Plenty of businesses are quick to give marketing lip service to being inclusive and welcoming to all people, but Elisa Shankle and Darian Hall, the entrepreneurs behind, HealHaus based in Brooklyn, New York, are truly putting their money where their mouths are.

“When I first started coming into these healing spaces, they were not reflective of me,” Hall said. “There were very few men, let alone men of color. We tried to tackle the question: How do you get someone—who has never practiced yoga or been to a healing space—to feel comfortable?”

One way that Shankle decided to shift the paradigm, was to add color to the HealHaus space and make it welcoming and warm.

“So many wellness spaces are this clinical white,” she said. “When I designed HealHaus, I wanted to have a lot of color and textures to allow for people to bring their greatest healing offerings. We wanted people to feel free to come as they are, do their practice, move, enjoy a smoothie at the café, and seek health.”

The business at the crossroads of tony Prospect Heights and new-meets-old Clinton Hill offers everything from meditation and yoga classes to cupping, facials, and Reiki. They also offer community workshops, talks and panel events around topics that many might consider to be too taboo for public discussion.

“It’s about changing the frame of mind and normalizing topics that would typically be stigmatized,” Shankle said.

Photo by Nick Graham for Forbes.

If you want to read more about HealHaus and the powerhouse pair behind the brand, check out my latest story over at Forbes.