If meditation is supposed to help with stress, then it really shouldn’t be a surprise the practice is trending in DC. Though the concept of meditation has been in use for ages, it’s only recently that it’s been neatly packaged into boutique studios that seem to be popping up all over our city.
If third time’s a charm, I think we can officially say that boutique meditation studios are “a thing” in DC now. First, there was Just Meditate in Bethesda, which opened in November with $22 group meditation classes. Then Recharj, a power nap and meditation boutique opened downtown in December. Next week, Take Five Meditation is opening in Dupont with 30 and 45 minute meditation classes for $20 to $30 for a drop-in.
While it was probably only a matter of time before other industries caught on to the business strategy of boutique fitness gyms—why have clients pay $50 to $100 for a monthly membership when you could get $20 to $30 per class out of them?—meditation is an interesting evolution of the trend. And the trend isn’t just in DC, either—meditation studio MNDFL opened in New York City 2015 and Inscape followed this fall.
So what’s with all the meditation studios? It’s impossible to say that the operators of each of these chains could have predicted the high levels of stress that Washingtonians and Americans at large would be under throughout the 2016 election and under the new administration in 2017. Nonetheless, you can’t deny that the timing is pretty perfect: While Washingtonian’s are running to their therapists with new anxieties, their therapists are preaching self care. And where better to achieve self-care then in a highly branded, aromatherapy-scented, $30-a-pop meditation class?
Caroline Cunningham joined Washingtonian in 2014 after moving to the DC area from Cincinnati, where she interned and freelanced for Cincinnati Magazine and worked in content marketing. She currently resides in College Park.
