Erika Pritchard
Hub Staff Writer
KEARNEY — Kearney business owner and massage therapist Kady Jacobs hopes that her new spa and boutique will melt away her customers’ stresses.
Whether a client is visiting the spa or wanting to shop at Holistic Healing Spa and Bohemian Boutique, Jacobs said she and her employees make sure to spread positive energy.
“It’s really just what we can do to offer healing to people outside of massage therapy or facials,” she said. “I mean, you just come in and get a good vibe.”
Those vibes can be felt right away when walking into Jacobs’ new storefront at 2119 Central Ave. in downtown Kearney.
Jacobs said she and her employees are intentional about welcoming guests with a happy face and being present with them while they are at the spa and boutique.
She officially opened her new space on Aug. 19 after practicing massage therapy and running Holistic Healing & Spa at the corner of Second Avenue and 30th Street for 2 ½ years. For almost five years of her career she had worked downtown.
Jacobs breathed new life into her downtown space, which she learned was a bank long ago.
She separated the open floor plan into different rooms to suit her business. In the front of the store is the boutique with its Boho chic clothing and accessories. The cool and laid-back products are showcased in a room with light gray and blush walls, laminate wood flooring, natural wood shelving and gold metal hardware.
Jacobs said she offered retail at her spa before, but added the clothing and gifts to the bath salts and beauty products she already had sold. Gifts range from stationery, mugs, beauty products and candles to healing crystals. Bath salts are sold from a bath bar where Jacobs or one of her employees will mix the salts with different fragrances in front of their customers.
“It’s a fun thing for them to see,” she said.
All products offered in the store and are organic and fairly traded, Jacobs said.
“It’s really important to us where the stuff that we have in here to sell to the community is clean and natural and comes from good places in supporting other people,” she said.
Jacobs also added a small salon to her business and hired a stylist.
In the back of the building, clients take off their shoes and slip into plush slippers before enjoying one of many therapies. Treatments include a variety of massages, facials, reiki and crystal balancing and time in an infrared salt sauna.
Each offers different healing benefits, Jacobs said.
“Having a business called a spa is kind of a cliché thing. People don’t really understand that this is actual healing for your body, that we actually offer complementary and alternative healing to those in the community,” she said. “They think you’re going to the spa, you’re just kind of there to pamper yourself and just do your relaxation.”
For example massage therapy is good for the immune system and increases circulation. Facials hydrate and rejuvenate the skin. Reiki is a hands-free therapy that helps balance energy in the body.
Jacobs said her Reiki energy worker uses gemstones and crystals in this therapy to “flush out all the bad energy.”
“When you’re energy is out of whack it can cause you to have fatigue and depression, a multitude of different things can happen in your body,” she explained.
The sauna offers three in one healing with its infrared heat, colored lights and Himalayan salt crystal wall. The infrared light produces dry heat, Jacobs said, which warms the body from the inside out and causes the body to detox. Each colored light has different wave lengths that the body absorbs and offers different healing benefits such as decreased muscle tension and increased circulation. The salt crystals improve respiratory function.
The sauna, which is built into the building’s old bank vault, is the only infrared salt sauna in Kearney.
That history is a reason why Jacobs, a self-proclaimed old soul, is glad to have expanded her business into a downtown location.
“I just love the vibe down here, the history. These buildings just have a lot of character, a lot of history,” she said.
Original article can be found here.