A Wells-Spring of Inspiration

Most self-help gurus recommend making changes to your life in increments, gradual shifts rather than radical transformations.

On July 6 of this year, Taylor Wells of decided that her kids weren’t thriving on a raw vegan diet, that they needed to start attending a traditional school rather than being home-schooled and that she missed eating a broader spectrum of foods. She was also “ready to stop being a label.”

She also realized that she and her husband, Philippe, needed to make another choice: they could either keep Prana Restaurant or they could open a fifth yoga studio in Brooklyn, but they simply couldn’t do both from a financial or spiritual standpoint. They chose the new yoga studio.

“I went back to the house (they were vacationing on Nantucket),” Wells recalls. “And I said to Philippe, ‘Not only are our kids not raw vegan (a decision they’d discussed earlier in the day), but I really want nachos and beer.’ And then he said, ‘YEAH!’”

And that night they indeed went out for nachos and beer and talked about their decision to . Since then, the restaurant has re-opened under new and different ownership. 

This was just one rerouting on Wells’ lifelong journey of self-discovery and sharing of knowledge.

Wells says that she and her husband are “jumpers,” that all of their major life decisions have been made by taking these incredible leaps of faith. Some of these have been highly successful- like buying their current home in Newton, which they lovingly refer to as the “White Castle.” Others, like purchasing and running the restaurant, did not turn out as well, in spite of the best intentions and an initial feeling of inspiration and hope.

“I am a visionary,” Wells explains. “Yes, I’m idealistic and yes, maybe I’m also naïve. But I hire you to come in and be us. In retrospect, everyone I hired for Prana Power Yoga was gold. But from day one, the restaurant was hard. The funny line is ‘We needed a place to eat out,’ but we were paddling upstream.”

Wells is now at peace with her decision and is moving on. She continues to have faith in “deliberate creation” and what the Universe will bring her.

She has made many of these transitions. After a difficult childhood in the suburbs of Chicago, Wells moved in with her tennis coach in Florida and was a teenage tennis star. But she got advice to get out of the game by her dear friend, tennis superstar Andrea Jaeger. After graduating from Brown University in 1987, she scrapped plans to be a newscaster and journalist after visiting a major station in New York City and realizing that her life would be all about “popping ulcer pills and drinking coffee.” So she turned her love of writing into the highly successful blog Super-mom.com and the popular “Best Life Ever” column in the Boston Herald.

Wells has three major passions to which she is wholly committed: her husband, her five children, ranging in age from 18 months to 14 years, and her daily practice of yoga.

“No matter what is going on, what is happening or where I am, I get on the mat every day. Every day,” she states emphatically.

It is this commitment and her positivity that Wells shares with her students at the five existing studios she and Philippe own. This is also the underlying message of her book Create the Best Life Ever which she is currently revising to include her recent transition away from raw veganism and labels of any sort.

She even has a working title for her second book: Raw Enough.

Wells has dived enthusiastically back into cooking food for her family. She has found a renewed love of baked cupcakes that matches her renewed focus on her writing and her yoga studios.

Prana Power Yoga studio in Brooklyn is set to open this weekend, run for the Wells by former Prana student and teacher Ossi Raveh who moved her entire family to New York to undertake this endeavor.

Wells has no doubt that on that crucial day last summer, and with all her decisions, she made the right choices.

“Yoga saved my life and transformed me,” Wells explains. “Our dharma is yoga; our dharma was to plant the seeds in the restaurant and then pass the baton to someone else.”

Correction: The Wells' new yoga studio in Brooklyn will be their fifth studio, not sixth.