A one-stop wellness shop

MOSES LAKE — Kiley Carey wants O2 Studio to be more than simply a yoga studio.

“I kind of want to be this one-stop wellness shop,” Carey said, as she stood in the midst of the workout clothes, yoga mats and drink bottles she sells in 220 W. Third Ave.

She’s thinking of more than just yoga and all its permutations. Carey is also considering Pilates, barefoot Zumba, inviting an acupuncturist on occasion, the healing touch of reiki, even selling essential oils and healing crystals.

Everything to help 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 not about being young. It’s about that movement, the wellness, a community.”

Carey, 30, a yoga instructor who wanted to own her own business since she was a teenager, bought the downtown Moses Lake yoga business last June, and decided to keep the name because O2 is an established name in the area and because of what it represents — molecular oxygen, without which no one can live.

“O2 is breath, and we begin and we end with breath, in life and also in yoga,” Carey said. “Breath is this amazing thing that we take for granted; you don’t actually have to think about it.”

But part of yoga is thinking about breath, controlling breathing, a practice Carey said 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.

That’s especially true of some of the very complex and rigorous postures that require a lot of patience and determined effort to master, Carey said, adding she describes herself as very driven and competitive.

“You see these postures and go, oh my God, I’m never going to get there,” she said. “I have to work to get there.”

“I tend to like have a million things going on all the time, and I like to say I’m a recovering people pleaser,” Carey added. “So when I’m able to get into yoga and just take everything and blank it and focus on my breath and movement, it’s huge for me.”

Yoga is a Sanskrit word that means harness or yoke, and the practice has its origins in India around 1,500 years ago. While describing a broad and complex set of disciplines with Hinduism, modern yoga as a form of very mindful exercise began to become popular in the West more than a century ago.

Carey didn’t start out wanting to own a yoga studio, or even teach yoga. When she was 14, she began working for a trucking company in Everett, eventually running the office while taking business and accounting classes in college.

“For some reason, I have always wanted to run a business. I never knew what kind. I just love, I guess you could say, running things, having control of things,” she said. “Business and accounting is kind of my jam.”

Carey said she attended her first yoga class in 2015 out of curiosity, and fell in love almost immediately. When her daughter Harper was born a few years later, Carey said she was planning on working as soon possible before she realized she “didn’t want to miss out” raising her daughter.

“Even my husband, Levi, was ‘I don’t want anyone else raising our daughter,’” Carey said.

So she left the trucking company, taught yoga, did the mom thing, and when the former owners of O2 decided to move, Carey said she jumped at the chance.

“I didn’t even ask my husband first!” she said.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, Carey said it’s been an interesting time to get into business, especially one dependent on bringing people together to exercise. Like a lot of business owners, Carey has gone virtual, leading online interactive classes and small sessions in her downtown studio.

“We bought it and we can’t have in-studio classes, so it’s been exciting to say the least,” Carey laughed. “We bought a party tent and put it up in our back yard over the summer, because we were able to have outdoor classes. We did that for about two months, and that went really well.”

As difficult as it has been, Carey said she is upbeat and optimistic. She wants to expand her line of workout clothes, wellness options, and even sees the possibility of more workout space.

Because people need to breathe, to focus, and know what’s important in life, she said.

“That’s why I started teaching. I saw the impact, not just physically, that yoga had on me, but mentally,” Carey said. “Especially now during this pandemic, with everything going on, I feel people need that more than anything.”

“They need movement,” she added. “They need to get out of their head.”

Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at [email protected].