When Marco Rojas suddenly left YogaWorks and the teachers and management wouldn’t say where he went, I felt startlingly abandonded.

I had become very attached to this extraordinary yoga teacher who consistently delivers challenging classes peppered with a deftly dropped, “Where do you have to let go?”

YogaWorks practices bad kharma

It turned out that YogaWorks let him go when he told them he was signing up with Pure Yoga. They never gave him a chance to say good bye to us and even more surprising, the three staff people I queried had obviously been instructed to play dumb about where he went.

Not to be outdone, I started sniffing around the internet to find him because even though I really liked a couple of the other instructors, namely Arana Shapiro, I really wanted access to Marco.

I found Marco at Ishta Yoga and finally got to ask the big question. When he told me he’d signed up to teach thirteen classes a week at a spiffy, brand new, Upper East Side yoga studio, I had a decision to make.

I live and work near Columbus Circle and knew that taking the bus and/or subway to 86th between 2nd and 3rd would be a forty-five minute trip in each direction. I could not afford that much commute time just for a ninety-minute yoga class.

So I bought a spiffy, brand new folding bike so I could get there in fifteen minutes.

Pure Yoga gives me an icy welcome

On my first day at Pure Yoga, I folded my nifty bike outside, carried it up six steps to reception and got instructions to go downstairs to get my ID card. Here I encountered my first big disappointment.

The entrance to the space is peaceful and serene, but you have to descend to enter. I had a visceral reaction to having to go below ground to do yoga.

The neutral beige tones and suspicious, rain-forest-looking wood stairs are both appealing and scary. I connect all things yoga with harmony, respect and self-responsibility. If these stately, thick stairs really did come out to the rain forest, I’m already sad.

Leave your bike outside…hmmm…..but this is Manhattan
So I descend down another twenty-two stairs to the spare front desk and encounter management. The woman who checked my registration couldn’t have been nicer.

However, when I asked about my bike, neatly folded into a package slightly larger than a briefcase, the manager welcomed me to lock it outside on the bike rack because no one is allowed to bring anything into the studio.

Now, either this manager had just moved to Manhattan five minutes ago, or he didn’t give a rat’s ass about this brand new customer who just walked in to the brand new facility that has already started waiving their “initiation” fees.

Anybody with half a dozen brain cells knows that a bike left locked on the streets of New York City lasts as long as it takes to whip out a foot-long bolt-cutter or, if the thief happened to forget them, forget ever seeing the seat and quick-release tires again or anything else that’s not welded on.

I was unimpressed.

He said I was welcome to leave it in the locker room if it fit in the locker. Doh! Jeez, they forgot to design the lockers to accommodate bikes! Oops.

I saw the peacemaker, Marco, who blew off this rigid manager and said to leave it in the fire escape where it would be out of everyone’s way.

I told the manager what Marco suggested. He immediately went into a whole speech about the million dollar law suit that was sure to follow when someone got hurt on my folded up bike.

Now, really. Here is a bike that compacts into a 21″ x 11″ x 22″ COVERED package. It’s inconceivable that someone could figure out a way to “get hurt” on my folded bike tucked into the corner of the stairwell.

He then said he’d call division management to discuss the issue and would get back to me. He never did. Should I be surprised?

Now on to the other really big disappointments.

Tiny studios packed like sardines…”restriced” policies a joke

Not only are the studios all tiny, but their policy about limiting students is a joke. The membership salesman sold me on joining when he said they limit the number of students in each class by pre-placing mats on the floor.

Huh?

The mats are 5″ apart from each other IN EVERY DIRECTION!!! It’s appalling. I was willing to leave YogaWorks was because I couldn’t stand how crowded Marco’s classes became.

Pure Yoga is worse. And I didn’t think this was possible.

Who wants to do a sun salute with your neighbor’s torso no more than 24″ away to your right and left? A floor twist with arms outstretched? Are you kidding?

And here’s another thing. The rooms are broken up by these giant, square columns. Architecturally, I can’t imagine that these small rooms in a building that is maybe four stories (two underground, one or two above???) need GIANT columns in the middle of the small studios. It makes no sense. It breaks up the flow because a third of the students can’t see the intructor at any given time.

And yet another thing. The beautiful locker room sinks have faucets that spill water into a small corner. When you wash your hands, you can’t help but splash water onto the counter. What designer thought this was cool?

A last point. Back to respect and harmony in a yoga practice. I think yoga studios more than any other facility should express kindness to the earth. With abject contempt for conservation, Pure Yoga places giant, rolled up towels at each mat.

Theoretically, these towels are washed and dried after each use – or each class? What extraordinary waste. If the towels were half the size, they would still be excessive. Pure Yoga does not need to waste the water, the energy or the manpower to clean all this towel volume.

If they needed to provide giant towels for the shower rooms, fine. But for each person to have a towel to wipe her face? Heck, a face cloth could do.

I prefer the spaces at the Upper West Side’s YogaWorks and even the Ishta Yoga to the snooty Pure Yoga rooms. But since I really am attached to Marco’s teaching method, I’m venting and accepting the reality.

Solutions to improve the Pure Yoga experience

Here are four simple changes Pure Yoga could make to alter the experience from aggravating to pacifying:

1) Space out the mats. Start the calming of the mind instantly when we walk in the room with space to breathe. New York is already crowded enough. Do this or start advertising “Sardine Yoga.”

2) Get rid of the towels in the room on each mat. It’s great to offer us towels, but find smaller ones and offer them to us on the way in.

3) Encourage people to bike over and make a secure place for bikes. It’s good for the earth, it’s good exercise, and it welcomes a lot more of Manhattan to this inconvenient location.

4) When you build another facility, think “open rooms, open body, open mind.” Don’t break up a space with those awful columns.