Article in The Evening Post 28th Jan
We were featured in the Bristol Evening Post last week. Suzanne Saville came to Yogawest to interview us and Artur Lesniak took some lovely photos on a Sunday morning. Pumpkin our campervan stole the show as the story was written on the theme of Cinderella. We enjoyed reading it and are pleased that it has brought some new and returning students through the door this week. Despite the cold weather outside, it’s nice and warm in the studios!
Posted in Classes, studio, Studio makeover, Yoga
Jess, one of our teachers, left for Pune at the beginning of October for a month of study with the Iyengar family. We asked her to look out for a statue of Patanjali for us while she was there.
Jess and Melroy outside the Institute in Pune
Jess and Melroy (a Yogawest student) found a lovely statue and emailed us a photo of him. The astonishing thing was that he was made of stone, weighed 28kgs and would cost £200 to send here. There the adventure began…
By chance, Andrea, a friend of ours who works for BA, was to be in Bombay for 18 hours on a trip 2 days later, and it seemed too good an opportunity to pass up. There started an extraordinary relay race against time. I rang Suveer, a friend I’d met in India last year who I thought lived in Pune, but in fact had moved back to Bombay. He assured me he’d arrange it all. He rang Huzefa, a pal in Pune, and set things in motion.
Yogawest's Patanjali
Jess and Melroy bought the statue on Monday afternoon, and had it packed and ready for a long journey. Huzefa went to pick it up later in the day, and hotfooted it with the rather large box to the bus to Bombay. A long bus journey later, he arrived in Bombay to be met by our man Suveer. What possessed Huzefa to be so wonderfully helpful to us, we don’t know, but we are incredibly grateful! We are still awaiting a photo of him to add to this story.
In the morning, Suveer jumped in a Rickshaw and went as fast as Bombay traffic would allow to the ITC Maratha hotel and deposited Patanjali with the Bellboy there ready for Andrea’s arrival. Andrea took safe delivery (having luckily brought an extra large bag with her) and after a few hours shut-eye, made her way to the airport for her return trip to Heathrow. As you might imagine, emails were flying merrily between all interested parties at this stage and there was a certain amount of anxiety generated at the Bristol end: could this possibly work?
Andrea in a Rickshaw
And yes: it could and it did! Andrea arrived back the following morning, and took the precious package back to her house in West London. By another fortuitous chance, Mike was driving back from London to Bristol that afternoon, and collected Patanjali on his way past.
Patanjali emerges from the box
Patanjali in his new place
So… by 10 O’Clock that evening, a mere 47 hours after he left Pune, Patanjali was safely sitting on his new shelf in Studio 1 at Yogawest in Bristol. Phew!
A huge thanks to the whole team: we owe you (more than) one. And if you haven’t yet met him, do pop in to Studio 1 and pay your respects soon.
Posted in Studio makeover, Teachers, Yogawest Students Abroad
We’ve had a busy time recently at Yogawest (and that is perhaps something of an understatement.)
After moving in on 2nd September, Mike and I spent the next 8 days watching the mini re-fit take shape (and occasionally trying to help without getting in the way too much). We were really lucky to have an amazing team of builders, painters, electricians, garden designers, signage companies to name but a few, many working 12 hour days to achieve what Mike had planned to do in the week between getting the keys and re-opening the doors. And on the whole, they were remarkably tolerant of Mike’s ambitious plans and the taxing timescale.
A typical view from the front door during re-fit week at Yogawest
I couldn’t quite believe what was on the To-do List (Mike is used to re-fitting hospital wards and clearly thought he’d test his project management skills to the limit on this project!). It really was an extraordinary experience to watch the building transform. Every time I walked into a room it was full of people beetling away, and every time I turned around there was something else to see. Far from being stressful (although there were some moments!) it was really exciting and thrilling. Some friends called in during the re-fit and suggested we should have made a fly-on-the-wall programme about it, and it did at times feel as though we were in an extreme version of 60-minute makeover. But I don’t think we could have fitted anyone else in the building!
One of the main changes involved building a ‘box’ within Studio 1 in order to create a lobby area at the front door, meaning that Studio 1 is now a private space (students used to travel through it to get to Studio 2). And the Gents now have a brand new changing room with access off the reception area, meaning they don’t need to disturb a class to get there. The Women’s changing room has now doubled in size and they now have their very own shower!
We have also opened up the reception area to create a shop and tea bar: students can make themselves tea after class and drink it over a chat on the new deck, beautifully crafted by Claire’s husband Nigel and his brother Gary.
Perhaps the most exciting bit of all was seeing people’s faces on the Open Weekend as they absorbed the changes!
art directors on the photoshoot
photoshoot in progress
The teachers were amazing: we asked them to come in on the Friday afternoon for a photoshoot for the website (which we launched without photography). I was somewhat distracted and Bob took control of the art direction with Oliver the photographer and Wayne our designer, and between them they created a fantastic set of images which Wayne and Andy uploaded to the site the following week.
At 6.45pm, we were still clearing rubble and the lovely Lou was whizzing round with her hoover as guests began to arrive for the Launch party. It was lovely to meet everyone (some for the first time, and some old friends) and there was a great feeling of excitement at the studios re-opening after a summer break.
On the Saturday Annette taught 2 well-attended classes in the morning and the building was open for exploration in the afternoon.
If you haven’t seen it yet, do pop down and take a look.
Posted in Studio makeover, Teachers
We’ve had an amazing few weeks at Yogawest. After a few months of dreaming, planning, wondering, hoping and intensive graphic designing, Mike and I got the keys on 2nd September.
We spent the next week watching the re-fit take shape. We had a wonderful team putting in long days to get it all done. Read more in our Studio Makeover story.
Yogawest is now fully up and running with a growing timetable of classes in both studios. Keep an eye on our timetable as it expands. We are thrilled to retain all the teachers who taught here for Lynda and Gerry and have brought in some wonderful new (and returning) teachers too. We will feature specific classes in upcoming newsletters.
Posted in Studio makeover
I hope I am coming to the end of a 3-week Virgin Mediocre (as they will henceforth be known when I am being polite) nightmare. I have totalled around 23 hours of phone calls to them in the last fortnight following their unilateral decision to cut off the line, rather than transfer it to us as per Gerry’s instructions when we took over at Yogawest.
All very simple you might think, they just need to switch it back on again. But no, I can’t tell you the hoops I’ve had to jump through to get the number back (and it still isn’t working properly, so I can’t here incoming calls). I won’t bore you with the details, but it involves may different Virgin operatives, many different promises of service-resumption and many broken promises. All of which means that we had no phone for the week before launch, no phone for launch week and no phone for our first 10 days of trading.
If I had known I:
a) wouldn’t have printed up thousands of leaflets with a broken phone number on them,
b) would have used another phone company that ironically could have had us up and running with the correct number on the day we moved in.
When the number is working, I won’t need to phone you and let you know… you’ll hear me whooping over the rooftops.
In the meantime you can contact us on my mobile: 07970 198944 or email us at info@yogawest.co.uk
Diana
(frustrated of Bishopston)
Posted in Studio makeover
Mike and his trusted band of merry men spent a week of knocking down walls, carrying fully loaded paintbrushes and sprucing up the studio ready for its inaugural launch on 10th September.
We’ve got some great photos and will load them here soon. In the meantime, come round and have a nosey: it’s looking great!
We are delighted that the building is now fully open and running a complete timetable of classes.
Posted in Studio makeover
To celebrate the relaunch of Yogawest here in Bristol, we have created ‘his’ and ‘hers’ Yogavests. We have a limited supply. See them around.
We’ve had a fun time recently designing and ordering a range of T-shirts and vests for sale in our shop. Come and have a look and we’d love to know what you think.
All our wares are 100% cotton, the T-shirts are Organic cotton and we have used local embroiderers and screen printers to help us get our first range together.
Posted in shop, studio, Studio makeover