~YM@10~ 19th July 2021 will be 3650 days, aprox 5000 (FIVE THOUSAND) classes and lots of ‘stuff’ has happened since YM opened its doors. WHAT DOES 10YRS RUNNING YOUR OWN YOGA SCHOOL DAILY SERVICE IN ST HELIER LOOK LIKE FROM THIS SIDE OF 10? What kind of ‘stuff’ is YM’s decade made up of? Well. You know we always write about ‘Yoga as a Business’ in our blogs so here it is folks…
There would have been even MORE classes BUT. When we first opened we ran classes twice a day but nobody came. 1st class had 5 people. Then 3 people came. Then 3, 2, 0, 5, 1, 6, 10, 8 (you see how this goes, ‘building’ classes took time) etc. We ran the weekday morning classes for YEARS with 6 people and less in them. 5/6 ‘YEARS!’ That’s how long it took to get them to grow to a viable class size and some classes didn’t! Now we: close Bank Holiday Mondays (after years of trying where no one came 🙂 ); reduce our December schedule (after years of trying where no one came :)). One Hot Friday in 2018 we cancelled class after only 1 booking all day. There were also 2 studio ‘cv lockdowns’ and of course ‘the wall’ {Dec18} reduced our schedule for a while (we were down but not out!)… We have never once in those 10yrs daily service called in sick. Not once! It takes commitment in every sense of the word to create consistency: THERE IS OFTEN a challenge/turbulence that could easily represent a ‘class not going ahead today folks’ scenario but we are not in the business of letting people down. In the last month alone we have had incidence of someone setting smoke alarm off in lobby just as about to start ‘floor series’ and we had to stop the class and of course a week later the power supply cut to businesses in area including YM causing cancellation of Friday class but the power came back on just ‘1HR’ before Saturday class! We could tell many tales about ‘incidences’ or assaults on our spirit happening in hour, even ‘last minute’ prior to us having to walk into a full 90 minute class and teach as if everything was hunky dory. Additionally, over the years there have been a couple of unashamed efforts at stealing our footfall (going against Yoga ethic Asteya) but it is individuals who try to empire build by undermining our efforts and what we do that tends to unsettle our ‘peace’ the most. Why? because weirdly they are often operating in the same arena as us and such behavior goes against fundamental Yoga ethic’s (what we are all saying we are all about) and this really confuses us, makes us question things and makes us sad. When out and about we have frequently experienced verbocity with much venom on what we ‘do’ based on hearsay or a badly written far flung article (not on their local experience)! On a different front, in our 10yrs we have had some appalling experiences in relation to behaviours of landlords/property owners/tenants connected with our premises that would make your JAW DROP if we told you some of that stuff! Yes cv has been extraordinarily challenging but, weirdly, in the scheme of things of ALL our challenges it doesn’t feature big on the ‘bad trip’ ‘stressed out Yogi’ scale 🙂 {maybe it is because we are not alone in the cv boat}. From discussions with other studio owners around the world about some of what has happened there is a consensus of ‘that is not normal’ and ‘why is it that you still continue’. On opening we had a ‘5yr plan’ (as you do :)) to have Darren ‘onboard’ working full time at the studio by the end of first 5yrs. {Best laid plans and all that!} 10yrs later… that dream still not practical for us making the ends meet! ‘Studio fronts’ aside we have a personal life too that has many fronts that keep us occupied. Just like everyone else. FOR SURE it is not always smooth sailing; the effort to ensure some ‘challenged’ classes can take place is not ‘visible’ to practitioners who happily (and rightly so) tend to see the ‘surface duck’ not the ‘duck legs’ paddling furiously beneath the surface just to keep the class in place. {I thought about using the word ‘Swan’ here but then I looked in the mirror… I LIKE ducks. 🙂 } SOMETIMES what it takes to just keep a little Yoga school in St Helier, Jersey ‘open’ is really not for the faint hearted
BUT. BIG BUT. None of that stuff tells us who we really are. We started out perhaps naively with a particular idea of how it was going to be and it hasn’t quite panned out that way; but without that naivety we might never have started and we have no regrets! We feel a deeper calling; amidst all the chaos THE YOGA MUST TAKE PLACE! Yoga, after all, is nothing more than the TOTAL EXPERIENCE OF HUMAN LIFE! We always come back to ‘it is not ‘OUR’ class, it is the practice of those who Trust Us and WANT TO BE THERE’. It is not ‘our’ YM it is ‘YOUR’ YM. And maybe. JUST MAYBE. THAT is what makes it so amazing. Most of the time we draw the people we want to be around to us and for them it is never ‘just business’ for us. It is ALWAYS ‘Personal’. YOU ARE OUR PRIVILEGE! AND WE ARE SO GRATEFUL FOR YOU. Remembering this gives us a purpose, a practice and a connection to our people that gets us out of bed in the morning, keeps us resilient as well as spiritually on track! And even when we ‘fall off’ the track we have a track to get back on! And OUR PERSONAL PRACTICE? Well. THAT is the big antidote to all the other ‘stuff’; it allows us our opportunity to STILL THE INEVITABLE FLUCTUATIONS OF THE MIND that come with the ‘stuff’ and return us to a place of equilibrium and grace.
We have analysed it TO THE HILT! We HAVE TO LEARN to be okay with WHATEVER the energy is! It doesn’t bear up to any judgment whatsoever; it is ALWAYS going to be what it is (or maybe it is where the Moon is in the sky 🙂 ) ! THROUGH us pulling ourselves together and getting on with it we discovered how VALUABLE putting OTHERS needs to practice FIRST was to help us personally lift our spirits and put distance between us and our troubles. More PROOF to us! that our HAPPINESS is inextricably linked to YOUR Bikram Yoga needs. WITHOUT A DOUBT we have made some of the BEST KIND of friends in our YM time that people can have! People who WANT to share this Yoga journey, people who are rooting for Yoga Matters to exist. Although the service we provide is ‘about the people’ who come to YM needing a space away from ‘their stuff’, in 10 years there have been times when some have recognized that we ourselves were under the cosh and they reached out to us to offer support in many different forms and with the passing of time when we think of those people and the moments they came forward they become even more amazing to us in our mind that they did that (because we have no expectations whatsoever, we made our choices). These people and their gestures were so POWERFUL! We TREASURE their acknowledgement. We are ETERNALLY GRATEFUL for the support/boost and in one case invaluable professional expertise (when we were floundering in an area of which we had limited knowledge) that they gave. They were truly like the beacon of light when we felt darkness closing in and those people remain an inspiration for us personally to want to do better ourselves and to be that kind of light in somebody else’s time of ‘stuff’.
!YES! IT HAS BEEN MUCH ADVENTURE being on a journey with those who like how we serve up our offerings. There has been GROWTH GALORE going around in the 10 years and many MANY ‘Laugh Out Loud’ moments. ALL OF THIS OUTWEIGHS ANY of that other ‘stuff’. And HERE WE ARE: 5000 REMARKABLE classes later! As a sister said to us recently “none of us are getting out of this alive”. WE DON’T WANT TO WASTE A PRECIOUS MINUTE; so we frequently reassess and REAFFIRM that we ARE where we want to BE. YM, what goes on there and ALL THE STUFF ‘IS’ a huge part of what makes us happy. Because we live IN the moment we are highly attuned to every tiny PLEASURE we get from what we do, people returning to a second class, witnessing their victories over body and mind, the way peeps come out of their Yoga class feeling so good they just want to ‘THANK’ someone for the results of all their own hard work and they choose to direct that thanks towards ‘us’ ! WE FEEL AMPLY REWARDED. Where there is Bikram Yoga there are no fluffy towels! But there is Stuff and Sweat and Bliss and Freedom and SUCCESS!
~YOGA GIVES~ We just cannot let this landmark pass without GIVING something back as THANKS so we added a ~‘YM BIRTHDAY! FREE ONE CLASS PASS’~ to Momoyoga for EVERYONE to use. It is valid for use IN our birthday month ‘July’. Make sure you ‘Add {this} Product’ and USE IT UP when you are booking your class IN JULY; {as a valid class pass of course usual ‘Terms Apply’ and it cannot be carried forward}. Make sure you ‘Add’ the RIGHT special ‘Product’ for this special occasion! the one that says ‘FREE’ in it otherwise it will create an admin issue; all other product types payment will be expected so please please pause when adding to make sure you get the right one. PLEASE it will make us SO HAPPY to see you using it YM Yogis! we will know you are sharing in our birthday happiness to STILL BE HERE after all these years! LOVE TRISHA & DARREN
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