We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Elizabeth April a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Elizabeth, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Opening a yoga and/or barre studio isn’t anything groundbreaking. There are plenty of studios out there! I do think where The Portland Yoga Project (PYP) differs from other studios is that we decided to open a studio with a centered focus on the teacher, and by default our students are taken care of. We set goals to pay teachers well, to offer enough classes, workshops, and trainings on the schedule to potentially create more opportunities to make a livable wage. We set goals to create employment status for teachers (rather than the typical contractor model for teachers) and to provide benefits like paid time off, continuing education stipends, health insurance, and more.

This structure is unique to yoga & barre studios and it was important to us to implement and over the last 7 years we have met goal after goal for our teachers with more to come! This structure also attracted true professionals to the studio with decades of experience teaching and depths of knowledge within their work… they are in it for the long run with us and this mindset is again, by default supports our students.

The students reap the benefits of teachers that are respected, paid well, heard, supported, and are in collaboration with their studio owners.

When contemplating opening PYP we of course did some market research and did find that there was a hole in the market when it came to studios offering robust schedules – yes, Portland, Maine is a small city but we felt that it could handle and would even welcome a big schedule. So we dove in head first and opened with 30 classes/week on the schedule and now 7 years later, we offer almost 90 classes/week between our two locations. Portland was ready for us!

So all in all, yes, we opened a yoga & barre studio that from the outside might look like any other studio but we wanted to reshape a lot of what goes on behind the scenes and while everything is a work in progress, I believe we are making big strides forward in this industry.

Elizabeth, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

My name is Elizabeth! I grew up dancing and was always a mover so getting into yoga and barre seemed like a no-brainer. I started my practice in 2002 and did my first yoga teacher training in at 2008. Since then, I have also completed a second yoga teacher training as well as my barre teacher training. I was lucky enough to gain experience in managing studios and in 2018 I decided to open PYP with the help of Jess Emilfarb.

At PYP, we offer everything from vinyasa, barre, gentle yoga, hatha, restorative, yin, ball rolling and more! We offer annual trainings in restorative, yin, barre, and your staple of a 200 hour YTT.

Additionally, PYP has become an example to the industry for our community outreach (think action events, mutual aid, grassroots change…) and our accessibility (think tiered pricing, scholarships, free classes…).

We want the community to know that coming to a yoga or barre class ripples out to the community. Landing on your mat each day (or when you can) adds to the bucket for yourself of course but in turn for the others directly around you and for the ones that will eventually walk through our doors.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Covid. Amidst a 6,000 square foot, buildout.

Enough said :)

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

We like to share this story because I knew Jess only for about 6 months when I asked her to go into business with me.

We met when she took my barre teacher training before we opened PYP. I came in with a baguette and cheese for lunch and we were immediate friends and little did I know, we’d become business partners not too long after!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.theportlandyogaproject.com
• Instagram: @theportlandyogaproject

Image Credits

all photos by: Bonnie Durham