This Brooklyn Wellness Studio Serves Up a Side of Empowerment With Your Exercise

We all have stray bits of information we simply can’t shake out of our heads. For Corinne Wainer, it was a statistic she came across while leafing through a yoga magazine this past winter. Sitting in a café in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, Wainer read that 44 percent of yogis in the New York area brought in an annual income of $75,000 or more. “That’s nearly half,” says Wainer, a certified yoga instructor whose jaw clenches when she talks about boutique fitness’s privilege problem. “Yoga is something that should be accessible to everyone, especially those who stand to benefit from it the most.”

This topic has been incredibly dear to Wainer for some time. The 31-year-old studied the effects of empowering literature on girls at Harvard’s School of Education, and went on to found YoGirls, a not-for-profit that brings yoga classes to at-risk New York schoolgirls. “I was working to address half of the equation, but what about all the adults who could be helped by a mindfulness practice?” says Wainer, whose feline beauty and habit of bringing her hand to her heart when speaking give her the air of Olivia Wilde’s imaginary New Age sister.

Wainer has answered her own question in the form of Shaktibarre, a 2,000-square-foot women’s empowerment hub in the guise of a yoga-and-barre studio that is both chicly appointed and affordable to one and all. Classes are offered at $30 a single session—a little less than SoulCycle—as well as on a sliding scale, with prices as low as $10. What separates this model from the smattering of pay-what-you-can yoga studios, which tend to feel frayed and bare bones, is that those who are able to pay market rates are enticed to do so in order to fund the philanthropic end of the enterprise. Ten percent of proceeds go to YoGirls—making it the Warby Parker or Toms shoes of boutique fitness, if you will.

Nestled on the fringe of the Williamsburg neighborhood, Shaktibarre has the requisite sunny exercise studio. It also features a café, run by Wainer’s cofounder Shauny Lamba and serving locally sourced treats, and a wellness room tricked out with an essential oil-misting machine and sheepskin-draped meditation chairs. It is here where Wainer plans to see her dreams of empowering hordes of women rise into a reality. Wainer’s “sisters”—as she calls clients—will come in for gatherings such as mothers’ groups, body-positivity and sexuality workshops, and monthly lunar parties. “You go to a boutique studio and afterward you might get asked, ‘How was class?’ or ‘Want a coconut water?’ ” Wainer says. “There’s so much deeper to go. I’m training my staff in active listening and eye contact.”

It’s an enormous undertaking, and all the more impressive is how quickly Wainer pulled it off. It was only six months ago that she recorded a fund-raising video making the case for a health-focused sanctuary accessible to women of all means. Her donors would include yoga world heavyweights Elena Brower and Laughing Lotus founder Dana Flynn as well as a “random dad” she chatted up on the 6 train one afternoon. “I gave him my 30-second spiel and he said he wanted to set up a meeting,” she recalls. “He’s one of our biggest supporters.”

Forty-eight hours before opening day, Wainer was buzzing on exhaustion and exhilaration. She’d woken up at 4:30 a.m. in order to exercise before a day of overseeing finishing touches, down to every last light fixture and doorknob. “I can’t stop until it’s perfect,” she says. “We’re mixing grassroots and fashion.”

Sisters, unite.

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