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From our students, we found our future teachers, our staff, and our business
partners. We were creating relationships based on a mutual love of yoga
with those around us. And it was from these relationships that we were
able to open Yoga Yoga North in 2001. The energy of the second yoga center
came from the energy of the second chakra – the ability to relate
to others and to create healthy relationships.
There is a saying in Yogic Astrology that once is an accident, twice is
a coincidence, and three times is destiny. With a newly expanded Teacher
Training Program at Yoga Yoga North, and all the energy that came from
these new teachers, the time seemed right to channel that energy into
a third location. In 2003, Yoga Yoga Westgate opened in all of its third
chakra manifesting glory. It was big, it was beautiful, and it was right
out there for everyone to see – spirit becoming matter just a few
doors down from Central Market.
The first three chakras in yoga are about the integration of the spirit
into the material world. Survival, reproduction, and energy are the concerns
of these chakras. From here, the journey moves to the realms of heart
and spirit.
As 2005 began, it made little sense to open a fourth location. With three
yoga centers, we could pay our bills and our teachers but there was nothing
extra to grow on. There were no investors, no large corporate bank account,
no shareholders.
My wife, myself, and our business partner, Raghurai, had put pretty much
all we had into keeping Yoga Yoga going. It was a business built on one
yoga class at a time. If we were to open a fourth Yoga Yoga according
to our road map, it had to come from the energy of the fourth chakra.
It had to come from the people who come for the yoga but stay for the
heart. It had to come from the people who love what they find here. It
could only happen if we had their help.
So we signed a lease on what we were to call Yoga Yoga Northwest, and
then pushed ahead on faith. We asked students who wanted to help us with
the new center to consider becoming a Yoga Yoga Founder and commit to
an unlimited two year pass.
Within a month enough students responded and we began construction on
the new Yoga Yoga. Like the other Yoga Yoga locations, it came into being
because of a belief that more yoga makes a better world for everybody.
More so than any of the other centers, Yoga Yoga Northwest was truly built
for and by the students it serves. The energy of the fourth chakra, service
and compassion, brought it into being and immediately this same energy
was called upon.
When we opened Yoga Yoga Northwest, the Katrina disaster struck. Along
with the joy of a new center, there was the concern we had for our brothers
and sisters who had lost their homes and nearly their lives. We began
to collect food at all the existing centers. On the third day after we
opened the new center, we worked with the Yoga Yoga teachers who donated
their time on the Free Day of Yoga to raise enough money to provide over
6,000 meals for the evacuees. Students filled and re-filled the donation
boxes at the centers in that outpouring of compassion.
As the hurricane evacuees came to Austin, we reached out to them with
what we knew would serve them best – peace of mind through yoga.
Anyone who came here from the disaster received unlimited yoga at Yoga
Yoga. Yoga students from the Gulf Coast had lost their yoga studios, their
places to practice, and even the ability to have a personal yoga practice
with the disruption in their lives. Some of the evacuees became familiar
faces around Yoga Yoga as they got their lives back together.
As they returned to their homes, we heard from them, like the person who
wrote us: “I’ve only been a dabbler in yoga. But in the storm’s
aftermath, I was too exhausted to do high-impact exercise like running.
I was also too emotionally drained to meditate or spend much time with
my thoughts. Yoga provided me the perfect balance of physical activity
and mindfulness practice, so I went to Yoga Yoga every day. It would be
impossible for me to overstate how much this practice meant to me. After
the hurricane, I was frequently humbled by spontaneous acts of generosity,
and none meant more to me than yours. Thank you.“
Opening the fourth Yoga Yoga under these circumstances taught me that
there is no separation between you and the person next to you. There is
no separation from your yoga practice and your actions. To pretend otherwise
is to miss the real purpose of yoga. Yoga is not about achieving Union
or unity. It is about realizing you are already in Union, connected to
every one in every possible way.
The more we do yoga, the more yoga does us. The transformations that occur
in your body, your mind, and your relationships show us in every way that
all life is yoga. We all live within that circle that opens to all directions,
to everyone, to the world around us.
And so now where are we going this year? It ultimately does not matter
as long as we know from where we are coming -- from all over, from everywhere,
and from the heart.
In the Spirit of Yoga,
Mehtab
Founder of Yoga Yoga
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