New Brunswick's Resilience Wellness Studio Offers Space to Relax, Rejuvenate

Go through a door at 49 Bayard St. and up a flight of stairs, and you will arrive in a different world.

A crystal chandelier glows overhead, calming music drifts through the air, lush houseplants soak in the sunlight pouring in through the windows, and yoga mats and stretch bands wait obediently in the corner for the next class to begin.

This is Resilience Wellness Studio, the city's newest destination for presence, healing and inner strength.

"Part of the vibe really is for people to step out of New Brunswick and have a space for them to relax and exhale and come in here and kind of remove themselves and have a moment," said Elena Holmes, who co-owns the studio with her mother, Carol Valentin.

Open since the spring, Resilience Wellness Studio is built around what Holmes calls its three silos: recovery, massage and movement.

Under one roof - or high ceilings - clients can book a full-body massage, sit in a salt room for halo salt therapy, strap into compression boots, stand in front of a red light therapy tower, take a cold plunge, unwind in an infrared sauna, or join a mat Pilates or yoga class.

A tenant instructor also rents studio hours to teach Tai Chi and Qi Gong through his own business, Wellness Through Tai Chi.

The space itself sat empty for about five years. It had been utilized as a barber shop and a yoga studio before Holmes and Valentin gutted and refinished it. There are new floors, fresh paint, and a hand-built stone accent wall meant to evoke a Zen rock garden.

Twice a week, the salt room even transforms into a massage space, with curtains drawn and a heated table brought in for licensed massage therapists to work.

Holmes said bringing full-body massage back to New Brunswick was a priority, noting that a previous massage service once offered near Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital had closed and never been replaced. Clients can now choose from Swedish, deep tissue, and hot stone massage.

In the recovery area, compression boots push blood and lymph through the legs after a long shift on your feet - something Holmes said benefits athletes, nurses, wait staff, and delivery workers.

A red light therapy tower is meant to ease inflammation and lift mood, especially in colder months, though Holmes says it typically takes several sessions to notice a difference. A vibration plate for lymphatic movement is on site but not yet available to clients.

Rounding out the recovery offerings is a contrast therapy area, where a roughly 100-gallon cold plunge tub, kept at 50 degrees, sits near an infrared sauna. Clients can use it on its own or move between the two. Holmes said she often coaches first-time cold plunge clients through their breathing to help calm their nervous systems.

The idea for the studio belonged first to Valentin, a psychotherapist who practices in Princeton.

Holmes said her mother noticed a gap in her clients' healing process. Therapy helped, but people needed somewhere to go afterward to keep regulating their nervous systems.

So, Valentin began researching spaces and eventually found the Bayard Street storefront through a for-rent sign in the window.

Holmes, who has a decade-plus of experience in hospitality and retail, joined later and helped expand her mother's original, massage-focused concept into the fuller mix of services the studio offers today.

"It wasn't initially us going into this together," Holmes said. "This was something she was starting, and then ... her health kind of started changing, and so she had to focus more on her health. And then two, I just noticed. I felt like there was more we could do that I had experience with, because she wasn't that familiar with recovery."

Now Valentin handles much of the studio's administrative side, while Holmes runs day-to-day operations: checking in clients, guiding people through recovery equipment, and this fall, teaching some classes herself as a certified yoga and Pilates instructor.

Holmes, who was born at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital and raised nearby in Franklin, said choosing to open the studio in New Brunswick was intentional. She has watched the city grow and change, paying particularly close attention to projects such as the multiphase, multi-billion-dollar Health and Life Science Exchange, known broadly as the HELIX, being built across from the New Brunswick Train Station.

After college in New York City, she struggled to find in New Brunswick the kind of wellness options - an early-morning yoga class, a sauna session - that had once been a short walk away.

"Why do we always have to leave? Why do we have to go so far to experience this?" Holmes said. "Why can't we have it right here, close to us?"

Since opening, Holmes said she's been encouraged by the range of clients coming through the door. They're not just the students and young professionals she expected, but older residents trying the cold plunge, too. She hopes to eventually draw hospital staff, Rutgers students, and downtown residents alike.

"Our goal is to help people who are carrying that stress walk in here and have a space to release that," Holmes said.

The work is personal for Holmes, too. She said she dealt with recurring, hard-to-diagnose illness growing up, which pushed her toward researching health and wellness on her own and toward a more holistic approach alongside traditional medicine. More recently, a sedentary stretch of desk work left her hips and knees aching. At 32, she was motivated to lean harder into movement through Pilates and yoga.

The studio is currently on summer hours, by appointment only, while Holmes and Valentin prepare to expand availability this fall. Appointments can be booked through the studio's website, resiliencewellnessstudio.com, or via resiliencewellnessstudio on Instagram.