TEXARKANA -- Wellness is a way of life for yoga instructor and entrepreneur Colleen Narens.
What began as various career outlets has transformed into a way for her to help others improve their lives in numerous ways -- financially, physically or spiritually.
Narens is a financial advisor with Raymond James, an instructor at Thrive Yoga and wellness, an AirBnB Super Host ambassador, and a practitioner of reiki energy healing.
For years, she's taken her specific set of skills and provided fun, new ways for the community to be introduced to ways they can improve their quality of life.
"People do these things, and they become trendy, and then because I've been doing yoga for 13 years people are like, 'Colleen should do this,'" she said.
Narens has hosted events like beer yoga at Scotties Grill and goat yoga at Thrive Yoga and Wellness, and most recently she's launched a yoga brunch crawl downtown. The Texarkana, Texas, SWAT team has taken lessons from Narens too.
"The big thing about things like beer or goat yoga is that you're trying to increase community awareness of health and wellness while taking the 'woo woo' out of yoga by making it more approachable," she said.
Another ways she has made her kind of wellness approachable is teaching yoga to children. Narens has her yoga for kids certification and has given lessons to both the Caddo Area Boy Scouts and to local students.
"I have teacher friends, and they will invite me to their classroom, and they'll talk about yoga beforehand. And then I'll show them exercises in the classroom," she said.
Narens' goals are to first increase community awareness and second to give a great instructional introduction to yoga to make it non-intimidating. She explained that she communicates with incoming students that it will take approximately 8 to 10 classes for them to feel comfortable and really see changes both physically and mentally.
For Narens, the importance also lies in continually improving her yoga teachings. She spent a semester in Mexico City immersing herself in the culture and training. Recently, she began implementing the alternative, holistic practice of reiki to her clients.
"Reiki is an energetic car wash for your space bubble, so to speak, or your aura," she said.
The Japanese form of energy healing is a type of medicine where energy is transferred from the palms of the practitioner to the patient. Narens implements sound baths using crystal singing bowls to further enhance the healing experience. The sound baths are a meditative experience using the transfer of sound waves for energy healing.
Narens said, "We hope that we are introducing something into their lives that will hopefully change their physical body and how it experiences things."