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To coincide with World Yoga Day on Monday 21 June, YogaLife opened the first hot yoga studio in the South Peninsula at Noordhoek Farm Village.
Opening a yoga studio at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, owners Clé Latouf and Bern le Roux believe is a testament to the fact that yoga is a much-needed practise that supports health and well-being – both physical and mental – during stressful and changing times.
It was only at the end of last year that they came together – Latouf the businesswoman and owner of YogaLife Studio at the De Waterkant and Le Roux the co-owner of Café Roux – to bring hot yoga to life in Noordhoek.
Le Roux explains: “Claire and I were on the same (yoga) teacher training and that’s how we connected and decided to bring YogaLife to Noordhoek. Noordhoek has the most yoga studios out of any suburb in the whole of South Africa. Historically in Noordhoek, the yoga styles have been quite traditional – Ashtanga-based, quite a lot of restorative yoga – and what we bring is quite a dynamic, accessible yoga that is fun and challenging. It’s something different.”
Hot yoga is a vigorous form of yoga performed in a very warm and humid studio. While it may be challenging, yogi Chantal Cohen explains it is these very challenges that yoga presents to the body that helps to work as a coping mechanism in everyday life.
“For students who are stepping into the room, it’s an opportunity for them to get to feel into their bodies – we don’t get a lot of opportunities to do that in our daily movements and daily life – and with this paying attention to your body comes so many benefits,” says Cohen.
She adds that the challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic can – like some yoga poses – seem too much to handle, but consistent yoga can help build the strength, both physically and mentally, to overcome them.
“It has been an incredibly challenging time for a lot of people. It’s taken people into incredibly overwhelming moments and most people don’t have the tools to be able to manage those kinds of moments and get overwhelmed quickly. So every time you arrive on your yoga mat, you get the opportunity to practise expanding your capacity for challenge and resistance a little bit more, so you leave the yoga room with an expanded capacity for tolerance,” Cohen explains.
Latouf adds: “During this time, people are struggling in general with Covid-19 and what it’s brought to our lives, So people need more yoga because it really is a nervous system regulation tool.”
The studio offers power yoga where the room is heated to 36 °C and targets strength, flexibility and breathing; vinyasa which offers creative and unique sequencing while focusing on breath; sculpt which combines free weights with vinyasa sequencing in a heated room of 32 °C; and hot 26, a 90-minute Bikram class with 26 postures and two breathing exercises. Free beginners classes are offered to introduce fundamental yoga poses.
For more information, visit www.yogalife.co.za.
