By Michael Burke
Journal Times | Posted: Monday, August 4, 2008 12:00 am
RACINE - If you like laughter or sweat with your yoga, Linda Messerschmidt will have a class for you - in Downtown.
Messerschmidt, owner of Your Yoga Lifestyle, will soon move her studio from West Racine to the second floor of 518 College Ave., above Shogun Japanese Restaurant.
The signing of the lease for Messerschmidt marked Downtown's second gain within days. On Friday the Racine Dominicans announced they will open a fair-trade store, coffee shop, and ministry on Sixth Street about Oct. 1.
Your Yoga Lifestyle has been at 3214 Washington Ave. for about the past two years; before that it was near Gateway Technical College. But Messerschmidt said she began looking hard for a place Downtown.
"I'm just excited about the positive energy I feel in the Downtown area," she said, citing street renovations, Lake Michigan, the arts and the frequency of public events. "I just feel the Downtown is the place to be."
Although she will leave behind West Racine's free parking, Messerschmidt said there is ample parking immediately behind the Shogun building, and benefits to the future site including more elbow room. She will roughly quadruple her space from 550 square feet now to more than 2,000.
"Sometimes the room has just been packed," she said. "That starts turning people off a little bit."
Your Yoga Lifestyle has grown to the point that it now has four different instructors, Messerschmidt said. With her move, she plans to expand two of the latest wrinkles in her field: laughter yoga and hot yoga.
Laughter yoga, she said, started in India and is pretty much what it sounds like. "You literally force laughter. Pretty soon everybody is really laughing." It's a great way to shed tension and feel renewed, she said, and will cost only about $5 per person for a session. Some of them will be offered during the noon hour.
Hot yoga is also self-explanatory, explained Messerschmidt, who said she recently began offering it at her present studio. The room is heated to 90-95 degrees and participants perspire freely, cleansing their bodies from the inside out. "You get a great adrenaline rush and energetic feeling afterwards," she said.
Messerschmidt said she sent an e-mail Sunday to 600-plus people on her contact database about her upcoming Downtown move, and the reaction has been all positive so far.
"One person said that they'd always needed an excuse to get Downtown."
For more information call Your Yoga Lifestyle at (262) 880-4044.