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Health & Fitness

Thirty Day Yoga Challenge Underway at Sacred Brooklyn

Bed-Stuy yogis practice for thirty days straight at Sacred Brooklyn.

Every night since the beginning of 2012, an army of smiling, stranger-greeting mat-luggers has poured into the doors of Sacred, a yoga and movement studio on Clifton Place between Franklin and Greene.

They diligently fill the studio’s hot room, where the temperature is turned up to an astounding one hundred and five degrees Fahrenheit and the humidity can reach forty percent. Shamelessly lining up mat beside mat, sweat dripping all over the room and each other, the faithful power through a series of 26 yoga postures for ninety arduous minutes. Their teacher-guides are firm, yet loving and patient, inspiring laughter and infusing a sense of playfulness into every class.

Many of those filling Sacred during this time have committed to a thirty day challenge in which they must complete a month of consecutive yoga classes in January. One must make alterations in scheduling and judiciously guard one’s nutritional intake to accommodate daily practice. At the successful completion of the challenge, a student can expect a healthier, leaner body, more conscious eating habits, and a calmer, happier mind.

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Sacred opened not quite a year ago and offers heated Vinyasa yoga in addition to its signature classes, which are partially inspired by Bikram Choudhury's method.  The studio also offers sensual movement classes for women, pole classes, hip-hop dance, and capoeira for kids. In some ways, its clientele mimics stereotypical yoga studio demographics: i.e. the students are mostly female.

However, among the clientele of many other yoga studios or membership-based centers of fitness I’ve experienced, people of color are scarce. Fascinatingly, at Sacred, there is a multitude of students of color who are among the faithful - much more accurately representing the majority non-white composition of our city.

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I suspect that has something to with how the space feels: unpretentious, oozing soul and attitude. It’s a vibrant place where students are truly encouraged to bring their true selves to the yoga, honor it, and then work hard to evolve from there.

As a participant, experiencing a room full of novice and advanced, black and white, fat, and skinny yogis and yoginis literally sweating through a process that encourages a healthy body, love, acceptance, gratitude, and responsibility in the middle of Bed-Stuy feels like an absolute boon to this community.

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