Couple Relocate Wellness Clinic from Crossroads to Calmer Digs in Union Hill

By Kevin Collison

Chris Powell and Jennifer Kieltyka have left the bustle of the Crossroads District and found a quieter place for their acupuncture and wellness clinic by Union Cemetery near Crown Center.

“The Crossroads was getting crowded and busy and we saw this building,” Kietyka said. “It’s a not too busy road and not far from the mainstream.”

The new location of Missouri Acupuncture & Wellness Services is at 2800 McGee Trafficway and opened at the beginning of the year.

It’s the third since the couple teamed up in 2007 to offer alternative healing arts, Chinese medicine and acupuncture for him, yoga and massage therapy for her.

Their first clinic was at 43rd and Main, above the former Wild Oats, and their Crossroads location was on Southwest Boulevard, Boulevard Yoga and Healing Arts. They moved into the McGee space at the beginning of the year.

“We’ve had clients for over 20 years,” she said. “What’s special about us is people are treated like family and close friends. People are loyal.”

Powell originally was interested in traditional medical school, but then a friend in Santa Fe told him about a Chinese medical school there. He graduated from the International Institute of Chinese Medicine and returned to Kansas City in 1996.

He specialized in working with cancer patients while helping his father, who had been diagnosed with terminal kidney cancer.

One of the massage rooms at wellness clinic.

“That got the practice of the ground,” Powell said. “I developed relationships with oncologists at St. Luke’s Hospital.”

Kietyka learned massage techniques, including craniosacral therapy, in Utah. She studied yoga in India and throughout the U.S. before opening a clinic in Brookside.

The couple met in 2003 and married in 2005.

Their new, one-level space is about 3,000 square-feet, smaller than their Crossroads studio, and is divided roughly in half between her yoga and massage therapy, and his acupuncture and Chinese medicine services.

“We’re opening people to all modalities,” Kietyka said. “There are people open to yoga, maybe, but not acupuncture and vice versa.”

There are a couple of subcontractors who work with the couple along with a part-time receptionist. They added that Hallmark, their landlord, has treated them well.

Hours are Mondays through Thursdays, 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Fridays, 9:30 a.m. to noon, and Saturdays, 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.

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