GUILDERLAND — Jennifer Nickel sat cross-legged, purple highlights glinting in her hair, beside a sculpture of the Hindu god Ganesh and explained that he is the god of removing obstacles.

“I need Ganesh!” she said, adding that she tends to place obstacles in her own way. “I’m my own worst enemy and my own best friend, wrapped up in one body.”

As Nickel puts it, she pushed the “reset” button on her life a couple of years ago, a change that culminated in her opening of a small yoga studio, A Place Called Om, at 2022 Western Ave. in Guilderland.

Nickel has practiced yoga since her teenage years, but her first experience teaching yoga was to other inmates, while she was serving five years in Albion Correctional Facility. She was not thinking clearly, she said, when she took things that didn’t belong to her. “I violated the trust of people who loved me,” she said. “I’ve spent the last decade trying to process that and build new, healthy relationships.”

She used her time in prison to, as she put it, “completely change my person.”

As a child, Nickel was heavily medicated by doctors for mental-health issues, she said.

In addition, she was a passenger in a serious car accident when she was 17, and was prescribed painkillers that became addictive.

“They had me on some very heavy mood-altering medications, and it all came from my doctors,” she said.

In prison, she said, she refused medication, and didn’t take any drugs.

“I was going to clear my head and start fresh,” she said. “I chose. That was not what I wanted,” she said of drugs.

Nickel has not taken any form of medication or any drugs since Oct. 1, 2010, she said.

A woman regularly came into the prison from outside to teach yoga. Nickel paired up with her, she said, and they got a room assigned where they could teach yoga as well as meditation.

She also went back to school while in prison and received a two-year associate’s degree from Medaille College, she says, in addiction treatment and prevention.

She became a certified welder, she says, and spent four-and-a-half of her five years in prison working, making garbage cans and grills. “All the garbage cans and grills you see in state parks all come from Albion,” she said.

Nickel also taught herself to crochet in prison and sent her family gifts “all the time,” she said, “to show them that I still loved and I hadn’t forgotten about them.

She had been angry, during her first couple of years of incarceration. “I was so angry, I felt like it was everybody’s fault — my dad for leaving me when I was 2, the doctors for prescribing all these drugs, the judge for putting me away.”

It was “a spiritual gut punch” when she realized, about halfway through her five-year sentence, Nickel said, that prison probably saved her life.

Before, she had been living dual lives, she said, her addiction not apparent to the many people who thought she was functioning just fine.

Nickel opened the yoga studio on the eighth anniversary of her sobriety.

“You get to the ultimate low point in your life and, when you get there, the only thing you can do is hand it to God and ask for help,” she said, explaining how she came to open the studio.

“What is my service?”

Nickel had been asking herself questions such as, “What is my service? What is my purpose to do?” she said.

It was then that two friends, D.J. and Renée Panetta, got in touch and said they had space in an office building in Guilderland and asked if she might like to rent it.

“‘We have this open space, and we believe in you. What do you want to do with it?’” Nickel recalled them saying.

The former medical building also contains Generations Planning Group, a financial planning firm run by the Panettas. There is also an architectural firm, an insurance company, an immigration attorney, and a counseling practice.

“I have a lot of trauma and darkness that’s led me here, and maybe it’s going to bring other people here,” Nickel said.

She added, “I’ve done some peer counseling before. I always thought all these things were separate, but they’re not. They’re all coming together here.”

One therapist will soon be offering donation-based massage for people undergoing addiction therapy, according to Nickel.

Nickel is also working on holding Alcoholics Anonymous meetings in the studio. She envisions people sitting on the floor and being able to share their struggles in an informal and supportive environment.

She wants to create within the studio “a place of safety,” she said, “where people can get back to their roots and ask themselves, ‘What is your soul purpose? What is it that makes your soul shine?’

“Big Y Yoga is my connection to God, to the divine, to the service I try to do on a daily basis,” she said. “Big Y Yoga is bringing what you learn on the mat off the mat, into the world,” she explained.

She has gathered “some fantastic teachers,” Nickel said, who offer classes including traditional Hatha yoga, chair yoga, Vinyasa Flow, Kundalini yoga, and journey dance.

Her studio also offers classes in kids’ yoga, and a teacher may soon start to offer “laughter yoga,” Nickel said, adding, “I’m trying to bring in things that are a little different.”

Twice a month, the studio holds “Sober Saturdays,” offering ecstatic dancing, Nickel said, adding that the event is meant as an alternative to drinking, to remind people, “You don’t have to be sitting in a bar; you can bring your kids and dance. Have sober fun.”

Nickel plans to expand her studio’s offerings beyond yoga, “to be able to invite people in who are looking for a holistic approach to health and wellness.”

She has added a massage therapist and would also like to add a health coach. “My dream is to get an acupuncturist, but there’s not too many of those,” she said.

She hopes to expand her ties to the local healing-arts community, and does not take a competitive view, she said. She’s happy to refer customers to the chiropractor or the qigong teacher nearby.

“I don’t feel like I can have a spiritual practice and be medicated,” Nickel said. “Medications dull your senses, and take away your ability to connect with your higher self.”

Every decision in life is based in either fear or love, Nickel said.

Opening a yoga studio “has forced me into the light,” she said. “It has forced me to make decisions based on love.”