It’s a boom time for yoga studios in Williamsburg/Greenpoint. When I first began researching for Part I of this story, I was aware there was a surge of new places to practice yoga in the neighborhood, but I didn’t realize we were in a veritable cornfield of them. Turns out that behind those barricades we all thought contained high-rise apartment buildings—just yoga studios! Miles and miles of yoga studios. If you haven’t yet sought out a neighborhood practice space for your plow pose, it’s a wonder you haven’t tripped into one, given their prevalence. It’s even possible you are living in a yoga studio and haven’t realized it yet. Take a whiff of the air—is it incense-scented? Is your pup, Sparky, all of a sudden stretching with his back knees bent, and his pelvis tipped in the air? Are people touchy about you wearing shoes inside your own home?
But in all seriousness, what is wonderful is that each location offers a different flavor of practice; a unique pathway to enlightenment and philosophy of mind/body healing. There are studios for those who like chanting, and studios for those who want to skip the “OM” business and dive straight into a workout. There are studios in the east, in the west, and Southside and Northside. And while there are ever more variations of the eastern discipline dotting our enlightened streets, what remains a common theme, is that when we come together to heal ourselves, good feeling and goodwill prevail throughout our community.
Yoga to the People (Affordable Yoga)211 N. 11th St. 2nd Floor
b/w Driggs Ave. and Roebling St.
Yoga To The People’s name is instantly recognizable. The first YTTP studio cropped up on St. Mark’s place four-and-a-half years ago, and is now one of the premiere spots for donation-based Power Vinyasa in Manhattan, holding heralded classes crammed with post-workday yogis, some-times as many as 60 at a time. The brand new Williamsburg outpost hasn’t garnered quite that much traffic yet, but I would be surprised if the studio’s contingency didn’t grow rapidly in the coming weeks. When I attended class at 4:30pm on a Tuesday, the just-opened traditional hot yoga studio held a class of about sixteen, one of the largest classes I attended in my ongoing yoga marathon. YTTP also had the most equal male to female ratio of any class I attended, and I don’t know about the other ladies in the neighborhood, but I am always motivated to work a little harder when there’s some strapping muscle around.
