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WALLA WALLA — Courtney Morgan’s new business, Revolver Yoga Studio, opened with a bang. Twenty-two students showed up Sept. 8 for the first session.
“The energy was so good and just kept going. At the end they started clapping,” she said.
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Revolver Yoga Studio is at 4 S. Fourth Ave. and can be found on the Web[1] and Facebook[2] . The studio can be reached at 509-520-3131.
Morgan started doing yoga 13 years ago, but her experience with the discipline has intensified in recent years.
“I’ve practiced earnestly for the last three years — devotional practice,” Morgan said. “It often starts as only a physical practice but then it either captures you or it doesn’t. You find it or a different thing.”
A native of Walla Walla, Morgan loves graphic design, art and music. She is a creative person, very spiritually awake and aware, but tempered with a gift for the practical.
After she earned a bachelor’s degree in 2007 from Whitman College and master’s in 2008 from Central St. Martin’s College of Art and Design in London, her life’s path seemed to be set. But she felt she needed a change.
“I ran away from a big part of my life and involvement. I was engaged and wanted to move from here, to New York, and work for a big design company,” Morgan said.
She and fiance Ben Turner broke up and she moved to New York in 2011, working as a receptionist at YogaWorks and sales associate at Patagonia in SoHo.
At one point the manager of YogaWorks suggested that she open a yoga studio in her hometown. Morgan downplayed the apparently off-the-cuff idea. But, wanting to return to the Northwest, she did move to Seattle in 2012 to work for Patagonia there.
Then she and her former fiance “just happened” to see each other, and the couple reunited. While discussing how their cross-state relationship would work, Morgan decided the time had come to return to the Valley to build her studio and a local yoga community — and her life came full circle.
“I moved back here Oct. 6, 2012. I ran into yoga, ran away from my life, ran back into yoga and it brought me back to where my path already was,” she said.
Opening a studio of her own was an imposing undertaking, but Turner was supportive, and she was up for the challenge.
“It seemed natural, and scary, to start a business. I always had this entrepreneurial drive,” she said.
Her biggest obstacle turned out to be finding the right space.
“I knew it was not ever going to be perfect. I needed east-facing windows to practice traditional yoga. I looked and looked. I was just at the end of my rope. One day I was on a bike ride and I saw this space.”
The location was ideal, and with some demolition and cleaning, the new studio took shape.
Coming up with a name for the studio was also a dilemma, but in the end it came about naturally. Its origin was the Beatles’ album “Revolver.”
“I was listing to a lot of Beatles last year. I have a habit or tradition of naming things I create after what I was listening to while I created it,” Morgan said.
“The ‘Revolver’ album was revolutionary, it redefined their sound. While I was drawing the font, I wanted something groovy, like the 1970s, with an imperfect look to it. The ‘o’ needs to be an icon, the center of a revolver, I noticed it looks like a lotus pod, multidimensional. To revolve, the root word is ‘evolve’ and in yoga you have revolved poses with a twist in them. And since I can’t do anything quietly, I decided to go for it.”
Since it’s opened, the studio has proved to be quite popular. Morgan has added new teachers Robin Brodt and Chrissy Mueller, and is pursuing bringing in specialty classes and workshops.
“It’s going well, it’s exceeding my expectations,” she said.
The more her students practice yoga, the more they feel it on a personal level and are able to improve at it, she said.
“It’s evolving. I love to see people’s physical body change. Some students are physically opening up. I can see them relaxing. They tap into real moments of stillness within them rather than being so high-energy all the time,” she said.
Each person has their own spiritual and physical challenges to work through, Morgan said.
“We’re all broken in our own ways,” she said.
However, she’s focused, motivated and enjoying her role as entrepreneur and business owner. For her, the experience has been a just another process of challenge, healing and growth.
“Moving between uncomfortable and comfortable and going in between,” she said.
Karlene Ponti can be reached at 509-526-8324 or karleneponti@wwub.com.
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