The Yoga Yoga Story
The story of Yoga Yoga begins with a woman and a man. In 1994, after twenty years of an off-again and on-again yoga practice, my wife and I were facing a crisis in our lives and our marriage. In one direction was pain and self-destruction, and in the other direction was the one thing we knew would work — yoga.
The blessing was that the choice was so obvious. Do yoga or lose everything. We turned all our energy into our yoga practice. We turned the extra bedroom into a yoga room and plunged into teacher training courses, weeklong yoga retreats, workshops and classes. We rekindled a life-long love for Kundalini Yoga, practiced Ashtanga Yoga with a new passion, and discovered the power of Hatha Yoga to heal our bodies and open our hearts.
Like yoga does so well, it changed our lives totally. It wasn’t enough to practice yoga – we wanted to live it, every day, all the time. So when we weren’t doing our yoga, we taught in our extra bedroom that held seven students if we all squeezed together.
We had classes in that small room back-to-back, alternating Hatha and Kundalini, and eventually had 65 students showing up at our back door every week to practice yoga. Students parked blocks away so neighbors could get into their driveways. Our relationship with those who loved yoga grew beyond the extra bedroom in our home.
With the help of a good friend, Kewal, newly acquired credit cards, and blissful ignorance about what we were doing, we leased a space at 1700 South Lamar in December 1997. It had two small rooms (that looked gigantic after our 250 square foot home studio) so we could teach two classes at the same time – a Hatha class and a Kundalini class. Two types of yoga = Yoga Yoga.
About Yoga Yoga
The Yoga Yoga Story by Mehtab
Founder, Yoga Yoga
“Enthusiasm, perseverance, discrimination, unshakable faith, and courage are the ways to bring success to yoga.” – Hatha Yoga Pradipika (1, 16)
The first day we opened our public South studio on January 22, 1998, forty-five students turned out. A few brought friends new to yoga because they were afraid we would not be able to stay in business very long. That thought finally occurred to us when we realized we were paying several thousand dollars a month for the privilege of offering yoga classes and could not afford to even pay ourselves for teaching.
Over the next few months, yoga teaching friends joined us. We added Ashtanga classes, morning classes and finally one day we counted (in the days before we had a computer) over 100 students on one day! So we paid ourselves a $100 salary that month.
As much as practicing yoga had changed our lives, it was the yoga teaching that completely transformed us. We wanted to share that discovery with students, so we offered a Teacher Training course in Kundalini Yoga. As these students became teachers, they needed a space to teach and the original Yoga Yoga on South Lamar was getting full.
One of our newly trained teachers, Rich, started scouting out possible locations for a second Yoga Yoga in the summer of 2000. He found a place on Anderson Lane at Burnett and as a new business partner, together we opened what we cleverly called Yoga Yoga North (which meant that the original location had to become, what else, Yoga Yoga South).
With the new North location, we added more Ashtanga classes, prenatal classes and ultimately more Teacher Training courses, including Hatha as well as Kundalini. Which of course meant more new teachers, which meant – another Yoga Yoga!
In May 2003 (after protracted labor), we delivered Yoga Yoga Westgate. It was ridiculously huge. I stood in the brand new large room that held nearly ten times the students we had taught just six years earlier. My wife said, “You know, we can actually fit our entire house into this room.” “Great,” I said, “Because we may have to sell it and live here.”
Like the neglected sibling after a newborn, the original South Lamar studio started asking for attention. We merged the two existing studios one into one big room and moved the Kundalini room into an adjacent storefront that previously sold safety work boots. Now we had eight studio rooms, three locations, 75 teachers and our names on leases that financially obligated us to do yoga, yoga, yoga until my beard would become completely white.
All the growth, the expansion, even the very beginning of Yoga Yoga was organic. When we finally get around to making business plans, we realized that planning was something you did while you waited for God to smile.
Teacher Training
Yoga Yoga Teacher Training in Austin, Texas, offers nationally recognized Yoga Teacher Training programs in Hatha Yoga, Flow-Based Hatha Yoga (also offered in San Antonio), Kundalini Yoga and Advanced Studies. We are an approved 200-hour and 500-hour Registered Yoga School (RYS) through Yoga Alliance.
Healthcare Professionals 300-hour Teacher Training
Yoga Yoga Teacher Training for Healthcare Professionals is a 300-hour comprehensive training in the tools and techniques of adapting yoga for a healing context.
Hatha 200-hour Teacher Training
Strengthen and enrich your Hatha yoga practice while learning to safely and effectively teach students of all levels; from beginner to intermediate.
- Flow-Based Hatha 200-hour Teacher Training
- For students who have a consistent Hatha Flow, Vinyasa or Ashtanga practice, we are now offering a Flow-Based Teacher Training!
- San Antonio Flow-Based Hatha 200-hour Teacher Training
We are now offering a Flow-Based Teacher Training in San Antonio with The Synergy Studio.
Kundalini 200-hour Teacher Training
Learn to teach the ancient practices of Kundalini yoga as taught by Yogi Bhajan. Join us for a special free class, Kundalini Mantra Magic: The Role of Sound and Music in Yoga, with Mehtab, Guru Karam and Siri Bahadur, on August 11 at Yoga Yoga North.
Advanced Studies 500-hour Teacher Training
If you are already a registered 200-hour yoga teacher, find out about our trainings that apply toward your 500-hour Hatha or 500-hour Kundalini certification.
Contact Yoga Yoga
info@yogayoga.com
NORTH
2167 W. Anderson Lane
Austin, TX 78757
512-380-9800 NORTHWEST
12001 Burnet Road
Austin, TX 78758
512-490-1200 SOUTH
1700 S. Lamar Blvd
Austin, TX 78704
512-326-3900 WESTGATE
4477 S. Lamar Blvd, #420
Austin, TX 78745
512-358-1200 360
2501 S. Capital of Texas Hwy
Austin, TX 78746
512-381-6464
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