Verge Yoga Survives The Pandemic

WAYNE, PA — Emily Forte bought Verge Yoga in January 2020 from Cara and Brian Bradley who had started it 15 years before.

“Owning my own yoga studio has always been a dream of mine,” Forte said. “I did my yoga teacher training at Verge back in 2012 and ever since then, I’ve been teaching yoga. When the opportunity came up, it was my home yoga studio, so it was something I felt I had to take advantage of. I left my full-time job in higher education and I became the owner.”

After having been open for only two-and-a-half months, Forte, like most every small business owner around the country, was forced to close the studio.

“I somehow knew intuitively or just in my heart that it was going to be longer than two weeks,” Forte said. “We reopened in July. Last summer was kind of a blur. It was tough getting people to come back. We were wearing masks — that was a challenge, wearing a mask in a hot yoga studio while you’re doing pranayama breathing is a struggle to begin with.”

On top of tackling the challenge of the sudden closure and partial reopening, Forte had to keep up with the rapidly changing COVID-19 regulations and CDC requirements. But before the studio was ready to reopen, the studio turned to the remote instruction of Zoom.

“I think that it only took us about three days to get online. We had multiple Zoom meetings with all our teachers about ‘how do we make this the same product for everyone?’” Forte said. “When we’re in the studio, our yoga classes are our product. So we spent a couple days figuring out how we have the same product if I’m teaching from my living room. That took about three days to figure out and then we were online by that Tuesday, just continuing to bring yoga to people.”

Eager to continue providing their service to the community, Verge Yoga was initially offering three live-streamed classes a day. And though Zoom was a great option, yoga through a screen just doesn’t feel the same for Forte.

“We’ve had an on-demand channel since about 2011, where we would put recorded classes online and people could just go in and hit play,” Forte said. “I was super grateful for that. We’ll always keep on-demand. I don’t know that we’ll always keep live-stream. I kind of saw it as a bandaid for the time being. I think having an online studio is so different from having a brick-and-mortar studio. I don’t know that I will always keep live-stream, but I do think it definitely increased people’s desire and habits of practicing yoga on their own, at home.”

Now, as restrictions are lifted and people are growing more comfortable with returning to public life, things for Verge are consistently getting better.

“Every day or maybe every other day, another student comes in that says ‘this is my first class since COVID!’” Forte said. “I see that slow progression of classes getting larger, so definitely positive. There’s a number of students that came in and cried when they walked in the door. I’ve teared up a few times, too. I think a huge part of yoga is the community feel and doing it with other people — you can kind of feel it at home, but it’s not the same over a screen.”

Now on the other side of the most severe lockdowns and parts of the pandemic, Forte is looking positively toward the future of Verge Yoga.

“I just feel fortunate that we are still open, that our dedicated members stuck with us through quarantine, that the majority of our teachers stuck with us,” Forte said. “I couldn’t do it without our community. I’m just happy we made it.”