We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kimberly Ghorai. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kimberly below.
Kimberly, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the decision of whether to donate a percentage of sales to an organization or cause – we’d love to hear the backstory of how you thought through this.
It’s important to us to recognize that our two business locations, Meta Yoga Studios in Breckenridge and Frisco, exist and gather on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Southern Ute Indian Tribes. As such, we feel that sharing our profits with them is necessary to honor their community and legacy. We work directly with the Southern Ute Reservation in Ignacio, Colorado to provide yearly reparations. A portion of every dollar spent at Meta Yoga is sent to the Southern Ute Indian Tribes. That means the more clients spend with Meta, the more we are able to send to the Tribes. The Cultural Preservation Department applies those funds to keep their ancestral culture alive in their community.
There are so many ways to research, connect with, and offer reparations to Tribal communities. It would be so incredible if all businesses started to view reparations as a part of their yearly budget. Maybe a business does not have extra funds to offer, but instead extra time or another resource. We encourage Colorado businesses to start with a conversation and then see what is possible to fit the needs of the Tribes. Let us all work towards lifting one another up towards our greatest and highest potentials!
If you are interested in learning more about the Southern Ute Reservation, please head to their website www.southernute-nsn.gov.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
I found yoga after the sudden loss of my twin sister, Kate. While exploring ways to process grief and create new connection, I fell in love with the experience of meditation. While taking time off working to cultivate this new relationship with myself I stumbled into a yoga teacher training at Meta Yoga. The “teacher” part of the training did not call to me, but the connection with Self did. By the end of my learnings, I found that teaching yoga came quite naturally to me. I started teaching almost immediately after and spent a few years finding my teaching voice and the styles of yoga that I was most passionate about.
The owners of Meta Yoga were looking to sell their studio and offered for myself and my husband to buy it. That came at a shock as we were not ready to be studio owners, but we knew that we couldn’t let a corporate yoga company come in and change the studio. The Summit County community has a deep connection with the studio and we wanted to build on the culture that had been set rather than watch it get wiped out and turned into a cookie-cutter studio.
Since we purchased Meta Yoga in 2018, we have worked towards providing space for passionate yoga teachers and practitioners. Our teachers are always encouraged to teach to their passions and lineage of training. A vinyasa class taught by one teacher can be totally different with another, and we love that! It allows our teachers to be authentic and create real support for their students. Teachers are also provided free yearly Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion trainings every year that help support their yoga teachers from different angles, such as Philanthropy in Yoga, The Decolonization of Yoga, and Adaptive Yoga for Physical Limitations. From our perspective, yoga teachers should always be students as a way of keeping their skills and inspiration at the highest caliber. Continuing education for them is a must to be a part of our team.
In 2021, we purchased our second location in Frisco. It was an already existing space for hot yoga. We loved the owners and never wanted to compete with them, so their interest in selling lined up perfectly. We have been able to merge the two studios’ communities and watch the interchange of energy. It really is something that lights us up!
In addition to daily yoga classes, Meta also offers monthly speciality workshops and trainings. The workshops are typically offering yoga students a deeper experience as an exploration of the self. There are Sound Journeys, Thai Yoga Massage, AcroYoga, Moon Journeys and more. Again, these offerings are born from the passions of our teachers and what they would love to provide as support to the community. Our trainings vary from Yoga Teacher Training and Advanced Yoga Teacher Certification to continuing education for yoga teachers such as Yin Yoga, Restorative Yoga, Meditation, and Hands on Assists to name a few.
Ultimately, Meta Yoga is all about finding the needs of the community and providing appropriate options. We have cycled through different offerings such as Yoga en Espanol, Yoga Darshana, and Donation Classes. We serve with the skills we have until the community decides that it no longer needs that particular offering. Then we go looking for what other needs the community has. This will always be part of our mission, to serve the community first.
Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?
I believe it is important for business owners to have a council that they connect with on a regular basis. We have a monthly management meeting where five of us ask questions where we could use another perspective on how to accomplish projects and overcome obstacles. It never matters what one member’s background or training is, they get to have an opinion and share their ideas. We have had so many great strategies born out of this free form brainstorming.
In particular, we have a Community Engagement Coordinator on our management team that has been such a lifeline for us. Their training as a Social Worker provides a steady perspective for us to regain our footing in any situation. This individual is open for everyone on our team at Meta to connect with when they need help navigating relationships with students, coworkers, jobs, management, or themselves. If only every business had someone in a role like this!
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Consistency, honesty and treating everyone like a local.
Before we bought the studios, there were seasonal schedules where the class times, styles, and teachers changed every three months. As soon as a student found the perfect class and built up a rhythm of attending, everything would change! Thanks to the persistence of my husband, we shifted our schedule to be year-round. A class stays in place as long as there are students joining and it works for that teacher. Now when a student finds a teacher that they love with the class style and time that works best for them, they know that it will be around for a good amount of time. This also means that we only hire teachers that plan to make Summit County their home for a good amount of time.
When something is not going right, we own up to it. The power of an apology for our mistakes is huge. Maybe a teacher no-shows for a class but there are a ton of students that were waiting. Yikes! This does happen and we take the time to connect with each student and make amends. We try not to make mistakes, but when we do we work hard to find a solution where everyone feels taken care of.
So many people call us to ask if we have a local’s special class rate. Well, before we bought the studio we did. To be super real, it felt icky. People would be in line to buy their class visit and would ask for the local’s rate. Our front desk person would then grill them to see if the truly were a local. Eww. Gross. Not the feelings we wanted students to have. Instead, everyone gets the same rates and opportunities with us. When students return to our studio, we want it to feel like home regardless if they live in the area 12 months or 1 month of the year. We work to remember their names. We cultivate connection. It is an important part of us helping students to find the journey to themselves.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.metayogastudios.com
- Instagram: @metayoga
- Facebook: /metayogastudios
Image Credits
Meigan Canfield Photography & Megan Dujardin Photography