CEDAR CITY — The newly opened Cedar Wellness Center is designed to be a place of fitness and healing for both mind and body. With its multiple wellness-oriented businesses under one roof, clients can take advantage of a variety of activities and services, including yoga classes, mental health counseling, massage therapy and doula services.

The newly remodeled building, located at 736 N. and 732 N. Main Street in Cedar City, has two primary tenants: Cedar Yoga Space on the north half of the building and Roots Counseling on the south. A massage therapist and a doula also occupy smaller spaces within the building.

Rebecca Simms said she first started her Cedar Yoga Space business about six years ago. 

Simms said the style of yoga she teaches is somewhat different from the kind typically practiced in a gym.

“It’s more on the therapeutics and the mental part of doing yoga,” she said. 

“We have a wide variety of classes,” Simms added. “Everything is adaptable for who comes in. So, no matter who comes into a class, we adapt and create a variation for them.”

Simms likened the process to that of following a recipe.

“We think of our teachings as a recipe,” she said. “All of our recipes are going to be different. So take somebody that might be more stressed, we would actually have them do something more restorative or gentle, or a meditation class, because in their recipe, if you put too much spice and heat in there, it might create more anxiety and more anger.”

For someone dealing with depression, Simms said, “We would probably create a class or a style for them that would be more geared towards heavier movements, quicker movements … so, a vinyasa style.”

“We really make sure everybody is getting what they need,” Simms added. “Instead of it being okay, we’re all doing the same thing and it’s going to look exactly the same. Recipe-wise, we want to add in sweetness, or take away spice, or add salt, and things like that.”

Simms said her classes are currently capped at 10-12 participants per class, due to current social distancing guidelines. Classes can also be taken online via Zoom, she said, adding that she sees to it that all remote participants have everything they need.

“I actually will bring you what we might need for the workshops,” she said. “I create the package, and I bring it to you. So it’s almost like you’re being in the studio, but in the safe space of your home because not everybody’s ready to come out and be in a crowd.”

“We’re really, really focusing on more of the gentle therapeutic aspects, so slowing down, focusing on anxious times,” she said. “We have lots of workshops built around anxiety and depression, building the immune system … so it’s a very medicinal practice that we do create here.”

To see Cedar Yoga Space’s class schedule, click here. For more information, call 435-868-4269.

Next door at Roots Counseling, certified mental health counselors Milton and Rochelle McLelland said they started their business in 2016 as a part-time endeavor.

“We started as just kind of a side thing, where we were just going to supplement our income a little bit,” Milton McLelland said. “In 2018, we decided to go full time. We’ve slowly been growing over the past couple years. Our business partner Mike Green purchased this building and we decided to remodel it and make it work for us.”

Previously housed in a different location on South Main, Roots Counseling’s new home is in a larger and more amenable space for clients.

In addition to a spacious group area where a dozen or more people can meet for group sessions, there are also smaller rooms for private counseling sessions. There’s even a shower/sauna room equipped with chromotherapy and aromatherapy equipment.

Outside, behind the building, a Japanese style garden provides meditative space.

The McLellands said their counseling services focus primarily on two areas: dialectical behavior therapy and eye-movement desensitization and reprocessing therapy, also known as EMDR.

“Dialectical behavior therapy is a mindfulness-based therapy, like merging behavior therapy with Buddhist philosophy,” Milton McLelland explained. “It’s a lot of mindfulness, a lot of learning how to tolerate stress. The ultimate goal is to figure out the skills you need to regulate your emotion.”

“I think the biggest part is helping people understand that you’ll have emotions no matter what,” he added. “It’s what you do with them. Yeah, you know, we can’t control whether or not an emotion comes or happens, but we decide what we do with that emotion and how we act on it.”

For more information about Roots Counseling, call 435-233-2240 or visit its website or Facebook page.

Rounding out the list of services available at the Cedar Wellness Center, licensed massage therapist Lisa Leist does massages by appointment, and Carissa Smith, an Herban doula, provides fertility, birth and postpartum doula services, along with childbirth, parenting and infant care classes. Call 435-868-4263 to schedule an appointment with either service.

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