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Studio Oxygen celebrates 10 years, opens second location
By Kalea Hall
POLAND
Marianne Hritz is a force to be reckoned with. She is a mother of five, a business owner with a growing brand and a fitness guru.
She’s also a community-minded Canfield resident with the desire to make people feel better.
That’s why Hritz decided to open her yoga and fitness center, Studio Oxygen.
Ten years later, she’s added a second location in Poland.
“Yoga is really a lifestyle,” Hritz said. “It’s more of a conscience living. Everything we do is to benefit us in a healthy way.”
The petite and fit blonde arrives energized to her new studio at 1714 Boardman-Poland Road, Suite 4, after teaching two classes at the Canfield Studio Oxygen.
Her energy is contagious, which is probably why her yoga studio has thrived for a decade.
“The instructors have such a good energy,” said Jennifer Rodway, a Studio Oxygen customer for two years.
Hritz has been a fitness trainer for more than 25 years. She’s done aerobics, kick boxing and Pilates, but yoga works both her body and her mind.
“It’s calming yet energizing,” she said. “It’s detoxifying – not just physically, but mentally.”
Merriam-Webster’s defines yoga as a “Hindu spiritual and ascetic discipline, including breath control, simple meditation and the adoption of specific bodily postures, is widely practiced for health and relaxation.”
But the yogis of the world and the Mahoning Valley will tell you it is much more than that.
It’s their way of disconnecting from the world.
“When I first opened, there was no social media,” Hritz said. “Now I see the pressure of social media. We need [yoga] more than ever before.”
The ancient form of exercise dates back more than 5,000 years when it was started in Northern India.
Hritz started her yoga addiction in the early 2000s after she discovered a more holistic approach to living. She started to teach yoga in her Canfield basement to family, friends and friends of friends.
She went on to teach classes at local fitness centers, and in many cases was the first yoga instructor for those centers.
She always had a dream of opening her own studio, but she waited for the right time.
“It took a long time to build,” Hritz said. “I worked endlessly.”
Her daughter, Sabrina Mihaly, was just 17 when the studio first opened and now manages the two locations and teaches yoga.
It took Mihaly, now 27, a long time for her to connect with the mind and body concept.
“I didn’t now how to move my body and how to flow, but now years later, I have made that connection,” Mihaly said.
She received her yoga training certificate in 2012, but she didn’t get her first class on the schedule until 2014.
“Looking back, it’s really funny because I was a little immature,” Mihaly said. “But now I do [yoga] for a whole different reason.”
Part of the reason is she loves giving people energy.
“Yoga is a good drug,” she said. “The more you do it, the more you start to let go, and it feels good.”
Mihaly refers to her mom as “super woman.”
“You can truly tell she loves what she does,” Mihaly said.
Hritz and the other Studio Oxygen instructors care about who walks in the door.
“I have a great support staff,” Hritz said.
In one day, the staff got the Poland location ready for its opening.
The calming atmosphere feels like a day at the beach with its decor. Well-known, and some local, clothing lines fill the shelves and racks.
Vases filled with flowers, pots of plants and balloons shaped into a person in a yoga pose are placed thoughtfully around the front desk.
Clients truly consider the studio a home away from home.
“I feel so comfortable there because I just feel a kindness,” said Julie Possage of Boardman.
Possage started to attend Studio Oxygen eight years ago. At first, she went for the spinning classes, and then Hritz turned her on to yoga.
She got hooked that first class.
“It was so different from everything else I had done,” Possage said. “It’s the only exercise I have done in my life that I can leave the outside world outside the door.”
Paula Caldwell has been going to Studio Oxygen from its start to learn yoga.
“It’s calming,” the Boardman resident said.
In 2005, Caldwell was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and started to use exercise to help treat it.
She met Hritz at a local fitness center and started to take her yoga classes. When Hritz opened Studio Oxygen, Caldwell followed. Yoga has kept Caldwell’s Parkinson’s symptoms at bay.
“It’s been a benefit to me in every possible way,” Caldwell said of yoga.
Caldwell typically will go to yoga classes three to four times a week.
“Yoga is the best [practice] I have done for myself physically and holistically,” Caldwell said.
For more information on Studio Oxygen, go to www.studiooxygenyoga.com/.