Mind, body focus of new store

HADLEY - It's difficult not to feel calm when you enter Inspirit Common, a new metaphysical center on Route 9.

Between the incense and the music, the chimes and the candles, the world actually seems softer, perhaps even a bit more peaceful.

That healing quality is just what the shop's owners, Bucky and Emily Sparkle, are aiming for. Last winter they opened the business, which is modeled in part on a metaphysical store in Natick where Emily once worked.

"It was a nice, quiet, serene place," she recalls of her former workplace. "It was a very nourishing place. When the owners closed it, several of us said, 'Oh, no. Now what do we do?'"

The answer was to develop such a business in Western Massachusetts, where the couple had a number of friends. They also felt the area was a good location to support this type of business. Emily has worked in corporate marketing and Bucky, who holds a master's degree in business administration, was a civil engineer.

Inspirit Common offers a supply and gift store along with a yoga space. It also has a healing center where practitioners perform body work, such as massage and reiki, and give life readings, including tarot card readings. A recent open house featured a psychic fair, complete with "aura photography" and a fire performance outside the shop.

The couple began working on their business plan for the center about four years ago. Then, a year ago, they rented the store and began contacting vendors - but not before touring the country for eight weeks, researching similar stores and finalizing plans for their own.

The retail section of the store opened first, in December. It features CDs, books, calendars, drums, crystals and essential oils. In January, the pair opened the yoga center out back, and in March they welcomed customers to the healing center upstairs, where they also hold workshops.

Bucky Sparkle says it was easy finding practitioners to do the yoga, massage and readings. For supplies, the couple deals with about 300 different vendors and hand-picks the items.

They stock a number of supplies for those who work in the healing arts, such as Avena essential oils and yoga supplies from Sun & Moon, a business based in Shelburne Falls.

When the Sparkles first moved into the space, which had recently been gutted and renovated, they added walls and removed the fluorescent lighting, replacing it with the warmer glow of track lights and sconces. To develop the yoga studio, they converted a space originally intended to be a commercial garage.

For the couple, the business is the realization of a dream long in the making.

"Our vision was to have a shop that offers supplies for metaphysical and physical support," says Bucky. "The items we sell help with healing. We sell drums, but we also really enjoy having drumming workshops here."