My studio, Eighteenth Element Yoga offers a nice selection of trauma sensitive yoga classes. You’ll find a regular schedule of vinyasa, Yoga H.I.I.T., Warriors Flow, Mindful Resiliency Yoga, Zen Flow, Restorative, and Yin. Yoga is offered everyday. Additionally, we offer seasonal and special classes along with workshops.
However, one thing we’ve discovered is that there are other interests that bring clients to the studio. We discovered this via Tai Chi. One of our instructors really wanted to offer Tai Chi so we allowed him to teach it. We’ve learned that about half of the Tai Chi clients only go to Tai Chi and the other half take various classes, mostly slower moving yoga formats like yin, restorative, and sow for. So for us, Tai Chi is filling a niche and is here to stay on the schedule.
Shortly after Tai Chi, we introduced mat Pilates. This class is popular with clients who take regularly flow based yoga classes at our studio. They enjoy the focus on the core and it’s just something different. The nice thing is that it was a small investment in very light weights (2-3 lbs) and those squishy balls (think Bender Ball).
Next, we added what we call the Barre Element. Barre Element is a fusion of Ballet, Pilates, yoga, resistance training, Lotte Berk Method, and low impact cardio. No, it’s not a “true” barre class, but it has aspects of it. With this format, we were able to use the balls and weights that we already had. We added some 5 and 8 lbs weights, some weighted bars (Body Bar), gliding disks, and resistance bands. This class draws in outsiders and some of our yoga clients. We only have one class on the schedule so far.
Then we got a little crazy and added a Friday night belly dancing class. Let me tell you that’s a huge success. I really think it’s the instructor with this class. Our people just love her.
Finally, we just started offering private yoga therapy sessions. My business co-owner is trained in yoga therapy so this is her deal. With this offering, clients seem to be mostly outsiders more so than our class clients. I find this very interesting.
All in all, as studio owners, we are a business and to thrive, we need clients and people in our classes. So for us, lots of variety with our yoga offerings complimented with sprinkles of other formats such as Tai Chi, mat Pilates, and Barre is a growing strategy. We are fairly new and slowly building our client community.
What are some formats that pair well with your studio? Let’s start a dialog.
Namaste,
Kristen
