Tori Jones is getting salty, but that doesn’t mean what you think it does.
What we mean is she’s opening Eden Yoga & Salt Studio at 15400 Chenal Parkway, Suite 160, in west Little Rock on Oct. 15.
There will also be an exclusive party on Oct. 12 for “some influencers, friends and family, people who worked on the project,” she said.
Smith was happy to explain the salt therapy half of her new business to Whispers. She said, “We’re using technology to recreate, or simulate, the environment that’s found in an underground salt mine.”
In a salt room at the studio, a machine will take pharmaceutical grade salt, grind it into microparticles and pump those particles into the air so that customers breathe it in. The salt clears up mucus in lungs and sinuses and settles on skin to exfoliate and act as an anti-bacterial agent to treat certain skin conditions, Jones said.
As of last week, Eden Yoga & Salt Studio was still on the hunt for its only full-time employee, a manager. Jones said it will also need one or two part-time employees during the holidays.
Contract employees include six to seven yoga instructors teaching a variety of forms, including restorative, power and vinyasa. Also, some yoga classes will be held in a salt room.
The studio will offer 25 yoga classes a week. Drop-in customers will be charged $18 per class. But there will be five- and 10-class packages as well as memberships; the price per class will be less for package buyers and members.
Salt therapy sessions start at $35 for adults and at $25 for children.
There will be an all-inclusive monthly package for salt therapy and yoga for $150.
Jones has been teaching yoga for most of the past decade, but salt therapy is a concept she discovered on a family trip.
“We were visiting my parents in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, and my mom, as a little family activity, said, ‘Hey let’s go to the salt cave.’ My husband [Leon Jones] and I had no idea what to expect. I think he thought we were going underground,” she said. “I was thinking salt scrubs and stuff like that.”
She has environmental allergies, and her husband has asthma. “We both left and were like ‘this is the best feeling, so amazing.’ Slept great for the next two or three days,” Jones said. “I was breathing through my nose like I haven’t in a really long time, even after I’d already had surgery.”
Her mother suggested they open a salt room and the couple researched it, attended a Salt Therapy Association conference and then decided to combine salt therapy with yoga for “more of an overall wellness studio.”
Now, Jones plans to bring her business model to other cities in Arkansas if things go well.
