( Pictures Top: Wash up facilities Middle: water is available from the water cooler provided Bottom: The front office of the Studio)
Many people will think that yoga is a slow and not so challenging sports. Wait till you try HOT yoga. Hot yoga is often practiced in a room heated to about 38- 40 deg Celsius. Mixture of up to 26 sanas which includes standing and seated poses are practiced in the room. Usuallly the instructor will encourage students not to leave the room until the full hour or 75 minutes is done. If the students cannot follow or really feel uncomfortable, they may sit down or assume Shavasana, or corpse pose, or they may simply sit down to take a breather. Variations of the poses are also practiced to ensure that the higher level students get to practice the deeper poses.
Anahata Yoga is located at Sultan Gate ( Kampong Glam Area). Front office is tucked at the back alley on the second floor. This is a no frills studio, but with nice simple showers and and decent studios. There are also non hot classes, but they are equally challenging like the Core Flow lessons on Tuesday nights ( 7pm) usually. The Core Flow focuses a lot on your core strength building up on the right postures.
The teachers are all very professional, they started practicing yoga for various reasons, some for health , some to recover from past injuries. But all are sincere and not just keep focusing of getting the sanas. More emphasis is placed on the teachings and philosophy of Yoga. The instructors also emphasize that the body needs time to adjust to new poses and also needs time to adjust. Some things cannot be rushed.
In this studio, the instructors and staff do not like to make you just keep buying classes or join membership. The whole setting is like going home, relaxed yet a good workout. Their classes are not expensive but the benefits are really way beyond.