My story picks up in the spring of 2003. Just as a reminder, we are still primarily a fitness studio but also offering a handful of yoga classes all taught by Steve, me or my protégé, Andy. I decided it was time to train others to teach yoga, so I took my yoga teacher training manual and started developing my own in house yoga teacher training program. The response was incredible. I think the first training we held had nearly 20 bodies in it. I was so new to yoga and yet I had my story to tell of how yoga had changed my life and I wanted to train others to do the same. To this day, I share this message with my yoga teacher trainees. There is so much to learn about yoga that it can be overwhelming, but the objective of Yoga Teacher Training is simply to develop the tools to be able to share how yoga has impacted your life with those around you. So that’s what I did. Now I have more trained teachers…but then we needed more space.
So, in the fall of 2003 we were all set to take on the upstairs area. Yep, right up the stairs to the right of the current BL. We figured we could fit 15 mats in there and that it would be a great space to expand our yoga program into. We had signed a lease for the space and had even set and started advertising our Grand Opening date. But just before we started demolition, the sun tan salon tenants were evicted. This was a much bigger space than upstairs, needed a lot more work, and was going to significantly increase my monthly rent. I was very concerned with the cost of build out (like the whole ceiling had to be re-hung) and the increased rent cost. I was also unsure as to whether the surrounding conservative Commerce community would be interested enough in doing yoga to support a designated yoga studio. But…of course, you know the answer…I took the leap and was able to offer yoga to thousands of bodies in this space over the past 20 years. Oh remember how I said we had already started advertising the Grand Opening…well by the time we decided to switch to this larger space, we had 3 weeks to demolish and rebuild the whole yoga studio. Needless to say, we had to scramble. We worked around the clock for those 3 weeks. In fact, at one point Dave taught Chris and his mother, Carol, to do Venetian plaster so they could help him finish the walls. One of the biggest challenges of creating this space was trying to block out the noise from Union Lake road as well as control the light and heat that came through the ceiling to floor windows…so Chris, Dave and I came up with the idea of the faux wall. The result was a quieter, darker and warmer yoga room. One day shortly after opening, a friend of mine, Kathryn, asked me for a key to BL and her and her husband Larry surprised me by installing the beautiful stained glass windows that she had made. It was an incredibly thoughtful gift and has added so much beauty to this room for years to come.
So from 2003 until 2015 (when we added the Link), yoga students came in the fitness doors, signed in at the front desk, and then walked back outside (often in the rain or snow) to go in the yoga room door to take class. Tune in next week for a continuation of the evolution of BL….
