As a financial person, I keep a keen eye on trading and the markets, but my mind in meditation and yoga. Most of the headlines, if not full of vitriol, are about some form of struggle. So it's refreshing, if not surprising, to see someone killing it and thriving in this environment. But this is not just an anybody somebody...
You get what you give and then you give a little more and then it comes back to you more. It must be the case with Ally Hamilton and her yoga studio Yogis Anonymous.
When I first wrote about her and her husband Dorian's studio, it was for Yoga Gives Back.
The studio is thriving on-line, and locally Ally has been able to enjoy a deeper and more personal connection with her students. At the last studio where she taught, 120 students often jammed into the room to take class with her.
In her new space, night-time classes average 40-50 participants, and Ally loves it because she feels she is able to deliver a higher quality, safer, more hands-on class with opportunities to explore unusually creative sequencing, funky arm balances, and time at the wall, for the advanced practitioner and those newer to yoga as well.
It seems yoga gives back... and forth. Since January, page views on their site have swelled to over 160,000 per month, largely due to the popularity of their streaming yoga videos.
"I just taught my class tonight and when I got home I had emails from people in New Zealand, Hong Kong -- and Burbank!" she said with a wink.
Students from far away are able to join Ally in class and work it into their schedules despite the time zone differences. (If you live in Burbank, and you're stuck in LA traffic, you might as well be in Hong Kong.)
The school has also benefited from the social media aspect of their endeavors, which has amplified the studio's reach through the looking glass of the computer monitor. "I have over 1,000 students who take classes online along with the folks who are in the studio. It's wild."
A Grin Without a Cat
Yogis Anonymous has become a must-see stopover point for traveling yogis and yoginis. "Last week, a guy from DC was in town for business and he took Charlie Samos class at 6:30 and my class at 8:30. He was exhausted, but he wanted to take the classes because he loved the vibe of our classes from doing them over the internet."
If you're wearing roller blades because your schedule is as full as mine, you can check out the wondrous Mary Beth LaRue during your lunch hour at her Blissed Flow class at 11 am. I don't think Blissed Flow has a formal definition... but like a lot of things in life, it's something you have to experience and feel.
Through Your Looking Glass