Several new studios find recession not a big deterrent to opening, strangely

Players big and small, fearless of lean times, falling revenue.

In Williamsburg, Sangha Yoga Shala by Alanna Kessler and Cory Washburn. This studio will mix Iyengar and Astanga traditions. 107 N 3rd, between Berry and Wythe.  Classes start April 13. 

Fierce Club "yoga to kick your asana," from "Core Strength" Sadie Nardini and partner Shannon Connell. Opens for classes first week of March. 

In Soho, Exhale Spa. "Located within a light filled temporary space at 68-70 Spring Street between Crosby + Lafayette, enjoy our signature Core Fusion®, Core Fusion® Sport and Core Energy Flow® classes while our permanent Downtown New York City flagship spa is being constructed. Exhale is pleased to be partnering in a condo conversion in a historic building that will be green (LEED gold standard) that is underway at 200 Lafayette Street in Downtown Manhattan."

Soon on the Upper West Side, Pure Yoga numero deux.

And also in Soho, Yoga Works, Soho. "Our Soho location will be the latest addition to the YogaWorks family. It’s innovative, cutting edge, environmentally friendly and the best thing to happen to yoga since the yoga mat. This is the perfect opportunity to find out how yoga can work for you."

Ready, set, eat your heart out, folks. 

The Woeful Tale of Yoga Shanti

As talented a yoga teacher as Rodney Yee is, he seems to attract crisis. Now, it's not him directly involved in the confrontation, but his ex-Ford model-wife, Colleen Saidman, co-ower of Sag Harbor yoga studio, Yoga Shanti.

The situation, as recalled in this amazingly detailed New York Post article (who had access to this level of detail about a complex, fractious situation?), has Saidman filing a lawsuit against her business partner and fellow yoga teacher, Jessica Bellofatto.

According to the Post: "Colleen, 49, is planning to file suit against Jessica, charging she misappropriated nearly a quarter of a million dollars from the business—and spent $12,000 of the embezzled funds on plastic surgery. Jessica, 35, is threatening a suit of her own, claiming libel and slander, and maintaining that her relationship with her former friend and business partner was destroyed by Colleen's famous husband."

It gives me shivers--of a bad kind. We readers will likely never know what tensions existed before this blow up, what personality clashes and tensions permeated the relationship, nor what agendas existed in the background. But the crisis is bringing out the crazies, the moralizers, and the vengeful (just read the comments after the article, oy vey).

The situation doesn't really offer an opportunity for a larger discussion since there's no clarity on the situation. When yogis go wrong.... 

Read the article to get the low-down. Three pages of it. 

Washington State to Tax Yoga

In a creative effort to raise money, Washington State has decided to slap a 9% sales tax on every yoga class, reports King5 news.

They can justify the tax by classifying yoga as physical fitness and you can just imagine what yoga studio owners have to say about that. "Yoga is not mere physical fitness, dear Mr. Tax Collector, come in and let us show you the path to enlightenment...."

Not only do people now have to pay 9% extra, but some studios are being required to pay back taxes on this initiative. Fun! Try finding an extra $10,000 hanging around at a small or mid-sized yoga studio.

The very cool Anne Phyfe Palmer, owner and director of 8 Limbs Yoga Centers of Seattle, says yoga centers are trying to come to an agreement with the Dept of Novel Tax Ideas. Clearly someone in the picture is not clued in to the higher aims of the practice.

Watch the video of the King 5 segment here.    

Epilogue, Nov 29: The state dropped the plan, after realizing it was a bit off in its conception of yoga.

Who in $$ Does Yoga?

This Huffington Post article tells us who is doing yoga in corporate America, which is interesting. Newcomers include William H. Gross, the Chief Investment Officer of Pimco, Edwin Catmull, the head of Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios, Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, new anchor Katie Couric.

Still, even if their main concern is the goal and not the process, powerful people tend to seek powerful ways to keep their assets--their brains and minds--in peak condition. It's not so much of a stretch that they, too, would appreciate yoga's revitalizing tonic. We've been hearing about celebrities doing yoga since day 1 of the current yoga craze (late 90s). Now it's time to hear more from the other power brokers.

Read the article here.  

Stress Management for Types A

Using the story of Christine Cody, a publishing executive for Penguin, this Wall Street Journal story shows how yoga is not wimpy at all; in fact it can kick your butt, tame your weight, make you more successful, happier, and easier to work with. What's not to love? 

"The unpredictability that New Yorkers have to deal with is so much more manageable for me since I've begun yoga," she says. "If the F train decides to run on the G line or the A train just doesn't show up, I still have a smile on my face. I feel like I don't have the same anxiety I used to. My friends even say they love my 'awesome new yoga attitude'."

Read it here. 

Traders Breathe Deep in Tough Times

The Wall Street Journal reports that traders are working off market stress with sun salutations--either in workplace classes or after hours."

The yoga industry, shrugging off its brown-rice-eating-and-sandal-wearing image, is adapting to and courting its new, wealthy customers. Yoga retreats in places like Malibu -- which offer grueling regimens of several hours of yoga a day -- have become popular destinations for the finance crowd."

I don't know one yoga teacher who hasn't made this adaptation, or at least wanted to. 

"Catharina Hedberg owns a yoga retreat called The Ashram in the Southern California hills near Malibu and says she has seen an increase in finance types attending over the past five years. Now, about a quarter of her customers, who pay $4,250 for a one-week stay, are financiers. The retreat offers a hard-core program of 6 a.m. yoga sessions with an alcohol-free, caffeine-free vegetarian diet that she says is popular with the Wall Street crowd. "Every week you see someone from hedge funds," says Ms. Hedberg."

 Business people are no different from the rest of of us stressed out urban rats. Why does it surprise anyone that traders need to cool of with some twisting and inverting? They do tend to like the more athletic practices like ashtanga... and they can't quite bring themselves to chant OM... and they have trouble with the whole process aspect of the practice... but other than that..."

Teachers say one key principle poses an implicit challenge to Wall Streeters: Value the process of hard work rather than the rewards it brings." 

Read it here.  

All's Fair in Yoga and Business

Gawker reports that the Wall Street Journal is quoting its own--an editor who owns Triyoga, a branch of a UK-based yoga franchise--touting the benefits of yoga--at Triyoga. Circular logic benefits all... because we're all one, right?

Pure Yoga Hits Town and Everyone Says, "Wow!"

Here's a round-up of comments so far about Pure Yoga in NYC:

July 30, Fashion Week Daily on "the scene" at Pure YogaJuly 30, Yoga Journal blog, Valerie Reiss

July 7, New York Sun 

June 15, New York Magazine (in the shopping section, ahem)

Dec 30, 2007, New York Magazine

From blogs:A range of responses like the not so critical Om La La on June 18th, "I dont think you can do drop in classes, its membership only, but something to check out when it finally opens!  Plus if the yoga is good, $140 for unlimited yoga is pretty good!"... to Om Yoga trained teacher, Lauren Cahn,'s worry on June 13, "On another note, Pure Yoga hired two non ashtanga people to run their ashtanga program. I think this decision was made before Christopher was available. Pure made a very bad decision. I have been in touch with the people at Pure. They claim their selection of teachers is temporary and if ashtanga does not do well at Pure, they may change teachers..."...to the refreshingly blunt, Valerie Reiss writing on the Yoga Journal blog Samadhi & The City, back in January. Titled, "Pure Yoga? or Pure Insanity?" her entry reads, "The quote Equinox gave New York is incredibly telling: "we will continue to expand and pursue an aggressive yoga strategy." I will be curious to see more responses as this giant moves in.   

Pure Yoga opens June 25

Equinox Gym's foray into yoga only, customer-service oriented 20,000 sq ft yoga palace complete with mat wipe downs between classes will open next week in the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

If this location goes well, there will be many more locations of Pure Yoga, a business that originated in Hong Kong where it has done extraordinarily well.

You can bet that this is the beginning of something big. Their tag line is, "Many Practices, One Intention." Twenty-one different styles under one roof.

Remember when Yoga Works chain opened in 2005? You don't, right, because it seems that the Yoga Works franchise has always been around. That's how powerful they are. Changing the face of yoga.

For background on the how financing entered the yoga free market, read the story of Yoga Works in the NYTimes small business section, and in Yoga Journal, 2005.

Yoga Business in Vancouver: Can They Keep to Roots?

Nettwerk Music is big if you're small--it represents indie musicians who get good play in Canada--Sarah McLachlan, Barenaked Ladies, Avril Lavigne. But now CEO Terry McBride is catching the yoga biz bug. According to the May 29 article in The Vancouver Sun. McBride says that, "yoga hasn't received the marketing it deserves."

Even with gyms jumping on mainstreamed yoga's promise of luxurious and exotic well-being, it still surprises me that a music CEO wants a slice of the pie.

"He wants to fill the need with YYoga, a business that incorporates restful tea lounges, infrared saunas, in-house yoga classes and other niceties he hopes will draw potential practitioners who might otherwise be frightened away by the prospect of trying to twist themselves up like pretzels."

As a long-time practitioner, it's hard to relate to this idea of the pretzel. But I know, I know, it's marketing...

"You should walk in and feel like you are in a spa," he said. "It should have people who work at the front desk, after class the teacher should sit and have tea for half an hour and the teacher should get paid for that. "You have to make it easy to practise yoga - have different classes for different studios."

He plans to expand to add more studios in Canada-and one in Seattle-- after another round of financing.

As reported in The Vancouver Sun.

Being a Yoga Teacher is Better than Being a Lawyer

According to CNNMoney.com. Number one in their survey of satisfying job switches is from lawyer to yoga teacher/studio owner.

Witness Susan Rubin at Seasonal Yoga, Armonk, NY.

http://www.seasonalyoga.com/

As covered at http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2007/moneymag/0703/gallery.bestjobs_profiles.moneymag/

Stock Brokers Talk Value

We all know that traders do yoga too--in the very small slivers of time they have away from their desks. Here's evidence, with interesting chatter about investments.

Proof that yoga is profitable, right here folks.

http://www.wallstrip.com/howard/?p=1434

Yoga is Big Business

The New York Times reports that (gasp!) yoga makes some people a lot of money. Their business reporter Susan Moran dropped in to the Yoga Journal conference in Boulder, CO, in early January 07 and found people not just blissed out with Shiva Rea, but dropping $100 on necklaces said to help with "expression issues."

As the mainstream embraces yoga, expect to see more and more shopping opportunities wherever yoga is practiced. Retail therapy gets literal.

Meditate on this: Yoga is big business http://www.financialexpress.com/fe_full_story.php?content_id=150919#

Read a Canadian angle this story: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/LAC.20070113.TEAYOGA13/TPStory/TPEntertainment/Style/

NPR looks at the Business of Yoga

From NPR's Web site:
"Talk of the Nation, December 26, 2006 · Guests explore yoga's path from the margins to the mainstream, and its transformation along the way from spiritual meditation to a mass-marketed workout.

Guests:
Hanna Rosin, staff writer for The Washington Post and author of "Striking a Pose," an article in Harper's magazine that examines yoga's potency as both exercise and market force.

Robert Love, contributing editor at the Columbia Journalism Review. Love's recent article "Fear of Yoga" traces yoga's origins in the United States and its rocky rise to popularity.

Miriam Nelson director of the John Hancock Center for Physical Activity and Nutrition"

Listen HERE http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6681341

India Patents Poses

This from a 2005 article from the London Telegraph. Dated, but still news: outraged that Americans and Europeans are making money off yoga, India started a project to record and patent 1,500 yoga poses.

This argument has been bubbling beneath the surface for a long time: who owns yoga?

Are Americans like Baron Baptiste and John Friend really corrupting yoga? Or, as with Western interpretations of Buddhism and meditation, are they reviving the practice as well as putting their American twist on it? Would yoga be so popular in India today if it hadn't first caught on in America? After all, yoga was nothing to get excited about 50 years ago.

Hmmm...

Fear of Yoga

Robert Love, faculty at Columbia's school of journalism, and former editor-in-chief of Rolling Stone, writes at length about the history of yoga as it's appeared in the American press since 1909. After an exhaustive and entertaining review of personalities, movements, and attitudes, Love concludes that yoga is a marketer's dream, a flourishing and trend-proof recreation (vocation?) that can sell anything and everything.

Read more in "Fear of Yoga" at the Columbia Journalism Review web site.