Bent Offerings

When Laura Spaulding started practicing yoga in 1967, there weren’t a lot of places she could go for instruction. “My mother introduced me to it when I was pretty young,” she says. “She saw an article in a magazine, practiced briefly and showed me the article. I started practicing the postures shown in the article. I loved it right away.”

 

Spaulding didn’t actually find a formal yoga teacher until 1989, when she met Yoga East founder Maja Trigg. Today, Spaulding is president of the 20-year-old studio on Kentucky Street, where she also teaches classes.

 

Yoga East has had several Highlands locations over the years, from Trigg’s home to Grinstead Drive to various storefronts along Kentucky Street neaar Beargrass Creek. It also has studios at Holiday Manor and on Frankfort Avenue, and employs 20 teachers.

 

Whether you’re thinking about adding yoga to your New Year’s fitness program or starting from scratch, Spaulding suggests sampling what Yoga East has to offer. “We have different kinds of attendance plans, like a pass that allows people to take a lot of classes in a three-month period,” she says. “Get that pass and try different teachers and see what they’re like. Or, if you’ve never taken yoga, take a class for $10.”

 

Yoga East offers “plain vanilla” Hatha yoga, as well as Ashtanga yoga, which Spaulding says is the oldest known form of yoga and the form from which most yoga done in the West is derived. “I started out as a Hatha person but switched over,” says Spaulding, who still teaches both methods. “Hatha gives the teachers quite a bit more freedom to try different things, while Ashtanga is a very precise sequence of postures.”

 

Ashtanga was popularized by the late Indian yoga teacher Pattabhi Jois. Spaulding, a former Jois student, is one of only some 50 teachers in the nation – and Yoga East is the only school in Kentucky – authorized to teach Ashtanga yoga in his tradition.

 

The attention to precision doesn’t mean that you have to be especially flexible or fit to try yoga, says Spaulding. “Yoga is designed for people with normal flexibility – not Cirque de Soleil flexibility,” she says. “Most people are tight in their shoulders and hamstrings; yoga shows you how to release that tightness and get back to normal flexibility.” Spaulding says that anybody can do yoga – even people who have special conditions such as MS, hip replacements, partial paralysis, stroke or obesity. “A friend of mine says, ‘Are you breathing? You can do yoga.’”

 

Still, even the most inactive student must bear in mind the need for diligence and pacing. “We have Hatha classes, which are gentle, all the way up to intermediate [level],” she says. “Ashtanga is pretty rigorous, although people learn the poses one at a time.” Spaulding says that a dedicated student with normal flexibility can practice even the more stringent Ashtanga method, but as with any exercise, frequent practice is ideal. “Hatha is good for people who are looking for one or two days a week for stretching and stress reduction. Ashtanga is for serious yogis who want to do it according to the traditional system.”

 

Spaulding has seen yoga take off in the two decades she has been teaching. “If you’d told me back in 1990 that this is how [yoga’s popularity would grow], I would not have believed it. [Back then,] classes were very small and people thought you were strange if you did yoga. About 1997, I started seeing it shift.”

 

Furthering the mission of the nonprofit “to make yoga available,” Yoga East has taught free classes, offered scholarships and been a part of the Healthy Hometown program. “No one gets turned away,” she says. “We’re a school, not a gym or a workout place. It’s a place where we teach the benefits of yoga.”

 

The location, of course, has its own benefits. “When I was thinking about moving to Louisville, I’d drive around the neighborhoods and the Highlands was it. So when I wanted to open a studio, that’s where I looked. Everyone who walks in says, ‘Ah, this is really nice!’ It’s a nice little quiet residential area, more conducive to yoga.”

 

The Highlands Yoga East studio is located at 1125 East Kentucky Street, near Barret Avenue. Their voice-mail number is (502) 634-5515. A complete schedule is online at www.yogaeast.com.

 

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