Center of Peace owner combines background in behavioral and mental health with holistic wellness

Center of Peace, LLC  joined Mt. Pleasant’s downtown community last Fall. Since then, they’ve been focusing on building a unique and welcoming community all their own. Epicenter Mt. Pleasant sat down with the owner and founder (plus yoga teacher and coach), Rhiannon Houghteling, to learn more about what makes this organization so special.

Epicenter Mt. Pleasant: Tell us about Center of Peace. How would you describe it?
Rhiannon Houghteling: We are a wellness center, which means that we offer a variety of wellness services, and we’re constantly expanding on that. And so one of the main things that we do here is build community and build healing in a holistic way.

Epicenter: One way you do that is through yoga, right?
Houghteling: So that can look like yoga, which automatically is very healing and very holistic. It means to unite, to bring things together. Anybody who’s taken a yoga class knows it’s not just the physical movements; it’s also the mental, the spiritual, kind of blending those things together. And so we have a variety of different services that do that, whether it be through our workshops, whether it be through coaching. I know that we’re adding Reiki in 2026 as well.


Epicenter: We’ve also heard you have a group meditation class?
Houghteling: Right now on the schedule, we have what’s called Yoga Nidra. It sounds like it’s going to be yoga (where) we’ll be doing Down Dog and stuff. That’s definitely not what Yoga Nidra is. 

You lay down on a mat or sit if you want to, but find yourself a comfortable position where you can actually just let it go, and then your teacher guides you through this meditative journey. It gets you into such a deep meditation that the benefits of Yoga Nidra are similar to that of going into a deep sleep of eight hours. 

Once a month we do Sound Baths. So that’s really awesome. Very, very similar to Yoga Nidra in that you just lay there and you let the experience do the work for you. 

We have a breath work guy coming in March, and he’s gonna be doing breath work with us. We have a past life regression thing going on. We’ve had dream interpretation workshops. And then at the end of this month, we have a Reiki training. In September, we’re hosting a yoga teacher training. So we’ll be training people how to teach yoga! 

Epicenter: You mentioned earlier “healing in a holistic way.” How does that concept tie in with the classes you teach at Center of Peace?
Houghteling: I’m a counselor in my day job, so I’ve just kind of always been in that helping field. I’ve been in the field for 10 years, and then I’m also a recovery coach. I worked at an outpatient program, and they had therapists as well as coaches work together, and I liked that, that integration of behavioral health and mental health, so that’s kind of how I got the idea of Center of Peace. 

When the opportunity came up to build a place where people can connect in community and build, heal and work on themselves, but do that along other people who are also working on themselves, it just kind of just kind of happened and then we built a little Sangha, a little community.


Epicenter: Why do you think community and holistic healing is so important?
Houghteling: I think it’s just easy to lose track of yourself. It’s like the world that we live in asks us to abandon ourselves on a daily basis. By connecting with yourself, you don’t do that, right? You reconnect with yourself. You stay true to who you are. You get pulled back into your heart space, your reality. 

And then when you do that, every person around you gets the reminder to do that as well. And so when you have a community of people who are doing that, it is incredibly hard to continue to have a bad time of it. 

Epicenter: You’re originally from Florida, right? What led you to start a healing community here?
Houghteling: So I moved here in 2020, and I just fell in love with Michigan. And it was like, I came home: ‘Wow, there’s no part of me that wants to leave,’ and I was like, ‘Okay, I’m going to start this business.’ It was already an online business for my coaching services. We did a couple little yoga pop ups throughout the years, but when it was time to actually start the brick and mortar, there was not a question in my mind, like, where should I go? It was Mt. Pleasant.

I almost cry every time we talk about anything having to do with my business, because it is everything beyond even my wildest dreams. 

I used to daydream about this place. When things got stressful at work, I would daydream about, oh, maybe one day I’ll start this place, and it will have blue walls and yellow accents, and people will just hang out in the lobby. And everybody would just have this, this space where they can come and they can support each other and reconnect with them. 

Sometimes I just walk in and I cry because it’s so beautiful. I walk in and somebody’s like, ‘Hey, can I come hang out in the lobby and do homework?’ And I’m like, ‘For sure! Like, let me put the kettle on.’ Or, I get out, and there’s just, like, friends of mine just chilling. Or, students that don’t even come to this class today, they’re just chilling. They’re just hanging out. And I’m just like, I can’t believe this. This is so much bigger and better than I could have ever imagined.

You can learn more about Center of Peace, LLC by visiting their website or stopping by 206 W. Michigan Street in Mt. Pleasant. Stay up-to-date on new events, workshops, and classes coming up on their Facebook page.