Why not more retail and fancy stuff? Instead just my mom’s paintings on the wall.
I often get the question; Dora, why don’t you do more retail? How about a restaurant on the side? Why not add a nice spa or a lounge area? My answer is always the same; I am a yoga teacher, I teach teachers, mindfulness, and yoga. My interest is not to make a spa experience, my interest is to provide the best education in yoga with the best teachers in an environment where you don’t feel like you got to keep up with the Joneses. Yoga is not about fancy pants, and spa, and the latest trends. Yoga for the past 3000 years has been about finding inner harmony while developing physical strength. Yoga as a philosophy is about letting go of materialistic labels and finding more profound meaning in life.
Unfortunately for the past ten years, the big business has been pushing the philosophy of yoga out of the picture, or minimizing it down to chishes for big profit. It is baffling to the mind how we managed to turn the art of “letting go” “giving up needs” “connecting to humanity and greater power” about pants, kombucha, and feeling good and being pampered.
So at Spira you will not find the latest and hippest, but you will practice in a simple and clean space, with great teachers, in an environment that takes you away from the pressures of society. Hopefully you will make friends with people without needing to know “what they do for a living,” a space where we simply see each other as human beings practicing. That is my goal – everything else is a distraction and a way to make more money if you are the owner, or spend money if you are the student. Don’t get me wrong, I want the business to be successful, but I want to be successful without giving up the soul of yoga…
Now, there is the argument of why not do both; get people in with the materialistic attractions, then teach yoga. Hmmm.. yeah, no, that argument will make you feel better as a business owner, but it simply doesn’t work. Every architecture student knows; form dictates function. And we all know that we feel different in a fancy space with things to purchase. The mind unconsciously goes toward materialism, toward comparison, toward judgement and expectations. To keep yoga yoga, we owners, must give up on some revenue. And that is OK with me, yoga does not need to make me rich. Yoga is here to sustain all of us in harmony.
So it is; no fancy retail, just humanity and family. What better way to reflect all this but to decorate the space with my mama’s paintings!
Me and my Mom – keeping yoga close to family.