YogaWorks – Downtown
Yogaworks, possibly the most famous national yoga chain. Yet it doesn’t suffer the pejorative connotations of a chain, it is still is seen as offering some pretty good yoga. And i can see why. In many ways practicing at Yogaworks was familiar. The teacher offered a balance between mediation, dharma (parables / story-telling), and asana. She shared personal details with surprising candor, and underlying vulnerbility. Her focus on alignment was intelligent, and enlightening. She was familiar.
I wondered if the familiarity was due to the Ishta influence in her’s and Kristin’s teaching. Possibly. But I appreciated that she realized hips and feet in Warrior I and Warrior II don’t readily align. It was refreshing to not be awkwardly flowing between these poses, compensating or compromising alignment in order to “flow”, and feeling guilty about it.
She built up poses gradually, with little actual sequencing, a good deal of time was spent workshopping, almost in an anusara tradition. It was progressively built up with unusual care. Each pose would be described thoroughly, and demoed extensively. When we did eventually do the pose, she surveyed us closely, and adjusted us carefully. All great things, which as I’ve moved from one studio to the next, have realized is increasingly rare.
I was expecting the starbucks of yoga, a cold impersonal studio, where they churn one class, so closely they overlap into the next. I was expecting teachers who taught the-lowest-common-denominator-yoga, I’m happy to say I was wrong. And as usual, when I judge quickly, I usually judge incorrectly.
