One might not be familiar with chakras or crystal therapy, but Taylor Melendes has an open-door policy for her new wellness center at 1049 S. Carson St.
She said her holistic practice is about the expansion of light and flow of energy, and she will talk to anyone walking in with questions.
Wiley’s Wellness Sanctuary, near Red’s Old 395 Grill, opened mid-December. It has a sign out front with encouraging notes, and the interior is adorned with crystals, plants, Melendes’ handmade jewelry, aromatherapy oils, vibrating crystal bowls and even vintage second-hand clothes.
The “safe space,” as Melendes put it, is a boutique of sorts. But there are also two therapy rooms, one for crystal bed therapy and one for infrared light therapy, and Melendes’ lushly decorated office is a space for grief counseling, health coaching and crystal therapy.
“Everybody has grief,” she said. “It doesn’t matter how big or how small it is. You can be grieving the fact that you didn’t finish college, and you had an expectation for yourself to finish it. Anytime that expectations aren’t reached, we sometimes have to grieve those things to process it and move it through our body.”
Melendes, 46, is from Detroit. A nutritionist for two decades — then a health coach and grief counselor — she moved her practice west last fall. She now lives in Incline Village but wanted to open a place like Wiley’s not in Tahoe or Reno — where she said there are similar practices — but in Carson City.
The name of the sanctuary comes from her late son, Wiley. Melendes’ practice is an outgrowth of her own journey through grief.
“I lost my son Wiley (Olsen) to a moose in the middle of the road in Jackson Hole, Wyoming,” she said.
This was in 2020. Her son was 17. She said he swerved right to avoid the moose then overcorrected to the left and was struck by another vehicle and killed.
Within years of losing her son, Melendes lost both parents, two friends and her dog.
“That was all within the span of four years,” she said. “That brought me to a pretty radical healing journey, and it brought me to Tucson, Arizona. I went to Canyon Ranch there a few times. It’s a wellness center/retreat center… I didn’t have any light.”
Melendes said she wanted to start to live again. Therapy helped, and she found crystal, sound and aromatherapy “elevated my healing.” Enough that she began her own practice.
Asked about western medicine, Melendes said, “It’s not replacing it, and I’m not knocking it. I’m just giving people a different alternative.”
Rachel Lee, a wellness coordinator with Wiley’s, noted the diverse ages of people visiting the business.
“We’ve gotten all walks of life through here,” she said.
Melendes described how her own experience and training have made her good at listening. She made a distinction between self-confidence and self-compassion.
“One is how you can walk into a space and hold yourself,” she said. “The other is about are you holding a space for yourself? Because we’re not very compassionate to ourselves. We beat ourselves up on a regular basis.”
Wiley’s Wellness Sanctuary offers alterative tools and modalities to create that space for the self, Melendes explained. She said her job is working with people and figuring out how to keep their energy moving.
“When your light is shining, and your vibration is high, you can conquer mountains,” she said.
For information, call 775-541-8196 or email [email protected].