Meet Maren: notes from a decade teaching yoga on the coast

I taught my first class in the back room of a coffee shop in 2014. Eight people came. One of them was my mom. Two of them got up halfway through because the espresso machine was too loud.

It's been a decade. People keep asking me to tell the story, and I keep dodging it, because I don't love the kind of founder story that polishes everything into a clean arc. The honest version is messier.

I almost didn't open the studio

In 2014 I had been teaching out of three rented spaces around town — a church basement on Mondays, a community center on Wednesdays, a friend's garage on Saturdays. A space opened up on Harbor Lane and the landlord, who took my Tuesday class, offered it to me at a rent I could almost afford.

I said no twice.

I said no because I had watched two other small studios in the area open with a lot of love and close eighteen months later. I said no because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life thinking about square footage and HVAC. I said no because I genuinely liked teaching in the church basement.

The thing that changed my mind was a student named Ruth. Ruth was 71 at the time. She had been coming to my Monday class for three years. She told me, after class, that having a real space — a place she could come to any day of the week, not just Mondays — would be the best thing that happened to her since she retired. She wasn't being dramatic. She just meant it.

I signed the lease the next week.

What I've learned

A few things, in no order:

• The students who change your studio aren't the ones who post about it. They're the ones who show up four mornings a week for two years and never miss.
• You cannot teach somebody to be calm. You can give them a room where calm is available and trust them to pick it up.
• Heated rooms are not better. They are just hotter.
• The best instructors are not the ones with the most certifications. They're the ones who notice when someone in the back row is holding their breath.
• If you make the front desk feel like a doctor's office, people will not come back.

Why I still teach the 6am

People ask if I'm going to stop teaching the early classes once we hire more staff. I don't think I will.

The 6am class is where I learn what the studio actually is. The students who come at 6am are the truest version of our community — no tourists, no drop-ins, no one who is trying yoga out. Just the people who built their week around being there.

Plus the light through the front windows at 6:15 in October is the best thing I'll see all day.