.
“When I sit with myself and try to disconnect [from] everything, I’m really trying to see what’s the priority for that day and how I can be of best service for myself and the people around me,” she says. Even on her most hectic days, meditation helps her stay on top of things and relax when things spin out of control.
Her mission
“One of our missions in Madera is to bring that awareness to people on how we can reconnect, slow down, and be productive with the small things,” she says, emphasising that watching what we eat, how we communicate with ourselves, and even taking short breaks contribute to self-awareness and healthy wellbeing.
“When I started [being kinder to myself], I’m surprised at how much I can handle and how much more I can do.”
As Ivana continues to meet more women on their wellness journey, one thing becomes clear to her. “After 40 years of my life, I found my purpose. I really want to be a life coach, which connects all of what I’m teaching to wellbeing,” she says. If there’s one thing Ivana wants to teach her clients, it’s this: “Each woman should love herself in the way that she is. The satisfaction of what kind of person you are is going to make you so radiant on the outside.”
Ivana’s ultimate dream for Madera Wellness is to be more than just a beauty and massage place. But the truth is, it already is.
At the end of the day, Madera Wellness is a place of self-love and glad to have this amazing concept and you can book Madera and their exclusive deals via Vawchoo
