For many of our members, their first yoga class is love at first shavasana. But the first time studio owner Jessica walked into an Oxygen Yoga & Fitness studio, she had her doubts.
“A girlfriend convinced me to go there and I pretty much walked in and was like, oh God, this is hot yoga, and I hated hot yoga” Jessica explained. But Jessica decided to tough it out. “I stayed and then, I was like, okay, that wasn’t so bad, so I kept going to more classes.”
This visit to Oxygen Yoga & Fitness wasn’t Jessica’s first foray into yoga. In fact, she started doing yoga because she was focused on weights and strength training and adding a yoga practice to her routine helped with her stretching and stability. Adding yoga to your strength training routine can have these benefits and more, including enhanced breathing during workouts and less muscle soreness. But while Jessica had previously been an athlete, she hadn’t worked in the fitness world. In fact, her previous professional career focused on photography and insurance. Still, as she took more and more classes, at some point Jessica got curious about what it would be take to being instructor.
“It kind of snowballed into what would it be to open a studio and then it just kind of went from there,” Jessica explained. While she was once pessimistic about hot yoga, now Jessica is a dual studio owner of both the Edgemont and Windermere Oxygen Yoga & Fitness studios, both of whose schedules you’ll find packed with heated classes. For Jessica, it was the infrared heat that made all the difference.
“I really like the infrared” Jessica explains. She describes, “I felt claustrophobic when I did hot yoga before. I just felt like it was just like hot air pumping on me all the time.. and I didn’t like that. And so I found the infrared it a lot easier to handle.” Infrared, unlike other hot yoga classes, heats the room naturally without blowing dry air or humidity. It’s also thought to come with a long list of health benefits. Jessica’s favorite classes to take now are the tone and sculpt or power yoga and her favorite to teach are power yoga or total body conditioning.
While the infrared heat was a major reason Jessica fell in love with Oxygen Yoga & Fitness, it wasn’t the only one. She also mentions the community as a draw towards her new career. Jessica explains she has lots of friends that attend Oxygen Yoga & Fitness, so even on off days she’ll find herself stopping by other Oxygen Yoga & Fitness studios than hers to take classes. It’s also clear that Jessica’s passionate about her members having a similar experience.
When asked what she hopes members get out of their time in the studio, Jessica says “to be part of our Oxygen family.” She makes efforts in areas big and small to make this happen, like learning member names and getting to know them. Jessica continues “I feel like they feel it’s nice to go into a place and feel welcomed and feel like it’s, you know, your second home and that you know people there, then they I find that when when people are friendly and communicating that other people open up and then friendships are built, not just with me and my members, but with members and other members themselves.”
The members inspire Jessica with their consistency. As an example, she explains “right now with the warrior 21 challenge I see them all come in every day, making sure they’re getting their stickers on the board.. some of them doing two classes a day, just them putting in the work, it makes it makes me pretty proud.”
All of this doesn’t happen without a lot of hard work on Jessica’s end. With the studio at Edgemont having just opened, Jessica explains “I’m pretty much at Edgemont 24 seven in the evenings, and then I still show up in the mornings just to kind of I’ll do a class or just to kind of hang out and meet my morning crew there. And then weekends same thing like I’ll take Saturdays off, usually to be up my family and then Sundays I’m back out here in the morning.”
The thing Jessica is most proud of in her Oxygen Yoga & Fitness journey? “Just how far we’ve come with the Windermere location” she shares. “COVID did a number on everybody right? So it wasn’t it wasn’t doing, it didn’t have the numbers, it wasn’t doing it as good as it should have been doing. And so, um I worked really hard and my team worked really hard over the past year and a half to get it up to being one of the best studios in Alberta, so that’s that’s something I’m pretty proud of.”
Jessica credits patience with being essential to making this happen and also says having patience is her biggest advice to anyone considering opening their own studio. As for what she’s learned over the process?
“That I am capable of doing it,” Jessica responds. “You know, I was a little nervous, running, taking on the two studios. Um, but I proven to myself that, um, especially with the help that I have behind me, my team that um we can do really great things.”
If you want to experience the community Jessica has built first hand, you can find it at the Windermere or Edgemont studio. Follow the studio to find upcoming events, like the Thai and Yoga massage and soundbath they had the first week of december, or the winter solstice workshop. And if you want to experience the greatness of Infrared Heat for yourself, give it a try at a location near you.
