El Cerrito Yoga Studio Adapts To Zoom

El Cerrito, CA — Nicole Becker opened the doors of Ojas Yoga Center back in October of 2010; at the time, hers was one of the first Yoga studios to crop up in the area. Becker says that while many studios tend to be more of a fitness-based yoga, she takes a different approach.

“I come from a more traditional background,” Becker said. “I was actually raised in a yogic household, so my roots go pretty far back. Most yoga these days has gotten more closely aligned with the fitness industry, and people tend to be interested in it from a purely physical aspect, which is fine but there’s a lot more to the tradition. My goal in opening up the studio was to provide a place where people could really feel a sense of sanctuary.”

Where so often today the practice of yoga has become about a physical push for perfection, Becker’s focus is on the internal, individual journey each student takes. It’s not about doing a pose perfectly or being perfectly flexible, it’s about taking the time to be with yourself and working to heal your body.

“A lot of people when they get into this fitness-type yoga, it’s this incessant push for perfection and progress,” Becker said. “It keeps a lot of people who might otherwise find yoga accessible, it keeps them away. Or there’s always this subtle pressure of you have to be a certain way to be good at yoga, and I just wanted to provide a counterpoint to that. In our world, there’s plenty of places where you can get exercise, but there’s not a lot of places where you can get spiritual sanctuary, where you can get peace and quiet, and that was really my goal, to create that kind of a feeling with my center.”

In the weeks leading up to the first official pandemic-incited lockdown, Becker was already trying to figure out how to keep the Center open or active in some way. At first planning on simply upping the cleaning protocols at the Center, it quickly became clear that the brick and mortar studio would have to close.

“I already had the tools in place, because I had been in the process of making online courses and videos, so I actually had a lot of that structure already,” Becker said. “When we had to shut down, I was able to go straight online.”

Through intensive administrative work, Becker was able to combine a scheduling software with Zoom, allowing her to continue instruction remotely.

“We took to it pretty well, and my students love the online format,” Becker said. “It’s actually been working a lot better than I ever thought it would. There’s a wonderful convenience about being able to practice yoga at home. It’s much more casual. It’s given people permission to take even better care of themselves during class. People have now discovered this even new layer of permission to just be gentle with themselves and to not push themselves. There’s this lovely relaxation that’s showed up at people’s practices, and also it’s taught people ‘oh, I can practice yoga at home.’ So it’s been a really beautiful process.”

And with a plethora of yoga videos permeating social media and the internet, Becker’s students — the majority of which have remained with the Center through this remote experience — prefer the community of the live (albeit virtual), classes.

“They tell me that there’s something special about being able to come to a live class versus being able to take any old yoga class on the internet,” Becker said. “There’s something about the live interaction that’s really supportive.”

Through what has been a very dark chapter in American history, Becker has been able to find a silver lining in the community she has been able to foster and even expand, thanks to being a yoga Center that is now without walls.

“People were forced to really figure out new ways to take care of themselves, and all of a sudden they had the extra time and all sorts of internet access,” Becker said. “It’s definitely opened my classes up to a larger range of students — I have former students who moved out of state who are now coming to class; I have people joining from Germany and L.A. and all over the place; any state any country. It’s so beautiful because we can all practice together. It’s been a joy to have that feeling of extended community.”

And even with a possible end-in-sight to the closures and restrictions that have become a hallmark of the pandemic, Becker is confident that this virtual aspect and virtual community won’t be going away.

“I think in some forms it will stay,” Becker said. “I envision that from now on, there’ll be some type of hybrid. For my studio, probably some of the classes will be concurrently streamed so you can have an option to be in-person or online, or there might be classes that are only online or only in-person, but I think the hybrid is here to stay because people realize the convenience and it makes it that much easier for them to work it into their day and stay dedicated.”

Despite the number of her students decreasing slightly, Becker remains confident that however long this closure lasts, Ojas Yoga center will weather the pandemic.

“It’s actually allowed me to expand my online offerings and branch out into different courses and workshops — [it] has really allowed the business to have a second life,” Becker said. “I’ve always looked at it like ‘if we somehow can’t manage to hang on to the brick and mortar I know that we can survive online with the rest of the offerings.’”