We recently connected with Jenn Curren and Carly Markowitz and have shared our conversation below.
Jenn and Carly, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with a story that highlights an important way in which your brand diverges from the industry standard.
Tula Yoga & Wellness is co-owned by two friends who met on the mat in a yoga studio. As it does, life happened – new jobs, moving, children, etc. and we found ourselves neighbors and missed the yoga classes we used to attend together. One conversation led to another and another and when we set out to open a yoga studio, we wanted it to be so much more than just a place for people to workout. We wanted a space for our local Northern Liberties community to come together, to have a safe, welcoming, and inclusive place to not only practice yoga with one another, but also to connect in community with our neighbors in a way that would allow authentic connections to be built and foster friendships that travel beyond the studio walls. Being a smaller, boutique studio we wanted to differentiate ourselves from many of the larger chain studios or gyms where the whole interaction can just feel very transactional. For us money is not the goal. Both of us maintain full time jobs outside of the studio so that we have the freedom and flexibility to really focus on the studio as co-founders, but also members of the community. While our community is a top focus, we have also prioritized top notch quality teachers from diverse backgrounds to further the feeling of inclusion, safety, and a life-long alignment based yoga practice in our studio space.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
Tula Yoga & Wellness is a fairytale of two yogis meeting in a yoga class, becoming dear friends, and then opening the yoga studio of our dreams together in the neighborhood we live in. The core of our business is a yoga studio – one that encourages you to stay awhile or come early and connect with others. The word Tula in Sanskrit means balance and we truly believe in that. We have students that come for yoga and brunch together or come to an evening class and grab a cocktail or dinner after. In addition to yoga we offer workshops that include breathwork, meditation, new moon circles, more advanced yoga poses and philosophies, Ayurveda practices, mala making, etc. We also have an office space that wellness practitioners offer private services in and these include but aren’t limited to psychotherapy, physical therapy, massage therapy, breathwork, and meditation. In Spring of 2023 we offered our first retreat. We also have specialty offerings for postpartum moms, prenatal yoga, and kids offerings. There was not an active traditional yoga studio in our neighborhood and this is what we aimed to create and build for our neighbors to enjoy. A space that encouraged more community involvement and engagement.
How’d you meet your business partner?
The short version of this story starts with us meeting in a yoga class at the studio where we were both long term yoga students and fairly new teachers at the time. From there we started getting more involved in the Philadelphia yoga community and had our first friend date shortly after. Years passed and eventually Carly showed Jenn the perfect listing for her most perfect little home, which convinced her to move to the neighborhood. While we loved being friends and neighbors, we both missed the access to the quality yoga and community we used to have, which ultimately led to the creation of Tula Yoga & Wellness. As life got busier getting our of our neighborhood regularly and to the yoga community we were once so involved with became more and more difficult and we saw a huge need for not just quality yoga, but also a yoga community in our neighborhood.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Tula Yoga & Wellness is a labor of love. With the guidance and support of our husbands, parents, extended families, and friends we renovated the yoga studio all on our own. You better bet that we were regulars down at Home Depot and Lowes. Carly, now a mother of two, was in her third trimester and painting along with the rest of us. Opening up a studio that prides itself on community you can’t be surprised to find out that we created this space with intention, our own hands, full hearts, and the ones we love most. We took a risk to start a business, to share something we love with the world, and opened in December of 2019, three months before the world shut down because of COVID-19. The devastation was incredible and the shock to our systems and business plans was truly scary. All the hard work, hours in the evenings after our other full time jobs, and countless hours over the weekends seemed like it was all going to fall out from beneath us. But in the three short months we were open we had built a small, yet mighty community. Folks immediately jumped on the virtual bandwagon, or kept their passes active despite not wanting to come virtually because they wanted us to survive. We got support from other local businesses, who allowed us to use their outdoor spaces for yoga since we didn’t have one. The great thing about opening a yoga studio with a best friend that balances you and supports you is that we supported the ups and downs of owning a business during a pandemic and truly being each other’s yin to the other’s yang – we always struck the right balance of pushing forward even when the days were really disheartening. And a fun fact about the word that relates to this is that Tula means balance in Sanskrit.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.tulayogaphilly.com/
- Instagram: @tulayogaphilly
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TulaYogaPhilly
- Twitter: @tulayogaphilly
- Other: Google: https://goo.gl/maps/JxeFR7eQG61gBALJA TikTok: @tulayogaphilly (up and coming!)