Chris and I were reminiscing about our milestone celebrations at BL the other day. First, we remembered when we did a big party to celebrate 10 years in business. It seemed like SUCH an accomplishment. 10 years managing and sustaining a fitness and yoga business…pretty much unheard of!! 5 years later we threw another party and the shirts we created for the event said…”15 years and going STRONG!” Then just 2 years later, it was time for another celebration when we finished 1 year of construction and actually had space to celebrate with the Grand Opening of the LINK!! And then…of course in 2017, we couldn’t miss the chance to celebrate now 2 decades in business. Our 20 year celebration was themed by showing our Team Spirit. We sported jerseys that said Team BL and had 97 on the back as 1997 was the year I bought BL!!   One of things consistent with all these celebrations is that we offered one morning of sample classes based on the number of years we were in business. So for our 20 year, we did 20 minute sample classes followed by a celebration to connect all the BL peeps.

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So every year from the time BL opened until 2008, we grew! Just a steady increase in bodies, number of classes and revenue. Then 2008 hit us hard as it did most businesses. But thanks in large part to the huge popularity of Zumba at this time, we were able to keep our heads above water and land on the other side of the 2008 -11 recession. Shortly after this, the physical therapist who was had occupied the space between fitness and yoga moved out. So for those of you who weren’t around at this time, let me paint you a picture. You walked in through the same doors your do now to sign in but then if you’re going to yoga you walk right back out the same doors and head in to the yoga door two doors down. No big deal except when it’s pouring down rain or in the middle of a snow storm. So when the landlord told us this space between fitness and yoga was opening up, it just made sense for us to take it over.

I say that with apparent ease now…like it just made sense so let’s do it BUT those around me at this time knew that I really wrestled with taking on more space. Not only would I be paying significantly more rent but my utilities would almost double. PLUS…we had to figure out what we were going to do with this space. We tossed around several ideas like adding Spinning or a third room for either another fitness or yoga class. We even considered making part of this area a Blow Dry Bar. Ha!!  What seemed to be obvious to others is that if we were taking on more cost we should defray some of that by brining in more revenue. Right?? But as were tossing around a bunch of ideas, what Chris and I kept coming back to is that what we really needed was more space for our BL peeps to connect. We knew that much of what set BL apart from other workout or yoga businesses, was our community.  Many of us have come to BL looking for a great workout or yoga class and been thrilled to have made life long friends along the way. So if that’s a big part of what BL is about, why not create more space for us all to connect? Oh, and it also created a space for those students who ONLY did fitness to meet those students who ONLY did yoga. (And realize they aren’t so scary!)  It created a more inclusive environment which has since resulted in more peeps crossing back and forth from fitness to yoga. It has offered a space for students to linger after classes and get to chat to their friends and make new ones. It also has given us a space to do social hours after many of our events.

With this vision in sight we now needed to figure out logistics, traffic flow and oh and a name for the area!! This venture was challenging. Dave took an entire year off his art job and employed Chris’ son, Chase, and the 2 of them took on, what turned out to be, a year long project. There were a LOT of decisions to be made like where to put the child care room, how to bust through a cinder brick wall, and which doors did we want students go in and out of. Not to mention picking out the faux finishes for all the walls and decorating the whole space. We had a good team with different skill sets. Chris was great at envisioning traffic flow and managed all the logistics…Dave was capable of executing and beautifying whatever we were envisioning and my role was often just to say…yep, I love turquoise!! One of the biggest challenges was busting through the cinder brick wall. We had to hire a structural engineer and close BL for a week due to safety and the huge mess this created. So we moved our classes to upstairs at Matter of Taste for one week. Clients said they loved doing yoga or fitness with a view of Union Lake.

Now that we have busted through the wall, we needed a name for the space we had created. Chris and I were at our friend Mary’s getting our hair done one afternoon, and we started brainstorming. Objective was to find a name that described a space for students to connect but also to describe a connection between fitness and yoga. The key word was connect…Mary was actually the one who came up with the perfect name…The Link!!! It says it all!!

Start to finish…the Link and the lower level Zen Zone for massages, took us a year to complete. Chris and I had lot of fun decorating it with furniture and rugs donated by family members, picked up at garage sales or, the place that became our favorite place to be, Home Goods!! Looking back, I’m so glad that I was encouraged by Chris and Dave to make the leap, to take on this additional space and that so many have enjoyed and appreciated this space to connect!!

So it was about this time 2008-2010 ish that we added another dimension to BL….WORKSHOPS!! Reminder that we had already started our teacher training program back in 2003 but the individual sessions of the training were only available to those enrolled in the whole teacher training program. You see when I first started the teacher training program, I not only created it, got it approved for Yoga Alliance’s 200 RYT, but I also led each and every session. Read More

My story picks up when BL is a little over 10 years old. It’s 2008 and the fitness and yoga programs were well established, but we decided it was time to “take our show on the road"!!  At this time, you really didn’t hear of many retreats or studio get aways but one of our teachers, Rachel Shepard, came to me and Chris and suggested we give a weekend retreat a try. She told us about this place called Garland and this amazing band who played at night… Jeff & Sue. Well…any of you ladies who ended up going on one of these girl get-aways over the next 10 years or so, know that they were an absolute blast!! We mixed in a little Zumba with some yoga…themed each year with matching outfits…shared good food (and, of course, drink)….danced, danced, danced and had lots of giggles and girlfriend time.Read More

As I continue my story of the evolution of BL, I would like to take this week to highlight some of the teachers who have played an integral part in our yoga program. Now, of course, we have had many great teachers over the past 20 plus years of BL yoga, but today I’m just focusing on a handful of them who have a long history at BL and who still play an integral part in our current yoga program. Here are a couple of their stories…

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