Sarah Levey - We Flow Hard: The Y7 Guide to Crafting Your Yoga Practice

T o really understand Y7, it helps to know how we started and where we came from. We didnt set out to start a yoga studio. Not really, anyway. The process was more organic than that, growing out of our own experiences and frustrations with practicing in more traditional environments. Weve always been creative people, and building Y7 ourselves was the natural answer to the question we seemed to always come back to: how could we practice yoga in a way that felt exciting and authentic, with good energy, good music, and good people?

I had practiced on and off for about five years, but no matter which classes I took, I always left feeling like something was missingthat I needed to go to the gym or take another cardio-based class to get a complete workout. I wasnt getting the physical payoff I wanted for my body, and I wasnt getting the studio experience I wanted in my life. To be honest, I really felt like I was wasting time and money, and as a result, for a while I stopped practicing altogether.

My husband was always a more consistent yogi than I was, but he wasnt satisfied with traditional studios either. We couldnt find a place that combined the passion we had for yoga with the intense workout we were looking for. And we definitely couldnt find a place to practice that had the right vibe, that felt like us. After dealing with the same frustrations over and over again, we decided to do something about itand thats when we created the concept of Y7.

We actually started Y7 as a pop-up in July 2013. Before we had studios or staff, it was just me and Mason setting up shop in a huge room in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. We rented the space for a few hours one weekend from a recording studio that wasnt using it. All of our classes were free.

You should have seen us: me and my now-husband trekking down Bedford Avenue to the temporary studio with two huge rolling trunks full of supplies. And then, in the middle of the summer heat, lugging those trunks up to the fourth-floor walk-up. The first weekend we had no idea who would show up, what the reception would be, or if people would even like what we were doing. It was a complete unknown, but it was also incredibly exciting.

At the end of that weekend, someone asked us for a studio schedule and wanted to know if they could buy a package of classes. And that was all it took. That one person showing interest and loving what we had created was enough for us to say, okay, maybe we can do this.

We continued Y7 as a pop-up until September 2013, when we found a 300-square-foot space in Williamsburg we could afford on our salaries. At that time, we both still had full-time jobsI was an account executive working in fashion, and Mason was working in digital advertising. We couldnt believe there were people who wanted to practice yoga the way we did and who wanted to spend their free time practicing with us in the space we were so proud of. Looking back, that was the beginning of our tribe of yogis.

It wasnt all perfect. There were days when that conviction in our mission and our tribe faltered. Some days, not a single person would show up to the 7:00 p.m. class, and we would close early. Fall/Winter 2013 was rough for us, balancing our jobs, our lives, and our fledgling studio. Most of my days looked like this: