Phoenix studio Urban Yoga flourishes under new owners

After 16 years in business, Phoenix yoga studio Urban Yoga began a new chapter late last year under the ownership of three women – Amy Charles, Lucía Nevárez and Nevárez's wife, Rosie Fajardo. While they’re working to expand the business to reach more customers, including Spanish speakers, their approach has been rooted in respecting and preserving the studio's longstanding emphasis on offering non-heated yoga with a spiritual and restorative emphasis.

Before this business venture, Charles was a longtime fitness and yoga instructor at various studios and Nevárez had founded a commercial facility services company that she later sold but stayed on as a vice president. Nevárez has since left that job to run Urban Yoga with Charles full time. Fajardo is currently a silent partner in their operation but hopes to become more hands-on in the future.

Nevárez, who started her journey as an entrepreneur when she was a kid by selling her mom’s bean and cheese burritos at school, knew she wanted to pursue her next venture in the fitness and wellness space, an industry worth $6.3 trillion globally.

Still, acquiring Urban Yoga took a leap of faith. "It was a big risk and jump to decide to go into doing this full time because there are a lot of yoga studios and fitness is kind of a scary industry," Charles says.

Yet, something about Urban Yoga drew them in.


Phoenix’s yoga offerings are dominated by heated yoga studios that lean toward a fitness approach to the practice, rather than a spiritual one. It’s easy to find fast-paced, core-focused classes that are held in rooms set to over 100 degrees and over 30% humidity. But non-heated classes that teach traditional, meditative forms of yoga such as kundalini and hatha yoga? Not so much.

"I think we very much want to keep the brand of Urban Yoga as a more spiritual side of yoga and more yin focused," Charles adds, referring to a type of yoga that focuses on slow movements and long holds in poses. However, they have expanded their course offerings to include a wider variety of restorative classes, as well as two power flow classes to cater to customers seeking a more athletic style of yoga.

The new owners are also committed to expanding Urban Yoga's reach. They've placed particular focus on the studio's Spanish-speaking offerings – a rare feature in Phoenix's yoga scene.

Lourdes Silva, an instructor at Urban Yoga since 2016, has been instrumental in developing the studio's Spanish-language programming. She was first drawn to the studio while navigating cancer treatment and, after receiving her yoga teacher training certification, began offering yoga classes at Urban Yoga specifically for the Hispanic community.

In 2019, Silva proposed and helped establish Urban Yoga’s first Spanish-language Yoga Teacher Training (YTT) program, which now has 21 graduates, two of whom now also teach at Urban Yoga. The program not only empowers students in their language but helps expand the number of Spanish-speaking instructors at the studio and across Phoenix, something that Silva feels is still sorely lacking.

"Yoga for the Hispanic community is really tough culturally ... It is something that is a taboo. It is for the devil. It's not really totally open for all," she explains, referring to the strong Catholic influence in Latin American communities.
Silva’s ability to navigate these cultural complexities has been key in helping Urban Yoga build trust with Spanish-speaking students.

Beatriz Bogard, who takes at least five classes at Urban Yoga a week, described the studio’s classes as transformative and instrumental in helping her heal from an injury.

"Thanks to yoga, my life changed completely," Bogard says. The accessibility of the Spanish classes has also been especially valuable to Bogard, who’s originally from Mexico. "It’s nice when the class is in your language and, well, Spanish is my language even though I’ve been here for 30 years.”


The ownership duo, who became friends when Charles was an instructor at Orangetheory Fitness and Nevárez a student, noted that the Spanish-led classes haven’t grown as quickly as they’d hoped, in part because the previous management replaced the Spanish classes with bilingual ones which negatively affected attendance. But they’re determined to get the word out there.

“My vision is to find either like festivals or events that would attract the Spanish community ... and bring (Spanish-speaking) teachers out to do pop-up classes and things like that," Charles says.

They also have prioritized making the studio more accessible to Spanish speakers in other ways, such as by hiring a Spanish-speaking front desk assistant and creating fliers in Spanish.

Charles believes Urban Yoga's authentic community of yoga-lovers is what sets it apart, and it’s a sentiment echoed by Silva, whose dedication to her students and her commitment to making yoga accessible to her community is palpable.

"Yoga is for everyone regardless of age, regardless of weight, regardless of color ... Yoga is for everyone," Silva says.

For now, the new owners are focused on stabilizing the business while staying true to what has made Urban Yoga meaningful to so many in the Valley.

"Our dream is to have an Urban Yoga Arcadia, an Urban Yoga Moon Valley, you know, Urban Yoga West," Nevárez says, imagining a future where their model of inclusive, healing yoga could expand across the region.

Urban Yoga is located at 2024 N. Seventh St., #201. Call 602-277-9642 or visit the Urban Yoga website.