Yoga studio opts for a donations system

The week that Sean and Karen Conley replaced their membership database with a donation box,… The week that Sean and Karen Conley replaced their membership database with a donation box, Amazing Yoga’s studios were silent.

“It was as if the students were expecting some monumental upheaval,” Sean said. “It took them awhile to realize that everything is the same, except now they have the freedom to come and go as they please.”

Last month, Amazing Yoga became the first large-scale yoga business in Pittsburgh to rely entirely on the generosity of its customers. For years Sean and his wife Karen — owners of the three studios in Shadyside, South Side and Wexford — have toyed with the idea of replacing fees and packages with donations. Their friend Bryan Kest and his pay-what-you-can studio in Santa Monica inspired them, but it wasn’t until the recession hit that they decided to go for it.

As a relatively broke student who attended a session once last summer as a sort of indulgence, I was thrilled to find out about this. But the more I mulled it over — this concept of donations — the more I wondered how it could possibly be sustainable. After all, it’s still a business, and businesses don’t usually survive on only love, faith and hugs, even if what is being sold is something as spiritual as yoga.

Curious as to why an entrepreneur would take this risk, about a week before the transition I trudged through piles of snow to talk to the Conleys at their second-floor studio on Ellsworth Avenue. It was 10 minutes after the last class of the day, and I made it about three-quarters of the way up the stairs before it hit me: a wave of dripping-wet, sauna-like heat.

I remembered this heat and my full-sized bath towel that was soaked by the end of my session. Amazing Yoga heats its studios to a temperature of at least 90 degrees to increase blood flow to muscles, which prevents injuries and results in an exhilarating full-body workout that one does not usually associate with yoga. (The morning after, I painfully discovered the truth behind this — and muscles I never knew I had.)

Mentally willing myself to not sweat profusely, I held my fogged glasses in one hand and greeted the Conleys with the other. I noticed that Karen, who had just finished teaching back-to-back classes, was glowing as if freshly showered. She bustled around the studio, shutting things down and packing things up while Sean, snug in his winter coat, smiled and suggested we pop a squat on the floor. I wiped my forehead and agreed that this was a wonderful place to do the interview, but thought, “You have got to be kidding me.”

Luckily, Karen overrode his suggestion and instead we headed to the Crazy Mocha across the street. Sipping San Pelligrino, Karen described how she got interested in yoga 17 years ago while pregnant with her first child. Sean picked it up a couple years later — partly in an effort to soothe the hip flexors and lower back muscles that he injured after playing football for Pitt and for various teams during a four-year stint in the NFL.

Both of them studied under renowned yogi Baron Baptiste and fell in love with the accessibility of his power vinyasa style of yoga. Faster-paced and athletic, power vinyasa emphasizes moving through poses instead of achieving a certain position. It is adaptable to an individual’s strengths and weaknesses and can be practiced by people of all shapes and levels of flexibility.

Jen Lee, manager of the South Side studio and a lecturer of nonfiction in the English department, practiced the more traditional iyengar yoga for years, which focuses on precision of posture. She said she found the style of power vinyasa to be more intuitive, allowing the poses to “just feel right.”

The Conleys think that neither body shape nor income should be a barrier to yoga. Since opening Amazing Yoga in 2001 they have strived to keep their rates as low as possible, ranging from $7 to $13 per session. They also created a work-exchange program that allows yogis to attend a session for an hour of cleaning up and working the front desk.

When they first opened, Sean said there were probably only about three yoga studios in Pittsburgh. Now there are at least 15. To keep up with the increasing popularity, they adopted a computer system a couple years ago to manage accounts, thinking it would make things easier and more efficient. “It didn’t,” Karen said. “In fact, it caused more angst among employees and slower-moving lines. It also made us more corporate than we wanted to be.”

This frustration with technology was the first impetus for their back-to-the-roots donation approach, but the clincher was the recession and financial concern for students and employees. “Not a week goes by that we don’t hear about a teacher’s husband or a student losing their job,” Sean said, to which Karen nodded and added, “Some people have told us that they couldn’t continue if we didn’t switch.”

In the letter they sent to students in February about the transition, they suggested $14 for a donation in order to ease anxiety and uncertainty. But they have no way of knowing how much each person gives, since the table with the donation box is separate from the front desk. Sean said that he hopes this privacy will relieve any pressure to contribute a certain amount. “The point is that everyone can pay according to how they value the practice,” Karen said.

In addition to per-session donations, students who don’t want to carry cash with them each time also have to option to purchase multiple donation cards. Together, this income fully supports the operating costs of the studios and the livelihoods of Karen, Sean and their 20 or so employees. For this reason, they emphasized that donations do not mean free or cheap yoga. “If you don’t donate,” Karen said, “we can’t operate.”

Ironically, since the economy tanked, the business itself has actually done fine. In fact, attendance has increased — a trend that Sean and Karen attribute to the extra free time and a need for stress relief that results from unemployment.

Still, nothing is certain in the current financial atmosphere.

Sean — who began but never completed a master’s degree in business administration at Pitt — admitted with a laugh that “this is probably the last thing any business expert would advise you to do.” Yet my attempts to get the Conleys to show fear, or anxiety — anything that would signal capitalistic Americanism — only resulted in shrugs and a shared smiles.

“We have made yoga commercial in the U.S.,” Karen said. “This is a way to make it simple again. We have no way of knowing what will happen, but if this is what we’re meant to do, the universe will take care of us. Besides,” she added, “it’s not like we could never go back.”

I walked home from the coffee shop refreshed by the Conleys’ apparent altruism, yet still a little skeptical. I talked to my friend Ashley Lynch, a senior who does Amazing Yoga’s work-exchange program, and it made a little more sense.

“Sean always says that we do the deep forward fold again and again so that we can bend over and tie our shoes when we’re 70 or 80,” she said, laughing. A vegan and yoga enthusiast, power vinyasa at Amazing Yoga has given Ashley time for herself in a hectic life filled with classes, work and volunteering.

“It’s a time for meditation and reflection,” she said. “When you’re in a difficult pose, you learn about yourself. You learn how to persevere.”