YYoga Richmond

Yesterday I took the Canada Line down to Richmond to check out my 4th YYoga studio. YYoga, as always gets gold for decor and setting that spa-like atmosphere, but unfortunately last night's class left me feeling underwhelmed and unsatisfied.

What: YYoga Richmond

Where: 102 - 7731 Alderbridge Way, Richmond BC

When: July 12, 2010, 7:00pm-8:00pm

Class: Hatha

Teacher: Alex

Drop-In price per class: $15-20

Types of classes offered: Hatha, YHot, Flow, Power, Yin, Meditation

Space:

If you take the Canada Line skytrain here, it's a short 15 min walk from Lansdowne station. The studio is located in a business park that inst the most esthetically pleasing, but the exterior is just the exterior, right? The studio had a great front entrance lobby area, with a few tables for pre/post yoga tea and chatting. There were two yoga rooms, named sun and moon. The studio I was in was closest to the front desk, but the changerooms were located down a long, fluorescent pink lit hallway. It was a bit odd to have to walk up and down such a long hallway in bare feet, but I guess that's just how the space had to be laid out. The other studio was bigger and could be accessed directly from the changerooms. There were of course lovely fixtures and amenities and the bamboo floors looked super new. You can basically expect beautiful, professional spaced at any of the YYoga locations.

Atmosphere:

Super zen, lots of bamboo and clean edges. Very spa-like. The front desk staff were super nice and welcoming. With the large tea-room, it looked like a great place to hang out with your fellow yogis/yoginis.

Teacher/Class:

Ok- rant warning. Very seldom do I have bad things to say about a class, but there were so many things that I just couldn't ignore about this one. I went to a 1 hour hatha class led by Alex, who I later found out turned out to be the studio director. He was super charming and funny. The class was packed full of women with the exception of one guy, and Alex brought a light-hearted approach to a class of giggly women. He even spoke Chinese at times (he's not a native speaker), which brought out even more giggles.

Anyways, on to the class itself. We started with some core work and that was all good. His style was definitely workout-oriented, but he did say he was mainly a power/vinyasa teacher so it's par for the course. However, he didn't do a great job of cueing and did no demos (which is understandable given the lack of space in the packed room), which left some people confused. We then went into some standing warrior poses and I started to notice a pattern. He would do one side of a standing warrior pose, then come to tadasana (mountain), then the other side, the back to tadasana, then another warrior variation, then the other side, then back to tadasana, then another... this kept on going on for a while, and, needless to say, I was bored out of my mind at the end There was no flow, no balance between strength and relaxation, no sun/moon, no ha/tha. He was teaching a hatha class like it was a Bikram's hot class! I might be biased to my style, but I hate it when a teacher teaches one side then the other right after for the entire class. Where's the flow and creativity in that? I usually don't make a fuss about classes being boring, but this class was also not taught safely. Towards the end of class, he got everyone to face away from the front of the room and do halasana or plough pose. If you don't know this pose, it's an inversion where you kick your legs up over your head and rest your feet on the floor above your head. It's usually paired with shoulder stand. When you're upside down like that, all your weight is coming down on the neck. If you move your head in this pose, you could potentially seriously harm your spine. So you can see why I was so shocked when he told people to bring their legs up over their heads and rest their feet on the floor behind them. With no demo and unclear instructions, people were moving their heads like crazy to see what they were supposed to do. He started telling them not to move their heads once he realized people were unsure of the pose. He also failed to note the necessary precautions for inversions, like how you shouldn't do it if you have high blood pressure or eye/ear infections or if you're on your period. In a room packed full of women, I'm sure some were menstruating.

So after all that, came savasana, corpse pose. A good savasana can usually save a class and mend any aggravations that might have arisen, but even the savasana sucked this time! Not only was it too short, but all you could hear was loud talking from people waiting outside in the lobby. It was super distracting and I could not fully relax. There was no help from the instructor to tell people to keep it down. There was no music to drown out the talking - it was just a bunch of noise. I thought it was quite rude that a bunch of yoga practitioners would not clue in to keep it down if they knew a class was ending. So all in all, not a fun class. I was so disappointed that I actually met with the teacher after to give him my constructive feedback. Of course, it was just my luck that he happened to be the guy who ran the place, so I can pretty much count on never getting hired at Richmond YYoga! At least he was open to hearing me out and thanked me for the feedback. I'm glad I had the balls to tell him in person. I think safe yoga is so important and I always feel the need to call out unsafe teaching when I see it.

Rating: 8/10. Awesome studio, sucky class. This class doesn't represent the other teachers and classes there, so my review is mainly based on this one experience.