Yoga Studio Closes for Good After a Decade In Danbury

Once again, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed yet another local business.

Yoga Culture on Mill Plain Road in Danbury is closing their doors for good as of Saturday (September 26). The owner of Yoga Culture, Jenny Schuck, blames the pandemic as her reason for closing.

Schuck recently told newstimes.com that the coronavirus shut down has made it next to impossible for her to continue classes at the studio.

It simply didn't make sense to keep paying rent on an empty space. We hadn't reopened because we didn't feel it was safe to do so, our windows in our studio don't open. Also with the current class size limitations, we would only be able to fit five to ten people in a studio that regularly held twenty to thirty people per class. Add to that PPE and an air purifying system, and we would be losing money on every single class.

When the shut down happened, the studio did shift to on line classes, and had a full schedule, but even with these classes, the studio still lost many of it's members.

During the summer months, the studio was able to have outdoor classes at Tarrywile Park, something that they have been doing for years, and something that has also raised money for the park.

Schuck also said one of the other problems the studio was facing with online classes was that her staff was having issues making the online transition to Zoom in such a short period of time.

Normally, we walk around the class, leading it with our voice as we check on students alignment. We had to quickly turn to doing the practice ourselves while we taught the class, and most students are positioned online in a way that we can't see them.

So, does Jenny have any plans to re-open after the pandemic ends? Looks like right now the answer is no, but she will continue to hold online classes, but her biggest challenge right now is letting her clients know about the studio closing.

Telling these people you're taking away their happy place, the place they go to find calm and peace, during a pandemic, was gut wrenching. Like taking away a child's teddy bear in the dark during a thunderstorm.