Lakeside military wife balances multiple businesses, motherhood

Coty Sluis’ 7-month-old son Austin grins merrily as he tugs at the beads around her neck. She smiles back and pulls him closer into her colorfully tattooed arms. Her face is luminous, showing no signs of the struggles she’s had to overcome to get here, sitting inside her yoga studio, Wildflower Society, that she started from the ground up.

The Vermont native is a self-described free spirit who moved to Lakeside three years ago with her husband Josh, who is in the U.S. Army Special Forces. But her love for yoga started long before when Sluis was just 17 years old. Back then, she suffered from anxiety and depression and hadn’t even heard of yoga until a friend introduced her. After her first class, she remembered thinking it was a little weird, but Sluis stuck with it.

“I kept with it and just noticed the mental and emotional benefits that came along with it,” Sluis said. “I remember thinking in the first yoga class I took that that was the first time in my life where I had paid attention to my breath.”

Her practice taught her how to connect body with mind, how to live in the present, and most importantly — how to love herself. It wasn’t long before she dreamed of one day becoming an instructor. She was also drawn to the portability of the profession. As with her other creative work, including logo design, singing in a band and running her own clothing brand, Sluis wanted to continue setting her own schedule and having the ability to travel.

But it was love, not yoga, that inspired her move from the East Coast to the Northwest. She and Josh initially connected at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. She was working there as a bartender and he would drive down on weekends from Fort Bragg. They lost touch after she left the area, but reconnected years later over Facebook. After the couple dated long-distance for a year, Sluis decided to take the leap and packed up her two suitcases, bound for Montana.

Once settling in Lakeside, she obtained her yoga teaching certification and taught classes at Yoga Hive for about six months before branching out on her own.

“I started teaching some classes here in the park on my own. I just made some fliers and told everyone I know,” Sluis said. “I gained this following here of people in Lakeside that really wanted yoga. I just kind of took it and ran.”

THERE WASN’T a studio in Lakeside at the time and Sluis hoped one day, maybe five years down the line, to launch her own. But fate had other plans. She and Josh were driving through town and spotted a “For Rent” sign in front of a building on Deer Creek Road, just off U.S. 93 S. They didn’t have any money saved and they knew it was certainly a risk, but Sluis said it just felt right.

“It’s going to work because it just has to work,” she recalled thinking.

They put every last dime they had into first and last months’ rent and renovations. Josh, a contractor when not on duty, and Coty used their collective skills to transform the space from a physical therapy office into a zen haven. And all of their hard work paid off — this April, Wildflower Society celebrated two years in business.

“My favorite part has been the people that I’ve met and been able to connect with since opening the studio,” she said. “There wasn’t a yoga studio here before so I would say about 80% of our members had never done yoga before. I’ve gotten to introduce yoga to a lot of people and I just think that is so cool.”

WHILE SLUIS has been sharing her passion for yoga with the Lakeside community, as of late, she’s also been learning some lessons of her own. She became a mother in October 2019 and has raised her son largely on her own. Josh is in the midst of a year-long deployment to Afghanistan which began last August, while she’s manning the yoga studio, her guesthouse business, two dogs and 7-month-old Austin. It may be her most intense challenge yet. She’s handled sleepless nights, assembled baby furniture and even learned how to tackle some of her own plumbing issues.

“It’s been a challenge, but the good takeaways are becoming a lot more resilient and strong and doing all these things that I didn’t know I was capable of doing,” Sluis said.

While Josh’s military duty has taken him away for the time-being, the couple does get to connect over a secure app a couple of times each week.

“I’ll tell him about my day, but he can’t really tell me exactly what he’s doing,” she said. “That’s definitely hard but I’m just happy to hear from him that he’s safe.”

Another way they stay connected is through yoga.

“He just thought yoga was for girls but he started coming to classes early on when I started teaching and he really liked it,” Sluis explained.

He enjoyed the practice so much that he gifted her some video equipment for Christmas so she could record classes and send them to him while he was deployed.

“I was set up to do all of this before [the pandemic] even happened,” she noted.

Her husband and the rest of his 12-person team in Afghanistan started doing her yoga classes remotely, but she realized that they were lacking proper equipment.

“Josh is sending me pictures and they’re on this cement floor with a mat without blocks without straps trying to do these poses,” Sluis recalled.

Ever the creative spirit, Sluis knew she could find a way to get them the equipment they needed to continue their practice safely. She set up a fundraiser on Facebook and held a class to help solicit donations and ended up bringing in $700 to purchase equipment and cover shipping costs.

“They’ve been doing yoga and they’re much happier,” she said.

Her next mission is to continue growing the Wildflower Society into a one-of-a-kind retreat center, boutique and yoga center so more people can discover the healing powers of yoga nestled against the shoreline of Flathead Lake. If recent history is any indicator, she’s got the vision and most certainly the passion to see it through.

Reporter Mackenzie Reiss can be reached at mreiss@dailyinterlake.com or (406) 758-4433.