Participants pose during a class at Wild Root Yoga on Tuesday led by Cara Unrue. Credit: William Moody | Lantern Photographer

It was 2017, and Debbie Penzone was in the early stages of opening the Royal Rhino Club Barbershop & Lounge in Columbus’ Italian Village neighborhood with her husband, Charles Penzone. 

Unexpectedly, the couple’s realtor casually asked Debbie Penzone if she wanted to view another available space in the building. She wasn’t entirely sure why, but she went along with it anyway. 

It was a vast space with high industrial ceilings and 100-year-old brick walls — instantly captivating. 

“Wow, Debbie,” Charles Penzone said, taking it all in. “This could be a great yoga studio.” 

The idea had never crossed her mind. She earned her 200-hour teacher training certification for yoga in 2015 and was perfectly content teaching at other studios. But standing there, surrounded by the raw beauty of the space, she couldn’t help but imagine the possibilities.

“You love yoga, and I know you want to share it with the community,” Charles Penzone continued.

She smiled, and at that moment, Charles Penzone knew he had made the right decision purchasing the space in advance, unbeknownst to his wife. 

“Happy birthday,” he said.

It was a gift — an incredible, utterly surprising one. But it was also a challenge. Charles Penzone, who already owned two businesses — the new barbershop and PENZONE Salon + Spa — encouraged his wife to take a leap of her own.

She accepted. But she had no idea just how challenging the journey ahead would be, or why. 

Debbie Penzone’s LIT Life + Yoga is one of many yoga studios that shut down in-person operations in March 2020, when Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine released the “Director’s Stay at Home Order” — which urged all non-essential employees to remain at home as COVID-19 spread. 

In the five years since, many Columbus yoga studios have faced closures, new beginnings and ongoing challenges. Now, studio owners like Debbie Penzone are reflecting on their journeys throughout the pandemic, including the process of opening new spaces and the continued growth of the city’s yoga community. 

LIT Life + Yoga 

Debbie Penzone officially opened LIT Life + Yoga’s Italian Village location at 999 N. Fourth St. in December 2017, describing it as a source of healing during a challenging period in her life. 

“I felt like yoga saved my life,” Debbie Penzone said. “I had been going through a tough time with my father being really sick and helping take care of my mom, and it just really helped me to get up and deal with everything.” 

Debbie Penzone said the studio, unlike many others, offers various wellness experiences beyond traditional yoga practices, including aromatherapy, infrared yoga and sound baths. 

She said she remembers the exact weekend the studio had to shut down. The studio — which had also become a yoga school, offering teacher training certification with the 200-hour teacher training program — was offering 50-hour teacher training certification for aerial yoga with one of the original creators of aerial yoga herself, Carmen Curtis, who had flown into town from California. 

“We were so excited, and of course, that same weekend — I’ll never forget it — we were one of the first states to shut down, and I ended up taking her back to the airport to go back to California, and I was just in shock,” Debbie Penzone said.

Like many other studios, Debbie Penzone said LIT Life + Yoga implemented health protocols such as installing an air-purification system, cutting class sizes in half, maintaining six feet of distance, enforcing mask mandates and sanitizing all equipment after each use. 

Of equal importance, Debbie Penzone said she ensured all LIT Lumineers — the studio’s term for its instructors — could continue teaching and receiving pay. 

“The yoga teachers, they really depend on that, and so I really wanted to show that we supported them,” Debbie Penzone said. “We are also very fortunate that we were grounded in a strong foundation and that our community was so strong around us and stood with us.”  

Debbie Penzone said LIT Life + Yoga didn’t just survive the pandemic, but thrived after months of hard work and perseverance, ultimately enabling her to open another studio location at 6671 Village Parkway in Dublin just over a year ago. 

Debbie Penzone said in the five years since the pandemic, she has come to understand that the true essence of yoga lies in the sense of community it creates. 

“People want to be back in their community, and I have felt it for this past year when we opened this other studio,” Debbie Penzone said. “It’s all about community. It’s all about people wanting to have human connections again. It is not just the yoga you do on the mat, it is how it changes your life.” 

Wild Root Yoga 

Cara Unrue, owner of Wild Root Yoga at 4080 Indianola Ave., said she had been teaching yoga for almost a decade in Columbus and was working as an instructor at Yoga On High when the COVID-19 pandemic prompted her and her colleagues to stay home in March 2020. 

“[Yoga On High] was the biggest yoga studio in the city, and it had been for the last 30 years,” Unrue said. “We had a wonderful community and wonderful attendance. Business was booming, and then we had this unexpected situation.” 

Following DeWine’s stay-at-home order, Unrue said she adapted by continuing to teach yoga remotely, leading virtual classes from her home.

Participants pose during a class at Wild Root Yoga on Tuesday led by Cara Unrue. Credit: William Moody | Lantern

“It really didn’t work very well, which obviously devastated most yoga studios financially,” Unrue said. “Very few actually stayed open past that.”

Unrue said Yoga On High managed to sustain itself through virtual classes, eventually resuming limited-capacity in-person sessions in summer 2020. However, the newly implemented protocols — including mandatory masks and rigorous sanitization — led many practitioners to opt for at-home yoga instead. 

“There was a lot of paranoia in the classroom about catching COVID-19, and there were a lot of people that didn’t come back, and then you also had folks on the other end of the spectrum who felt [the protocols were] too much, so they were frustrated about not being able to have things the way that they were before,” Unrue said. “It just really shook up the dynamic in so many ways.” 

Not long after, Unrue left Yoga On High to teach at YogaSix’s Upper Arlington location. However, in September 2022, she said YogaSix closed its doors due to struggles with attendance and financial sustainability. Less than a year later in June 2023, Yoga On High did the same.

After YogaSix’s closure, Unrue said she was pushed to explore new ways for her and her colleagues to continue teaching yoga in their community. 

“There were all these teachers that had nowhere to teach, and so I started scrambling to find space to hold classes in,” Unrue said. “I wasn’t planning on opening a yoga studio. I was just going to do these classes as a sort of interim, and I ended up finding a commercial space I could share with a plant store.”  

Unrue said she and the owner of BarTrop Plants — a plant store located at 3017 Indianola Ave. — split the rent evenly, giving her a space large enough to accommodate classes of 20 students. But the store and studio quickly outgrew this capacity. 

As Unrue searched for a larger venue, she discovered an old water treatment plant located at 4080 Indianola Ave. and seized the opportunity to purchase the property in October 2022. She now operates her own studio, Wild Root Yoga, in a space that allows her to host classes of up to 35 students.

“It’s really been a huge comeback,” Unrue said. “We’re doing really well, and I don’t think any of it would have happened if it hadn’t been for the way COVID-19 affected the old yoga studios in the community.” 

Unrue also said she attributes Wild Root Yoga’s success to its emphasis on inclusivity, as it provides a diverse range of classes for all skill levels and offers affordable options for those facing financial constraints. 

“We make sure that every person who comes in feels welcomed immediately,” Unrue said. “There’s no clique group of people, and there’s no one style of yoga that you have to be able to fit into. We also have multiple free and donation-based classes, and if someone wants to have a regular membership and attend all the classes and they can’t quite make that work budget-wise, we do pay-what-you-can agreements so that yoga is something available to everyone.” 

Modo Yoga 

Chad Underwood, owner of two Columbus Modo Yoga locations, said he opened the first studio at 4700 N. High St. in Clintonville after relocating to his home city of Columbus in June 2015. 

“I had fallen in love with yoga, hot yoga in particular, down in Cincinnati,” Underwood said. “I was living in Cincinnati at the time, and there were [Modo Yoga locations] down there. I had been wanting to move back to Columbus, but I was like, ‘Where is this in Columbus?’ And as I started looking around, there really weren’t any. So, I moved to Columbus to start Modo here.” 

After nearly five successful years of offering hot yoga — which is practiced in a heated room between 98-102 degrees — Underwood said the studio had to pause in-person classes but adapted by providing four live virtual sessions daily and a database of pre-recorded lessons. The studio reopened with limited in-person classes June 8, 2020, allowing a capacity of 20 participants instead of the usual 45. 

Underwood said it also helped that Modo Yoga’s layout naturally lent itself to a more efficient sanitization process, as the studio is located at the back of the building, beyond the lobby, bathrooms and locker rooms. 

Students would enter, use the restroom, get ready and head to the studio. During class, the lobby, bathrooms and locker rooms were sanitized, and after class, students exited through the studio’s back door, allowing the studio spaces to then be cleaned. 

“It was an extremely trying time, and things were constantly changing,” Underwood said. “Looking back now, some of the stuff we did, it is like, ‘I can’t believe we did this.’” 

In a more controversial move, Underwood said the studio required participants to be vaccinated in order to sign up for in-person classes when they reopened. 

“We had surveyed our community and found out 92% of our students wanted us to do it, so we did it,” Underwood said. “Some didn’t agree with the decision, and it was a really challenging time, but I’m glad we were able to weather the storm.” 

Underwood said the studio is now busier than ever. In fact, its growth recently allowed him to open a second Modo Yoga location at 1042 Dublin Road in Grandview in October 2024. 

Though many regulars never returned to in-person classes, opting instead for at-home pre-recorded sessions, Underwood said Modo Yoga provides an experience that can’t be fully replicated at home — something that has fueled the studio’s success and growth.

“Anyone can roll out their mat in their basement, but what you can’t do is turn up the heat and humidity in your house to get it to 100 degrees and humid like we can here,” Underwood said. “We want this to be a second home for people, and we want them to walk out feeling better than when they walked in; that is what we offer.” 

Zen Yoga Studio 

Similar to Unrue, Ellen Eilers, owner of Zen Yoga Studio, said she wanted to create a space centered on inclusivity when she opened the studio — currently located at 3242 N. High St. — in July 2019. 

“I wanted to give students a place they could feel welcome, no matter what clothes they were wearing and what level of practice they had,” Eilers said. “I just wanted to make it really inclusive, and I wanted to keep it affordable because I know yoga can be really expensive.” 

Eilers said the studio, originally located in Grandview, had been open for only eight months when the COVID-19 pandemic forced her to shut down.

Being new to the community, Eilers decided not to renew her lease in Grandview. Instead, she transitioned to offering online classes for a few months, before opting to host in-person, socially distanced sessions at Goodale Park.

“It made it so that it was more open, and we weren’t in an enclosed space with a lot of people because we were all really worried about spreading COVID-19,” Eilers said. 

Eilers said she wasn’t sure if she would open another in-person studio until her students approached her, asking her to teach them how to become instructors. This led her to reopen in Upper Arlington in November 2020 for a short time, before finding a permanent space in Clintonville in May 2021. 

She said without the love and support from the community, she likely wouldn’t have reopened. 

“I really wanted to give people a place to be themselves and heal,” Eilers said. “I had many of my students tell me that Zen Yoga is their safe space or their favorite part of their day, and so it’s a struggle for me to think about shutting it down because there are so many people that are getting so many benefits from it. I’m really doing it as a labor of love.”