Funky’s Downtown Studio: A Mr. Rogers Goodbye

Friends, yogis, and dear human collection—our community,

We are embarking on a change that we’ve put a lot of time, energy, and heart into making.

After 5 years in our downtown space, we’ve decided not to renew our lease. As we’ve prepared for this change, we are full of “both/ands.” We are feeling grateful and bittersweet, wistful and hopeful, nostalgic and excited for the future. Above all, we are outrageously thankful for every single person who’s shared their practice in our studios.

In January of 2020, we opened our 4th Funky Buddha studio in downtown Grand Rapids in the Studio Park block. We were so excited to create this new space for more yoga offerings! After being open for less than 6 weeks, the pandemic hit, and we shut down all Funky Buddha studios on March 9th, 2020; we were closed for almost 9 months.

This was an incredibly unique and challenging time for the entire world, including our spaces. Our Downtown studio has had some extra unique obstacles in us rebuilding post-Covid, since we did not have an opportunity to build a member base before lockdown. Ultimately, our little Neighborhood Studio remained closed for 1 year and 7 months.

We have worked diligently for the past 5 years to understand and adapt to the major changes in the way our community lives, works, moves, and engages with GR’s wonderful downtown area. Still though, our downtown studio’s class schedule has dwindled; shrinking from 30 classes per week pre-Covid, to 6— To those that have been attending and supporting these classes, from the bottom of our hearts, thank you.

Our first core value of Create Accessibility sparked the dream of opening downtown in 2019, and it’s the same value that helped us decide to lovingly close the doors in 2025. It’s incredibly hard to make the choice to remove a studio from our schedule, and we trust this will give us different opportunities to create access to the yoga and staff you love.  The last day to practice in our Downtown Studio will be Saturday, March 29th.

We want to reassure you that Funky’s other 3 studios are doing amazing! We’ve seen such positive growth in Holland, Eastown, and Forest Hills.  We commit to continuing to host and support the classes, our staff, and this amazing community in our other 3 spaces—with the same supportive yoga, meditation, and community we’ve always cultivated. It is our hope that closing our downtown studio will create space and resources to expand our offerings even more! We foresee growth, connection, and new collaborations! 

We are deeply grateful and appreciative for every single one of you who has visited the downtown space. We also cannot express how much gratitude we have for this community, who’ve supported us through the great joys, the difficult times, and every moment in between. 

To those of you who’ve shared your practice with us, even once over the past 15 years, thank you 🙏

With so much love,

Larissa, Cathy, Carina, LJ, and our amazing team <3