A new yoga studio that just opened
34 NOVEMBER 2 0 1 9
for business in Astoria takes a holistic
approach to healing a person’s
mind, body and spirit.
Breathe Strength Yoga & Wellness, located
at 31-16 36th Ave., officially opened
to the public on Oct. 7, offering classes in
yoga, fitness and mediation at all levels led
by a team of 16 teachers, including owner
Charlotte Muller.
For eight years, Muller taught fitness
classes as her “side hustle,” running fitness
classes in gyms and other public spaces
wherever she could during and after college.
Muller quickly found that this wasn’t
a particularly stable way to make a living
and was working in human resources after
graduation to make ends meet.
“I always had an idea to open my own studio,
but the thought was always along the
lines of, ‘Oh, I’ll do it when I’m married’ or ‘I’ll
do it when I’m more financially stable,’” Muller
said. “I tried to do it out of college but it didn’t
work. But it was always on my mind because I
wasn’t happy in the corporate world.”
Muller ultimately took the plunge, quitting
her job in the corporate sector and eventually
finding Breathe Strength’s Astoria studio
space in February 2019.
“Once I stepped inside the studio, I felt,
‘Yup, this is it,’” said Muller. “I knew that it
was meant to be.”
If you were to tell Muller years ago that she’d
be running her own yoga and fitness studio,
she’d probably think you were crazy.
“I was not athletic,” Muller said, laughing.
“I hated going to the gym and gym
class at school.”
It wasn’t until Muller was faced with the
death of her mother that a switch flipped inside
her and started her fitness journey from
the ground up.
“When I was 17, I lost my mom unexpectedly,”
Muller said. “I got tested and found
out that I had a genetic disorder that gives
me high cholesterol. I had to change my life
completely, and about a month into it I had a
complete change of heart.”
Muller made a complete turnaround, not
only incorporating exercise into her routine
but gaining her certifications to teach Zumba,
high-intensity interval training and yoga,
and building the Breathe Strength brand
while she was in college.
“The company was originally called ‘Conquering
Cholesterol,’ but the more I wrote
that down, it didn’t feel right,” said Muller. “I
started writing down words that felt beautiful
to me and tried pairing them, and landed on
'Breathe Strength.' Now my studio is Breathe
Strength: 'breathe' for yoga, and 'strength'
for fitness.”
While the Breathe Strength studio didn’t
officially open until Oct. 7, Muller and her
staff had been teaching community yoga
classes in the space while it underwent construction.
The classes, which take place on
Monday afternoons at 3:45, helped Breathe
Strength build its following well before it
opened to the public.
“Construction took about three or four
months, but the space was still usable for
yoga,” Muller said. “I offered six or seven
community yoga classes a week, which were
completely donation-based, and after two
months, we had 100 people who had either
taken a class or were in our contacts for future
classes.”
Now that it’s open, Breathe Strength currently
offers classes in yoga and fitness —
including but not limited to vinyasa yoga,
yoga sculpt and high-intensity interval training
— and they are also working to add meditation
into the mix. Every third Friday of the
month, Breathe Strength will host a Meditation
101 class, taught by Tawn Le, that aims
to teach everyone the ins and outs of meditation
while cracking the mystery of why it’s
so hard to meditate.
Meditation 101 will cost $10 per person.
Breathe Strength also hosts a weekly community
meditation every Wednesday from noon
to 12:30 p.m., also led by Le, which is run completely
off of donations. In fact, Muller made
sure that classes are affordable.
“We’re not in it for the money,” Muller said.
“That’s why it was important for us to have
donation-based community classes on top
of our regular classes.”
For more information about Breathe
Strength, visit breathestrengthwellness.com.
BY EMILY DAVENPORT
Photos courtesy of Charlotte Muller
FMOIONDD ++ DBROIDNYK
Holistic Hustle
New Astoria wellness studio brings yoga,
fitness and meditation under one roof
/breathestrengthwellness.com
