Journey to the light
I found yoga...or it found me. I think more with yoga, it finds you when you need it. One day, you kind of feel this mat underneath your feet. It just arrives there.
Surya Hot Yoga re-opened after the pandemic in May 2021, but the journey began way back in 2001 when I attended my first ever Bikram class. At the time, I was suffering deeply from burnout after working 60/70 hour weeks in the restaurant business for over 35 years. I wasn't sure there would ever be a way out of the stress fuelled lifestyle I had become accustomed to.
This is something I really need to emphasise, knowing so many who are still in that same situation, struggling to care for themselves in a perpetual cycle of working to survive. And thinking that living this way is normal.
I went with a friend who said “There's this hot yoga thing, why don't you come and try it?” Hardest thing I'd ever done... 50 women; long sleeved shirt; dripping with sweat... but for the hell of me, I was not going to sit down! That was part of my personality I suppose in those days. Yoga teaches us to give in, but also teaches us to never give up.
Everyone remembers their first ever Bikram Yoga class. For so many, it marks the beginning of a remarkable journey of transformation. I was amazed at how my practice alleviated my stress levels and helped to keep me grounded and sane. At the same time bringing a lot more clarity and balance into my life.
The Eureka moment came when in 2008 with the seed of change beginning to grow, I made the decision to drop everything I was doing, sell up my interests in the restaurant business and go to teacher training. My practice gave me so much strength and support to make the jump. I never looked back.
Initially, there was no intention to become a teacher, but something was calling from inside. There was a lot of transformation going on within me that I wasn't really conscious of. Yoga helps you to connect to your power; into your self; into your true self. And allows your soul to speak to you as it begins to quiet your mind.
Most people come to yoga for physical reasons. It’s what it does to you mentally and emotionally that keeps you coming back.
Upon returning from training, I made the step into teaching and spent the next couple of years experiencing an unprecedented level of freedom; travelling and connecting with like minded souls who tread upon the path to a more conscious life. I spent invaluable time with teachers such as Mooji. And spent months at the Osho ashram in Pune and these contributed so much to my growth.
After all this soul searching In 2011, I decided to open my own studio and that is where the community here was born. Originally called Bikram Yoga Wimbledon, where the focus was all on that specific 90 minute practice, which I often refer to as the 'Daddy of Hot Yoga’.
Luckily I managed to convince Sarah to come back from Australia and help me run the studio. Which thank god she did because I don’t know where we’d be without her! She is such an integral part of this space and it wouldn’t be the same place without her.
As the studio and I evolved, a big shift came in 2016 when the name was changed to Hot Yoga Wimbledon and we began open out into offering a wider variety of practices and styles of yoga like Vinyasa Flow, meditation, Yin/Yang and Yin.
With yoga if it's coming from the right source, it doesn't matter what it is. It's how you apply where it's coming from that matters. The external you can vary it; you can change it; you can adapt it; you can improve it but the inner sense of it, that is something that is there and you grow it; you nurture it; you listen to it; it speaks to you; it guides you; the more you're in tune with it the more it gives to you.
The next few years saw the community expand with a growing team of wonderful teachers. We dove deeper into what the practice brings to the lives of so many. The original studio across the road at Hot Yoga Wimbledon holds such a beautiful space in so many people's hearts, but the transition into a new space has seen a massive shift in the energy. The studio here feels lighter; all the work put in over the road has created a whole new world at Surya Hot Yoga.
With the huge windows, and the way the sunlight shines through it, it creates this ineffable ambience that perfectly represents the new lightness and joyfulness that is this incredible space.
