Celebrating Two Years of Wellness: How It Started & How It’s Going Now
What started as a dream nearly 20 years ago has blossomed into an urban sanctuary for healing, connection & community right here in St. Louis. Chakra founder, Cabanne Howard, shares how a lifelong vision became reality—creating a space where eastern healing practices meet modern wellness.
“We wondered if anyone else would want a place like Chakra… and the good news: we weren’t alone!”
Chakra is a beautiful culmination of nearly 20 years of dreaming. When I first moved back to St. Louis from L.A. in the early 2000s, I fantasized about having a wellness center in St. Louis where we can build community and seek eastern healing treatments. We wondered if anyone other than us would want a place like Chakra. Too soon.
Fast forward to 2021. The world felt ripe for a sanctuary for healing. Even in a city like St. Louis, which might be slower to adopt, I felt like people might be more receptive to the idea. Post-pandemic, people’s emotional edges were frayed and even people who may have previously scoffed at so-called “alternative” methods of healing were open to things they never were before. The post-pandemic open-mindedness in an attempt to feel good was real.
At the time, I had been taking an annual trip to Miraval in Arizona to get my wellness on with girlfriends. Reiki, psychics, crystals, labyrinths, mala-making, meditation, you name it, they had it. I started to think how could it would feel to get a dose of wellness more frequently… and locally… instead of once a year… without traveling by plane to the desert?
I had bought a new building for KMG, our marketing firm, and the ground floor space was available to lease out. And I thought, “I could lease this space out… OR… I could finally realize the dream of creating an urban sanctuary. And so, I became my own tenant and Chakra was born.
What I didn’t realize is that that decision was merely a seedling of the idea. Another key moment was when I messaged with Confluence Crystals on Instagram… Drew said yes!
The rest has been better than anything I could have imagined.
We said we’d give ourselves one year to see if we were the only one who wanted a place like this. The good news: we weren’t!
We knew we were onto something when we felt “in flow”... we were not forcing it.
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