Business of the Week: Olde Mill Yoga

If there’s any kind of stigma associated with the practice of yoga, it’s left at the door of in Tatamy.

“Yoga is not just for the elite,” said owner and teacher Midi Miller. “We have fun, we joke around… we’re not in India, and it’s not 5,000 years ago.”

Olde Mill Yoga has been around for nearly seven years, found on Bushkill Street less than a mile from Forks Township. The focus of the studio is, of course, on yoga, but that’s where the comparisons to other contemporary studios end.

Olde Mill Yoga holds 27 regular classes a week, which means they will always be held, regardless if there’s one person or 50 people. The studio charges a flat $27 a month for unlimited classes.

“Yoga isn’t something you just do on Mondays at 5:00,” said Miller. “It’s something you do whenever you like, when it feels right.”

Eight yoga teachers and three Zumba instructors run the classes at Olde Mill, which illustrates another way the studio is unique; it encourages students to take classes from all teachers, rather than just one, since each teacher brings different knowledge and style of yoga.

According to Miller, no other studio in the area teaches Svaroopa yoga, a style that specializes in spiritual opening and releasing deep tensions.

The studio also offers Zumba classes, which works in conjunction with yoga poses because it is a “free, liberating exercise,” as Miller put it. She has been teaching aerobics since 1983, and has taught yoga for 13 years.

“I’ve always been involved in health and wellness,” she said. “I’ve done it all; kickboxing, personal training… just about anything to do with a gym.”

She was one of the three founding partners of Easton Yoga ten years ago, before striking out on her own in 2004.

“There was only one listing in Tatamy,” she said, referring to the old mill that houses Olde Mill. “We wound up falling in love with the building.”

In fact, Olde Mill Yoga is set on a 106 year-old foundation. The building was originally a barracks for railroad workers before being converted to a series of industrial mills. In the 1970s, it served as an antiques place.  

When Miller decided to put in her studio, the building had no heat, no plumbing, and no walls beside the bare exteriors. She got to work refinishing the floors and installing radiant heating. Today the 3,400 square feet studio is barely recognizable as a former mill.

“There’s probably $2,000 worth of paint on these walls,” Miller joked.

“Namaste” is a phrase seen and heard a lot around the studio. The lengthy, literal translation is inscribed on a sheet tacked on a wall (check out the photo gallery for the full interpretation), but Miller paraphrased: “I am you, you are me, we are one.”

“Yoga is about making a connection to your conscious self… that you have an essence inside you,” she said.

Olde Mill Yoga is located at 336 Bushkill Street in Tatamy, next to the . See the website for a current class schedule and pricing information.