If you believe what you hear in yoga class, you might start to recognize that one good thing about time is that, like everything else, it’s an illusion. It happens like this: You drop into a pose, feeling the toes plugging into the floor, the coccyx heavy like gold. And then you notice that half an hour has passed and you haven’t even thought about time. The next thing you know, two hour classes start to zip by, then a week doesn’t really seem that long. And in a blink you’ve been practicing yoga for a year or two just watching incremental changes in the length of your hamstrings.

So one day you notice you’ve been practicing yoga for about twenty years and you’re still in the same spot on the floor as you were during that first class. Now, is that an illusion, or what? You can indulge the mind in the illusion and decide that those twenty years had remarkable significance. Or you could conclude that the marker is utterly meaningless. Or you could decide that twenty years is both important and meaningless. Which might be called the middle path or might just be confusion masquerading as the middle path. No matter. Since it’s all an illusion anyway, why worry about it?

Speaking of twenty years, that’s how long we’ve been open as the Yoga Workshop, here in the same spot on 21st Street in Boulder. That’s possibly significant, or more likely insane. Hopefully it’s not meaningless. We’re trying to sort that one out. (Check out the end of this blog post to see how you can contribute to sending us your stories about the Yoga Workshop over the past 20 years).

Sri K. Pattabhi Jois teaching at the Yoga Workshop 1988

Some days it does seem significant to have been practicing, learning and teaching in one spot for over two decades. For sure it’s a significant number of boxes of Kleenex, toilet paper and cleaning supplies we’ve been through in that time. It’s many, many turns of the key in the lock, and many more turns of the back foot into the line of front foot in the triangle pose—both of which are at least noteworthy.

Illusion or not, we’ve been here day after day for a long time. We’ve closed only for about 15 days total over all those twenty years; taking a break from teaching for minor studio renovations and a few holidays. During that time we’ve watched the space, the practice and the yoga itself evolve. We’ve also seen how when we check into the deeper structure of the yoga, not much has changed at all.

It all began for the Yoga Workshop when Richard, who had taught for many years in Boulder after returning from teaching yoga in Tehran, decided it was time to find a studio space that would be available when he wanted to teach. For years he’d taught classes in friend’s living rooms or in the rented space above the Crystal Market on Pearl Street. The room above Crystal Market was great because the floor tilted just enough so that if you were particularly stiff in forward bends, and if you positioned your mat on the west side of the room, gravity would give you an extra quarter inch of stretch in forward bend, gratis. The creaking of the floorboards also covered any straining sounds you or your hamstrings might contribute to class. Life was simple and good.

Then in 1988 our good friend—a remarkable dancer named Karen Steele–told us of a new practice space next to the plumbing shop that was for rent. Good floors, ok location and miles of parking. The building had an interesting history too. It had been an ice house in the early 20’s, then was a meat packing facility and eventually, it became the home for Alcoholics Anonymous in Boulder. This made it not only a place many locals knew about, but it occasionally increased class attendance as someone looking for a place to pass out would stumble in and join us for the corpse pose.

The room was perfect. It was huge and clean, with a brand new wooden floor. It even had its own bathroom! There was enough space to store the large duffle bags full of blankets, straps and blocks that Richard usually stowed in his car between classes. There was a heater, running water and even a lock on the front door. Luxury.

The only drawback was the florescent lighting (which we’ve kept to embarrass newcomers who absent mindedly flip the switch and zap the room with harsh light while trying to sneak into the bathroom during class). So our first major renovation was immediate. We added strings of stage lighting. They clipped onto the ceiling panels and all met at one extension cord that dangled down and plugged into the main outlet near the front door. It was old-style India in décor. That worked great for about five years until an enthusiastic Fire Department employee who was inspecting the studio, required us to dismantle the set up. We unplugged it every time we left from then on until the major renovation that took place a few years later.

Who would have guessed that we’d keep the studio open for so long or that yoga itself would move from the realm of the weird to the fashionable? Certainly not Richard. But here we are, many Surya Namaskaras later, and we’re still jumping back. Maybe it is all an illusion.

As we try to decide whether it’s insane or significant (or something else) that we’ve been in business for a while now, we invite you to help us shed light on it all. If you’ve been a student or teacher at the Yoga Workshop and have an interesting story about some aspect of the studio from the past twenty years, or if you’ve got photos of the studio itself, or of studio events that you’d like to share—we welcome your input. Over the course of the next year, we’ll be making regularly scheduled posts about the twenty years at the studio, and we’ll be including interesting tidbits from within our sangha as part of these posts. Please send short stories, anecdotes, observations or photos to us if you’ve got something you’d like to share and we’ll try to get it posted.

Thanks for your help!