the yoga studio that used to be a nightclub

and the impossible made possible

Autumn has arrived here on the South Coast, abruptly and unexpectedly in the middle of a heatwave. I’ve been hot and sweaty for so long now I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to be cold.

Every year it’s the same. You’d think I’d learn but I dont. Summer seems to go on forever and I walk around in a slightly sweaty daze, never thinking about the piles of sweaters that lie abandoned in the back of the closet. It seems ridiculous that I would ever need them.

Yesterday I woke up and it was 9 degrees.

I start thinking about the wood that needs chopping. I’ve promised Rod this is the year I learn how to chop wood myself. I’m mentally preparing myself. I’ve been doing my weights and practicing my swing. I feel for my shins and all the wood splinters that will probably fly into them, but I’m determined. Wood needs to be chopped and I need to learn.

The memories of spending most of the time freezing come flooding back.

My good friend Emmie lives in Japan. It’s minus 4 here she tells me. I feel very silly complaining about 9 degrees. And we’re still in February. It’s literally still Summer, but these are the things that play on my mind.

The other thing that has snuck up on me is how late the sun is rising. I teach the 6am classes at the studio and in December the entire studio is awash with light. Now we enter in the dark and the sun rises with us. Soon the candles will be the only light.

As many of you know, the studio resides in a quirky old building next to what used to be ‘Birdland’, a dilapidated, rather creepy animal park that went into liquidation at the end of last year. A cloud of mystery surrounds the Soul Tribe building, and the Birdland plot.

When I first bought the studio from Danni way back in 2018, there were no questions asked. She gave me the number of the real estate, told me how much the rent was and where to pay and left. I’m not a very detail oriented person (except when it comes to long rambling stories) so I didn’t ask any questions. I just nodded and smiled and stuffed cash in an envelope each month and took it, by hand, to a little office in Batemans Bay.

One day the real estate asked to have a meeting with me. I sat barefoot on the hard chair with my feet curled under me like I always do and they commented on my strange seated position and made some reference to yoga as people always do. I had the distinct feeling that no one was taking me seriously, which was probably because I wasn’t sure if it was taking myself seriously.

In those early days I would wake up every day and remind myself ‘you’ve taken over a business. You own a business. With a building. You’re renting a building. You own a yoga studio. You have a lease’ It seemed so bizarre because it was the last thing I ever thought I’d be doing.

The thing was though, there was no lease. I was always on a rolling month to month agreement because the building was on Crown Land and commercial leases weren’t allowed. My original landlord explained it to me. The real estate explained it to me. It still didn’t make much sense, but as it wasn’t affecting me I nodded and smiled and went along with it. I actually liked not having a lease. I liked having no commitment. ‘At least I’m not tied into anything’ I always told myself. If the whole thing fails (which I was pretty sure it might) at least I can just leave, get back in my van and keep driving.

I bought the studio with no formal agreement, no handover, no lease. Things have always been ‘different’.

I dont know when the studio building was first built.

I do know that in the early 90’s, my husband Rod went to the studio, then called ‘Bensons Nightclub’ with a borrowed ID, wearing a patterned shirt that he still owns with $10 in his pocket, hoping to be let in for free by his friends who worked there. My other friend tells me she had her first proper kiss in the corridor. From the stories I hear it was a seedy place, thick with cigarette smoke with carpets that stuck to cheap high heels, not unlike the clubs I used to frequent in Hereford between the ages of 16 - 22.

When I’m lying on the studio floor in between classes staring up at the ceiling which is a common pastime I like to imagine the disco lights and smoke machines.

When the nightclubs and restaurants closed the building disappeared into anonymity for many years until a young woman with a vision and a whole lot of determination (not me!!) breathed life into it again.

When Danni took over the ‘lease that wasn’t a lease’ the building had been converted into drab offices. I have no idea how she did it, but she convinced the man who owned the building (and also owned most of Batemans Bay) to rent it to her and allow her to renovate it and turn it into what you see today. If Danni hadn’t of done that, Soul Tribe wouldn’t exist.

Everything has its cycles and everyone has their part to play. She was the creative force, the Saraswati element, the ideas person. She knew how to design a space. She knew what worked. It wasn’t her calling to sustain Soul Tribe as a business, so the studio closed a few months after she opened and thats where I come in.

I ‘just happened’ to be passing through Batemans Bay at the exact time she realised she had to let it go. It was 2018 which feels like another life. Life pre-soul tribe. I can barely remember how that felt. She asked me if I’d take it on. Of course I said yes even though neither of us knew what I was saying yes to.

The building has a diverse, colourful history. There are many rumours and numerous speculation on the legitimacy of the building and the crown lease, but whatever has happened in the past I feel confident that for the last seven years Soul Tribe has been a haven for community. I hesitate to even use the word community because it’s become such a cliche but it’s true.

For me, community means a group of people who support each other and gather regularly with shared and diverse interests and have each others wellbeing as a driving motivational force to keep gathering.

This is what happens.

People fall in love with the space. They want to support it. Their unique gifts are revealed. I have a student who has a gift for growing, arranging and taking care of plants. She creates the beautiful arrangements you see all over the studio.

Another student brings flowers to every class. They sit beside me and the other teachers, shining their faces towards ours. This is her way of showing love.

Another student comes in early and even though I tell her to relax, if she notices the prop cupboard is a disaster she’ll take time to meticulously fold each blanket and stack the pillows in matching piles.

I notice the friendships that are formed between students, the little gifts people leave each other on the front desk, the plans that are made after class and the care that is shown.

I didn’t ‘organise’ any of this. It just happens. When people love a space and care about its wellbeing, this devotion comes through.

I am in turn devoted to the space and the students. I’ve made a commitment to keep the classes consistent. I will never cancel a class. Of course, things are always evolving, but the core timetable is the core timetable. The timetable has tripled since I first took over in 2018. When I first started I taught all of the classes. Every single one. Now we have 16 teachers.

I do everything I can to ensure our students are looked after. I’m always thinking about and creating ways to gather, above and beyond the regular timetable.

I dont do this because I think I should, or I think its what people want, or because its ‘good business’ (most of the things I do make zero strategic business sense).

I do it because it comes as naturally to me as breathing. I know it’s what I’m here to do. I cant not do it (which scares me sometimes).

I do sometimes think, what would I do, who would I be without the studio. How would I cope.

So much of my identity is tied up with Soul Tribe and I used to think that was ‘bad’ and I needed to seperate ‘me’ from the studio but I thankfully came to my senses and realised ‘OF COURSE WE TIED UP. WE ARE EACH OTHER. WE CANT BE SEPARATED’.

Sometimes people ask me about franchising or hiring more behinds the scenes support or delegating more, and sure, there are probably lots of things that I could do more effectively BUT.

I’ve always said no to outsourcing. I dont want someone else to do the social media. I dont want to give these email newsletters away. I dont want AI to do the work for me. This means that things are a bit messy and the instagram grid is all over the place and I send things out with the wrong dates and there’s typos and when I’m ovulating there’s 1736 posts a day and when I’m pre-bleed its crickets but I dont care.

The important heart work always gets done. Things always work out, somehow, impossibly sometimes.

I also love teaching classes and I want to teach as much as possible. I dont have a goal to teach less. If anything, I have a goal to teach more! In studios I used to teach at in Sydney, I’d hear the owners say ‘I’m pulling back from teaching group classes, I’m focusing on the business’ and I always thought that was strange.

What I love more than anything is teaching. Teaching classes is my favourite part of this whole thing so why would I want to give that up. Teaching classes isn’t some cute thing on the side, it’s everything. So yes, I’ll always teach what some people consider a ridiculous amount of classes per week.

I’ve always done things a little differently. Soul Tribe will always be a bit different.

In the heat of summer I asked Rod to open the windows in the studio that were ‘mysteriously’ drilled shut. ‘I cant believe it’s taken me 6 years to do this’ I cried.

This morning as the chill set in and I tried to close said windows, of course they wouldn’t close. I called him up at 7 in the morning. Ummm, please can you drill those windows shut again?

I could tell by his voice that he was in the middle of something but he came anyway and sped into the carpark in his white ute with the big wheels and in five seconds the job was done.

So, this is my love letter to 57 Beach Road, the quirky soul tribe building with its ornate high ceilings and triangular windows, light switches in the most random of places, thousands of old internet ports and the most delightful sunny courtyard always covered in She Oak needles. I love you. Thank the Goddess you’re not a new build.

(And thank you to Rod for always being there. And thank to my epic team of teachers. And thank you to all of our wonderful students paying memberships and paying for classes who in turn allow me to pay the rent, pay our teachers, pay the electricity, internet, rates, water, mindbody subscriptions, buy new equipment, keep the toilet paper stocked, keep the (very important) tea cabinet stocked, keep us in candles and incense, get the sewage pumped out, fix the potholes in the carpark, paint the walls, attend to the myriad of things that break and pay my taxes, without you, none of this would happen and Soul Tribe wouldn’t last very long. Thank you, thank you, thank you, a million thank yous. I’m so grateful.

I’ll leave you with this quote from Terrence McKenna (shared by

The Broad Place

)

“Nature loves courage. You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by removing impossible obstacles. Dream the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under, it will lift you up. This is the trick. This is what all these teachers and philosophers who really counted, who really touched the alchemical gold, this is what they understood. This is the shamanic dance in the waterfall. This is how magic is done. By hurling yourself into the abyss and discovering it's a feather bed.”

~

come practice with me at Soul Tribe Studio, Yuin Country, Far South Coast NSW