Words by Kaylie Clark and Suz Born on creating Subtle Senses, a third space where you can exhale and make room for yourself.
Subtle Senses is more than a wellness studio. When we began dreaming about it, we weren’t trying to build another place to take a yoga class or book a treatment. We wanted to create a place we were craving ourselves—a place where you could take a class and not feel like you needed to rush out the door afterward. Where you could sit with a cup of tea, open your laptop, pull a book from the shelf, talk to someone you had just met, or simply stay for a while. We wanted wellness to feel less like another thing to accomplish and more like a way of coming back into relationship with yourself. Mostly, we wanted to create a place where people could exhale.
Subtle Senses sits on Hyperion Avenue, the street that divides Silver Lake and Los Feliz in Los Angeles. We love being right at that intersection because, in many ways, the space itself is an intersection too: wellness and creativity, solitude and community, movement and stillness, ancient practices and everyday life. Inside, there is a movement studio, infrared saunas, a facial room, a retail space, a workshop space, books, art, and comfortable places to lounge.
On any given day, someone might come in for yoga, stay for a sauna, have a facial, work at the table for an hour, and end up having a conversation with someone they have never met. That last part matters to us as much as anything else.
Our offerings reflect our belief that wellness is multidimensional. We work with movement, sound, breath, facial treatments, meditation, creative expression, and community because different days ask for different medicine. Some days you need an active vinyasa class. Other days you need to lie on the floor and receive the vibration of a singing bowl. Sometimes you need to sweat in an infrared sauna with silence. Sometimes you need to cut images out of old books and glue them onto paper. We think of these practices as different ways of tuning your human instrument. Rooted in both ancient wisdom and modern life, they offer opportunities to quiet some of the external noise and listen more closely to what is happening within.
We often describe Subtle Senses as a third space; a place that is neither home nor work, but somewhere you can return to often enough that you begin to feel known.
We joke that we want to be the Cheers of wellness: a place “where everybody knows your name” and where people are genuinely glad you came. There is something beautifully ordinary about that kind of belonging, and we think ordinary belonging can be profound.
We also believe community should have entry points that don’t always require buying something. Our free sound baths, open community co-working, monthly book club, and donation-based gatherings are all ways of creating reasons for people to return. Because community doesn’t happen in one visit. It happens when you start recognizing faces, when someone remembers your name, when a conversation from last week continues this week, and when you know which chair you like. Eventually, you walk through the door, and your body registers something before your mind even has to say it: I know this place. I belong here.
Subtle Senses was founded by the two of us, Kaylie Clark and Suz Born, after careers and life experiences that brought us to this work through different paths—beauty, design, art, yoga, sound, Reiki, Ayurveda, brand building, burnout, motherhood, friendship, and our own ongoing attempts to create lives that feel good on the inside, not simply ones that look good from the outside. We are practitioners, but we are participants too. We don’t pretend to have wellness figured out. We are asking the same questions as everyone who comes through our doors: How do we care for ourselves while caring for others? How do we make space for purpose and pleasure, discipline and rest, giving and receiving? How do we listen closely enough to know what we actually need?
What we hope to offer is a place to keep returning to those questions. A sanctuary, yes, but not one that asks you to escape your life. One that helps you return to it more rested, more curious, more connected, and more yourself. You don’t have to be good at yoga. You don’t have to consider yourself spiritual. You don’t have to understand sound healing, Ayurveda, astrology, meditation, or breathwork. You don’t have to be an artist. You don’t even have to know exactly what you need.
Curiosity is enough. Come tired, come curious, come alone, or come with a friend. Take what serves you, stay a little longer than you planned, and hopefully, over time, let us learn your name.
We’ll make the tea!
Photography by Talitha Bullock Photography
