Yogapata Offers Chance to 'Give Back'

Yogapata, located at 444 Danbury Rd., opened its doors June 1 after about a month of offering pop-up, donation-based classes.

There are about seven types of classes, some for beginners, some for specific therapeutic purposes and some for more advanced yoga practitioners. Classes are offered three or four times a day everyday.

Yogapata has seven teachers, including co-creators Mitchel and Tracy Bleier. There is also a roster of four “mentees,” yoga students who are training to become teachers and each teach a class or two per week for practice.

The Bleiers have been married for more than five years and have three sons. Tracy Bleier owned another yoga studio nearby for 10 years and Mitchel Bleier was a teacher there while also traveling the world instructing other yoga teachers. The two decided to open Yogapata partially because they wanted to create a better life for their family.

“We realized that Mitchel spent most of his time on the road,” Tracy Bleier said. “It ended up actually not being the life we loved living in.”

Mitchel Bleier said another reason the two decided to open Yogapata was because it provides a chance to make yoga a more personal experience between the students and teachers.

“The other studio that Tracy had owned, it got so big, and it almost became larger than our lives, and one of the things that we wanted here was something that really was in the means of our life, that we can manage, that really was just enough,” Mitchel Bleier said, “And in that, it allows us the opportunity to really give back.”

By way of “giving back,” a portion of the profits Yogapata makes from each class goes to a charity that particular teacher has chosen. Some of those charities include local organizations, such as Peace Pilgrim and Full Court Peace, and some benefit national causes such as breast cancer and autism research.