The Orange Door Opens to All: A Community Approach to Wellness

Written By Dylan Raskay, City Pulse Editor

Photos By Dylan Raskay

A group of inspired yoga educators reimagined what community wellness could be, and an Orange Door opened.

The Orange Door originally opened in 2019, as a quaint and friendly, frankly tranquil, one-room studio, just off North Ave. However, The Orange Door, located at 1227 N 23^rd St. unlocks much more than it once did.

In the Fall of 2022, reimagining themselves and what more they could do, The Orange Door renewed itself as Orange Door Community Wellness. Broadening their horizons to meet the community’s needs, yoga, and beyond.

Board President, Catherine Bradham said, “We decided that in order to become more in tune with what we wanted to do goal-wise, we became a non-profit organization.”

When The Orange Door opened, they didn’t want to be a regular yoga studio, fashioned with exclusivity through membership fees and perhaps an expensive rack of Lycra for sale in the lobby. Realizing that the culture around yoga and wellness, in general, had become unaffordable and unattainable for many, The Orange Door made the decision to reincorporate to meet this goal more successfully. “We want to make yoga and wellness opportunities financially accessible, a lot of people and populations we want to help don’t have the financial means to have a membership to a gym or a studio.” Said Bradham.

The studio has always prided itself on not having pricey memberships, continuing to charge a fair flat rate of five dollars for most of their more than a dozen walk-in classes offered each week. Recently, the studio has been steadily expanding into wellness offerings other than yoga, such as massage, reiki, and sound therapies offered by outside consultants and providers.  

Continuing to break down entry barriers for those interested in yoga, Orange Door has never shied away from addressing their role, and the role yoga can play in helping to better the community’s mental health, not to mention physical.

Orange Door’s intentions in creating affordable wellness couldn’t be clearer, “If we are helping one, or ten, or a hundred people when those people are self-improving and providing themselves with good self-care, then they are in turn able to help take care of others- it’s a ripple effect.” Said Bradham.

Many of the Orange Door instructors offer their services elsewhere in the community, such as at Mind Springs Health’s Women’s Recovery Center, where Bradham leads a weekly yoga class for women combating addiction. Building these connections outside the studio, Bradham says, is Orange Door’s primary outreach method for targeting the populations they wish to help serve. Going further, Orange Door hopes to engrain itself further within the communities of those who need them and their services, hoping to establish connections within the Department of Corrections as well as other community health organizations, so that people in need can then come to Orange Door to continue their wellness journey after prior necessary care.

With revitalization, came a need for more space to continue the work being done by Orange Door, and suit a greater demand. The studio launched a GoFundMe in February of 2023, with the goal of raising funds to move themselves to a larger space.

“Right now, our rent is very cheap, our bills are very low, and we know that when we move into that larger space, our bills are going to be large, so we need a buffer prior to us moving into our new space.” Said Bradham. Orange Door hopes that with more space,  it can become a community gathering place, that other wellness groups can utilize, as well as independent practitioners of other wellness-focused conventions that don’t have their own spaces to practice in comfortably.  

With expansion efforts underway, the team at Orange Door Community Wellness hopes to holistically server their newly reimagined role as more important than ever in a time when healthcare, let alone wellness is hard to come by.