For 20 years Zohra Campbell, the owner of Salem’s Indigo Wellness Center, has helped the community take a more therapeutic approach to wellbeing.
From her brightly decorated chiropractic, yoga and massage therapy center on Southeast Liberty Street, Campbell blends an expertise on how the body works with her love for the ancient practice of yoga. With these two elements Campbell, a licensed chiropractor, shows people how to develop the tools they need to help heal their bodies.
Campbell works alongside another chiropractor and nine massage therapists at Indigo and has worked with and trained a number of well known yogis in Salem’s growing yoga community. Indigo serves roughly 860 clients per year.
“The passion that I have always had is that people sometimes don’t know what they can do. Especially if they’ve had injuries or something happens to their body in their life, and then they are afraid to move. As a chiropractor I am always excited when I can help people find that confidence in moving and starting to get back to the things that they love,” Campbell said.
“I think yoga is chiropractic from the inside out. It is chiropractic when you apply a force to the body from the outside. But yoga is what brings it from the inside. It has to be carefully applied.”
Indigo was founded in 2004 when Campbell started a private practice as a chiropractor out of her home. She then moved to a location on Southeast Ratcliff Drive and Southeast Commercial Street where she and a business partner opened up a yoga studio and chiropractic practice. The new center also offered massage therapy.
The business soon began to grow quickly but she lost her space and had to split up the yoga studio, which moved downtown, and the chiropractic business, which moved to Southeast 12th Street. At the time, Indigo also offered acupuncture.
Splitting her time running both businesses in separate locations was tough on Campbell.
She moved to the center’s current location at Pringle Park Plaza, 350 Liberty St. S.E., in 2014 after a client tipped her off that the space was for sale.
At the time the wellness center owned the yoga studio next door, but sold it in 2020. It’s now operating as a separate business, Common People Yoga.
Campbell focuses her work in the wellness center on chiropractic therapy and private yoga instruction tailored to her client’s specific needs.
Her clients come to her for an initial exam where she will get a better sense of what ails them. She said during the process she teaches people to better understand the biomechanics associated with their bodies, and shows them different yoga practices they can use to “unwind those unhelpful patterns” causing them pain and limited mobility. She thinks of it as something akin to physical therapy.
“I know I am helping that person stabilize that joint and they can start to move more,” Campbell said. “Then if they do that when they are hammering on the roof or doing sun salutations or whatever it is they are doing, then they are less likely to reinjure and more likely to regain full movement.”
Her journey with yoga began when she sustained a spinal injury in the 1980s which fractured her vertebrae and caused her to experience a curvature in her spine. Working on her own healing helped her craft her approach that she now uses on her clients.
During that time she gravitated toward Iyengar yoga, a style which focuses on precision and alignment in postures which she said helps protect the joints.
“When I look at a person’s body, I’m looking at their posture. I’m looking at muscle imbalance. I’m looking for weaknesses. And I try to help them find the specific exercises that will be good for them to unwind,” Campbell said.
Campbell also offers yoga retreats and teaches adaptive therapeutic yoga at the Salem YMCA. She said the class is frequented by students who are 70 years and older who enjoy moving their bodies in ways that don’t cause pain.
“That is my job. That is what I have taken on, Campbell said. “To help my little corner of the community.”
Campbell also leads 200 hour yoga teacher training which instills a knowledge of human anatomy to help yoga instructors be more effective. She said that so far she has graduated 100 students from her program over a seven year period, and many of her students have gone on to become popular yoga teachers around town.
“It is that kind of work that really excites me because I know that it is improving people’s lives,” Campbell said.
Contact reporter Joe Siess: [email protected] or 503-335-7790.
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Joe Siess is a reporter for Salem Reporter. Joe joined Salem Reporter in 2024 and primarily covers city and county government but loves surprises. Joe previously reported for the Redmond Spokesman, the Bulletin in Bend, Klamath Falls Herald and News and the Malheur Enterprise. He was born in Independence, MO, where the Oregon Trail officially starts, and grew up in the Kansas City area.
