We were lucky to catch up with Jeremy Wellman recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jeremy, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
I believe most people think you are searching for your one, singular purpose. I thought that for most of my life, that my career in the military and then subsequently working for the government in Afghanistan was my purpose. Protecting people was that purpose. I was good at my job but after sustaining injuries overseas I was unable to return to my purpose. That created a lot of internal turmoil. I thought I wouldn’t find anything that measured up ever again. While working through injuries, surgeries, and mental health issues I brought my focus to pinpoint on yoga. After diving into training after training and using it and my practice to help heal myself, I reached a point where I just knew I was meant to share it with others and to hopefully help them with whatever was going on in their lives, just as it had helped me. At the most basic of reality, I spent most of my life destroying things. There was purpose in that destruction that I believed in. But… I had never created anything tangible that brought good to this world. So a year ago we opened our studio. It’s small, quiet, and calm – built that way on purpose for people to escape the clutter of their lives, and has now grown beyond our dreams so fast that we are moving the studio to a new location. In addition, we opened a wellness center that is co-located with the new studio location. The purpose, my purpose, is now to provide space for people to access different ways of healing and to continue to grow those opportunities.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
Brief history… Joined the Marine Corps out of HS, married my HS sweetheart, spent 10yrs in the Marine Corps but was injured and that career ended. Worked for Harley-Davidson for almost 6 years as a Sales/General manager. Missed my military life so became a security contractor working for the CIA in Afghanistan until July 2020 when I was injured in country and was unable to return to that career.
Cue yoga and what my life has evolved into….
I started yoga back in 2005 while working for Harley-Davidson as a way to help relieve long hours with tons of stress related to running a busy dealership in the peak of H-D’s popularity. I would practice randomly as I had time. It became more and more part of my life as time went on. After leaving the dealership while working in Afghanistan over the the next 12 years I would practice while in country. I would always get a ton of questions as to what the heck I was doing and that gradually turned into a few people joining over my time deployed. I would practice at a local studio while I was home and started to consider becoming a teacher to be able to officially instruct those I was deployed with. I was injured in 2020 and after years of surgeries I realized I wasn’t going back to that life I had. I started practicing a lot… trying to help keep physically active with surgeries but also as a way to deal with mental health issues that started to become more prevalent with processing my life and purpose. I decided to pursue becoming a yoga teacher, first a 200hr RYT certification, then directly into my 500hr RYT. This took place over a span of 2.5 years. All the while using my practice and the lifestyle which is yoga to help bring myself back from the mental hole I had ended up in. Not having a career, I decided to open a yoga studio in the community where I lived. Yoga studios are commonplace these days and I wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, but I did want to provide a space where people who may have heard about yoga or even know nothing about it understand what it can do for your physical & mental health and can come to feel accepted and comfortable. I designed the studio to feel calm and uncluttered so people walking in feel like they are escaping the clutter of their lives… mental & physical. We opened Jan 29th, 2023 and from day 1 have been stoked to have an amazing group of instructors and clients who are truly like family and have helped build our community! Over the last year we have continued to grow and morph into what the community desires, being flexible to the situation but also trying to remain as consistent as possible. The space we started in is small and we limit our class sizes to allow a more spacious and personal feel. I don’t do well in crowded rooms and while you are coming for a group class, people still have strong feelings about personal space and we try and honor that.
Back in October of 2023 the opportunity arose to be able to move the studio from its current small, but somewhat secluded location to a much bigger, centrally located, and visible one right in town. Where the moving of the studio is a huge thing in itself, the new location has allowed me to expand this dream. The building is large, almost 6000 sqft, and where the new studio takes about 2500 of that, the rest has given me the opportunity to build something else for the community. We dreamed up the idea of a collective wellness center. The West End Wellness Centre is a space where local, small practitioners can rent space to run their own business but in a collective environment where everyone is co-located. A one-stop place for all your health & wellness needs! I started reaching out to practitioners I had met and through those contacts and word of mouth, I filled all of the (8) available rooms in a matter of just a couple weeks before we even started on the building renovations, which were substantial! We focused on the Wellness Centre area first in order to get everyone there up and running as fast as possible, and the center opened for business Feb 1, 2024. It contains a chiropractor, (3) mental health therapists, (2) massage therapists, and a physical therapist. Amazingly enough, of all of those practitioners, over half are also yoga teachers who will also be using the studio space to expand their own practices and brand of health and wellness through collaboration with the studio.
The focus has shifted to the studio renos, and as much thought that went into the current studio pales in comparison to the new studio flow and layout. To continue with the theme of community, there will be some retail offerings all from other local community members who don’t quite need a full space but just somewhere to display their wares. Plants, soaps, crystals, and candles will be spread through the space but in a minimal and organic way.
Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?
Leadership, attention to detail, and patience.
From 18-19 yrs old (now 50) I spent most of my life in a leadership roll. To me being a good leader is being able to read, understand, and best utilize your team with the resources you have to move forward with your mission. Leadership isn’t about being in charge and telling people what to do. To me it’s understanding how people think, feel, and what motivates them as an individual. It takes a leader focused on the collective good to be able to guide a group of individuals who each are valuable in their own way…. while trying to keep your ego and personal motivations and feelings out of the scenario.
Attention to detail. Well… being diagnosed with anxiety teamed with Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder (OCPD) maybe makes this easier for me than others in some ways, and where good, can also be a curse and can bog you down. Being able to plan out your path gives you a point of reference. In my previous careers we would plan operations with the understanding you expect the moment you step off. If stuff starts to not go as planned, the plan gives you a point of reference to refer back to where you can meet to regroup and keep the focus on the end goal. So many people let the situation guide them down paths which take you to other paths, slowly leading you off the target. I start my day with meditation, a way to start from a point of calm and focus before the day sprints off in whatever direction it takes. A meditation or slow yoga practice like Yin helps bring it all back down at the end, allowing you to collect, recenter, and appreciate what you accomplished that day.
Patience. Breathe. Slow down and realize the harder you push something, the more you try to control the outcome, the more resistance you will feel and encounter. That lesson took me 50yrs to learn and I continue to learn it each day.
If you knew you only had a decade of life left, how would you spend that decade?
Balance. I have a wife, (2) daughters, (2) businesses, a large commercial renovation project, and my physical and mental health to try and consider and be mindful of, all while juggling the myriad of things that pop up through the day. Inevitably certain things require more attention than others, those “fires” you need to put out right then, but always taking pause to look around and see your surroundings and how you can bring attention back to your main responsibilities.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.westendyogacompany.com
- Instagram: @westendyogacompany
- Facebook: @westendyogacompany
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