Health Features

YYoga creates practitioner connections

by Pieta Woolley on October 22nd, 2008 at 11:44 AM
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      For two years, Nettwerk Music Group CEO Terry McBride passionately practised hatha yoga. At first, he jokingly admits, he went as a strategy for meeting women. After having his "ass kicked" in his first class, he went to improve his fitness, his golf swing, his tennis game. Soon, McBride—whose company manages Avril Lavigne, the Barenaked Ladies, and Sarah McLachlan, among others—realized yoga had the power to transform his spirit.

      But then, among all the benefits your typical enthusiastic newbie experiences, he had an "a-ha" moment. McBride realized he hadn't really met a soul, although he'd been practising alongside a number of people for months.

      "This is crazy," he recalls thinking at the time. "The more I looked, the more I realized that most studios are missing the social aspect."

      To McBride, the heart of yoga is about connection to oneself and to others. This realization led to a business idea. In 2007, McBride and his business partner Lara Kozan launched YYoga, a network of studios designed to integrate power, hot, vinyasa flow, hatha, anusara-inspired, and yin yoga, among others, with a social space, organic cafés, a music label specializing in yoga tunes, shops selling yoga gear and CDs, and other spa and health services. In business speak, the idea is to create "multiple sticking points". To the rest of us, it's about demystifying the yoga experience and promoting community and healing.

      Kozan, the head instructor at YYoga's studios, noted that at most studios, "You have a little time for Savasana, then you're pushed out the door."

      McBride said that for many Vancouverites—despite the city's reputation as Yogaville—the practice remains a little alienating. "Ninety percent of the adult population can't touch their toes," he said. "What is yoga? It's 60 or 90 minutes of a physical activity that does not let you think about the outside world—or you'll fall over. For me, it's a moving meditation. It's invaluable to me and my stress levels. I am much more relaxed [since taking up yoga]."

      McBride and Kozan aren't the only ones thinking about the next stage in Vancouver's yoga evolution. Instructor Odette Slater and her husband, Ron Stelting, are also integrating yoga, community, and music, though on a much smaller scale. Slater teaches from her East Vancouver home, and Stelting teaches drumming there as well, through their business YogaDrum (www.yogadrum.ca/ ). Plus, Slater has started offering vegan dinner nights, so that she can help her students connect nutrition, community, and yoga.


      Terry McBride sees a link between music and yoga. Martin Prihoda photo.
      "On the surface, drumming is about music, and yoga is about body work. But when you take it deeper, the asana [poses] quotient of yoga is only one limb of the eight limbs. They both [music and poses] bring you into this alpha state of mind," Slater said, noting that she's seeing her students' stresses intensify. "People here are worried not just about the economy, but the environment too. So yoga is about coming into a calmer state of mind, and connecting with the seed of our being. But it's also about coming into community and realizing that we can't live without each other."

      Both pairs of yoga-promoters have witnessed the power of yoga coupled with music. McBride recalls that when Indian classical music-inspired Deva Premal and Miten played St. Andrew's-Wesley church on September 24, 1,400 fans who'd heard their music in yoga classes. He sees music as another way to bring Vancouver's burgeoning yoga community together.

      Already, YYoga has partnered with Neoalpine Yoga Studio in Whistler, the Flow studios in downtown Vancouver, and Northshore Elements in North Vancouver, to enhance what they offer. Highgate, a new YYoga facility, will open in Burnaby this fall, followed by studios in Richmond and South Granville in the spring. Members of YYoga will have access to all of the studios.

      McBride and Kozan have hired Vancouver yoga superstar Eoin Finn to spearhead the studio in South Granville, in particular because of his ability to bring people together.

      "Everybody gets a hug at the start of his classes," Kozan said. "People come in social groups. It's just a party when you walk in. He's the essence of what this should be."

      A calmer, more integrated Vancouver would be a beautiful gift.

      Comments

      2 Comments

      Alex W.

      Mar 10, 2012 at 7:07pm

      Yoga is amazing and I love the teachers but YYoga is a company like any other company who looks for profiting and getting your money. So make sure you read very well any contract you signed with them. We have had a very bad experience with them, where the representatives would tell us very different conditions about the rules at the time of the signing and what is written in the contract. After a one year contract and many discussions with them and giving them the opportunity to rectify their errors very easily, their answers has been so disappointing that we decided to take our bizz somewhere else.

      Greg

      Jul 24, 2013 at 7:50am

      I've enjoyed YYoga as an integrated, "easy entry point" into yoga. I like that a mainstream entity has weighed in; when I want hard-core ancient spiritual practices I know where to find them, but this approach feels like a 'gateway' to something better, a bridge between East and West.

      Clean ethics, good practices and integral following of their own goals. If only more of corporate culture followed their ethos, corporations as a body wouldn't have the bad rap.