MOSES LAKE – Kiley Carey wants O2 Studio to be more than just a yoga studio.
“I want to be that one-stop wellness shop, so to speak,” said Carey as she stood among the workout clothes, yoga mats, and water bottles that she found on 220 W. Third Ave. sold.
She thinks of more than yoga and all of its permutations. Carey is also considering Pilates, barefoot Zumba, occasionally inviting an acupuncturist, the healing touch of Reiki, even selling essential oils and healing crystals.
Everything to calm and center people with busy lives.
“I want to spread that, overall wellness,” she said. “Yoga isn’t just about being flexible or touching your toes, it’s also about being young. It’s about this movement, well-being, a community. “
Carey, 30, a yoga teacher who has wanted to run her own business since she was a teenager, bought the yoga business in downtown Moses Lake last June and decided to keep the name as O2 is an established name in the area and because of that represents – molecular oxygen, without which no one can live.
“O2 is breath, and we start and end with breath, in life and in yoga too,” said Carey. “Breath is this amazing thing that we take for granted. you don’t really have to think about it. “
But part of yoga is thinking about your breath and controlling your breath. An exercise that Carey says helps focus her very active mind and discipline her body.
“It helps you flow through life, it helps calm the mind, and it helps with your practice,” she said.
This is especially true of some of the very complex and rigorous postures that take a lot of patience and determined effort to master, Carey said, adding that she describes herself as very motivated and competitive.
“You see these attitudes and go, oh my god, I’ll never get there,” she said. “I have to work to get there.”
“I like a million things going on all the time, and I want to say that I enjoy relaxing people,” added Carey. “So if I’m able to do yoga and just take it all and block it out and focus on my breath and my movement, that’s huge for me.”
Yoga is a Sanskrit word meaning harness or yoke, and the practice originated in India about 1,500 years ago. While describing a wide and complex range of disciplines with Hinduism, modern yoga began to become popular as a form of very mindful exercise in the West more than a century ago.
Carey didn’t necessarily want to own a yoga studio or even teach yoga. She started working for a freight forwarding company in Everett when she was 14 and ended up running the office while taking business and accounting classes in college.
“For some reason, I’ve always wanted to run a business. I never knew which. I just love it, I guess you could say letting things go, being in control of things, ”she said. “Business and accounting is kind of a traffic jam.”
Carey said she took her first yoga class in 2015 out of curiosity and fell in love almost immediately. When their daughter Harper was born a few years later, Carey said she planned to get to work ASAP before realizing she didn’t want to miss her daughter.
“Even my husband Levi was ‘I don’t want anyone to raise our daughter,'” Carey said.
So she left the trucking company, taught yoga, did the motherboard, and when the former owners of O2 decided to move, Carey said she took the chance.
“I didn’t even ask my husband first!” She said.
With the COVID-19 pandemic, Carey said it had been an interesting time to do business, especially one that relied on bringing people together to play sports. Like many business owners, Carey has gone virtual, running interactive online classes and small meetings from her downtown studio.
“We bought it and we can’t have in-studio classes, so it was exciting to say the least,” laughed Carey. “We bought a party tent and set it up in our garden over the summer because we could have outdoor courses. We did this for about two months and that went really well. “
Difficult as it was, Carey said she was optimistic and optimistic. She wants to expand her range of workout clothing and wellness options and even sees the opportunity to create more exercise space.
Because people need to breathe, focus, and know what’s important in life, she said.
“That’s why I started teaching. I’ve seen the effects yoga has had on me not just physically but mentally, ”said Carey. “Right now, during this everything-going pandemic, I feel like people need this more than anything.”
“You need exercise,” she added. “You have to get out of your head.”
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected].
