Customer Spotlight: Haji Healing Salon

Haji Healing Salon Core Values

Haji Healing Salon Mission/Vision

To inspire and support the creation of a healing lifestyle with the understanding that people need different ways to enter a healing path.

Core Values

Invest in community—we heal together.
Part of that is being very intentional about the way that I set the space and the way that the services are offered within the space so that more people are willing to experience them. We are also lowering the barriers that have historically existed for black and brown people to access alternative healing services—both cost barriers and trust around practices like acupuncture, yoga and herbalism.

Speak and teach from a place of authenticity.
The people who work at Haji are all very much living a healing lifestyle. We’re not playing, we’re not pretending. We’re not riding on a trend wave. I’ve been 30 years invested in this lifestyle, and so has everyone else at Haji. This is really what we live, what we do every day.

Love
Love is very, very important. I feel it is the primary healer. You can heal so much with love. Haji is a space where you walk in and can feel the love—I hear that all the time. As a practitioner, as a yoga teacher, as a Reiki practitioner and an herbalist, the space that I hold is for people to fall in love with themselves through these practices. I want them to fall in love with the practices themselves, and I do my best to demonstrate that in the way that I live and teach.

What makes your company special?

Attention to detail and that we are invested in helping people feel welcome. Unfortunately I’ve entered several spaces recently where I was not acknowledged. I wasn’t welcomed, I didn’t meet anyone.

I’m interested in healing something that’s come up since Covid, the spotlight’s been shown on this sense of isolation that people feel. I just know for a fact, no one ever feels that at Haji. No one ever goes unseen, unacknowledged. In class, before we begin, we go around the room and everybody shares their name and how they’re feeling that day. We operate on a different theme every month. Often, I have a little prompt that I’ll ask people to consider some kind of contemplation around whatever our theme is. It gives people a chance to dive a little bit deeper in their self-study, being guided by this theme. It ends up that we have these really great discussions before we start a yoga class. By the end, it feels like you just did yoga with your friends. By sharing, you are able to see yourself in the others, building an even stronger sense of community.

Haji Healing Salon and the Industry

What have you learned along the way?

The number one thing is always, end well. Relationships begin and end. That’s life, whether you’re talking about intimate relationships or in business relationships, but it’s so important to end well because I’ve realized everybody and everything comes back around again.

Another thing is you have to prioritize your own care. I’d say that’s for any industry, but especially in the healing industry, because what good is a sick and broken down healer?

Pay yourself from the beginning, even if it’s just a gesture that you’re making, even if it’s not as much as you would like. It’s important that you factor yourself in and pay yourself first.

Industry trends you see

Well, every couple weeks there’s a new herb that’s trending, because some TikTok herbalists said, “go try this recipe.” And the sad thing is not everyone on TikTok working with herbs is actually an herbalist or has had any training at all. So people come into Haji with a lot of misinformation that they got from TikTok, and I guess it’s good because it brought them in, but I have to do a lot of teaching and correcting.

Right now people are really excited about Butterly Pea Flower. Sometimes there are obscure herbs that will start trending. I try to focus on the herbs that are more local to us or long-lasting value, not just a fad.

In Wellness, the trend has been rest. It’s a healthy trend because we’re tired as a nation. We’re overworked, and I just see a lot of people doing what I’m doing—taking sabbaticals and setting healthy boundaries.

Unique challenges

I think my biggest challenge with a heart-based business like mine, is staffing and growth. I felt like I’ve been given a charge to create a sacred space for healing and transformation on the south side of Chicago that centers around the needs of black and brown people. And I’ve been doing that for about eight years. But to grow, it requires that other people be as invested as I am.

Helpful resources in starting your own company

• The Creative Small Business Incubator program that I was a part of, through an organization called, Arts and Public Life
• My family. I knew there could be success from watching my uncle and my dad who are entrepreneurs. My grandma owned a gift shop and she ran a haircare company when I was little girl. So I had those examples historically.
• I think there are a lot of resources right around us—other people in your community who are doing it. When you go shopping and you see that you’re in a place that’s run by an independent owner, develop a relationship, chat with them. That person could become a mentor, or even just someone who’s willing to answer some questions for you.

What are some next steps for Haji Healing?

What I would love is the opportunity to train other people who want to do, what I call wellness curation. I would love for there to be multiple Haji Healing Salons in different locations that are run by different wellness curators, but all with the same kind of branding, core values and consistent quality that people have come to know Haji Healing Salon for. This is an unconventional model, but I would love to figure out how to move into this direction.