Strengthen Your Studio: A conversation with Brendan Gibbons of Devotion Yoga

If you've been thinking to yourself that there might be a few small things you could do to improve the finances at your yoga studio, you'll be hard pressed to find a better way to spend 30 minutes than by listening to this conversation with Brendan Gibbons of Devotion Yoga.

Brendan shares a slew of great tips that can help your studio - ranging from customer service at the front desk, pairing down your pricing options, and focusing on memberships. Brendan has helped Devotion Yoga more than triple their memberships and has helped put them on a more solid footing and you can do the exact same thing with your studio with a bit of intention.

Check out the discussion below, or subscribe to the Strengthen your studio podcast in iTunes.

Building a beautiful website for your yoga studio with Squarespace and Tula Software

I've been wanting to do this for a while now: a casual walkthrough of how to set up the initial infrastructure and framework for your website. In this video I walk through how you can use Squarespace and Tula Software to build a great looking website where your customers can view your calendar, sign up for events, make payments and manage their accounts - all while staying on your website.

Check out the video below:

Introducing Series Registration

We're really excited to announce another update to our registrations system today - the ability for students to register for an entire series of events.

Prior to today people could either register for an individual event via the calendar, or they could make a purchase via our payment forms, and then register for the classes that pass is good for. Registering for a group of events however - such as a course like a beginners series - was sub-optimal for students and occasionally confusing for studio owners.

Now every event series you create, whether it's a regular class or a special event, will come with a dedicated series registration widget and link. Just like with individual classes you determine whether payment is required or not, and we handle the purchase options accordingly.

How it works

To begin using this new feature, you simply create a series of events as usual. Now however you'll see a new link when viewing the Event Series page that says "Series Registration". Clicking that link will expose a registration widget and link just like we provide for custom payment forms and calendars. In other words, using the same pattern you're already familiar with.

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Copy/paste the link for quick access, or embed the widget into your website for a custom feel.

Guest access and logged in access

Of course, this wouldn't be a feature built by Tula if we didn't go to great lengths to ensure that both returning students with accounts, and new students without accounts, could both interact seamlessly with everything. Whether payment is required or optional, and whether your student is logged in or not, they can quickly and easily sign up and make a payment without ever leaving your website.

We're thrilled to be able to provide this new powerful feature for those of you that have been asking for it, and check out the short video below to see the full feature in action.

NamasDay Weekend Recap

We had the good fortune of sponsoring the NamasDay festival in West Chester, PA last weekend, and as is often the case with yoga festivals, I walked away with a new perspective on a number of things while learning, and re-learning, a number of lessons. 

The importance of connecting individual lessons

I started Saturday off with an hour of the Acro Yoga workshop taught by Lex Peters. About 30 minutes into the class though I realized it was being taught in a way that allowed the students to experience AcroYoga in a more advanced way than we otherwise would have been able to do. The thing he was doing is that each time we learned something new, he would connect it to the previous thing we had just learned.

So over the course of 3 or 4 moves, you practiced the first one 8 times, the second 6, the third 4, and so on. And so the result is that as you were learning new moves, the things you learned earlier were simultaneously being reinforced. To draw it, it would look like this:

What was powerful about this though is that it allowed me to, for a moment, experience AcroYoga in a way I hadn't before: as a fluid connection of moves. I'd only ever felt that 'flow' in a vinyasa class, but getting a glimpse of it with Acro was a real joy. 

That one hour changed what I thought I might be able to do should I choose to explore this part of practice more.

Transformations in my hips

I often have experiences at yoga festivals that I consider transformative. Not necessarily in a big grandiose way, but what I mean is that I have marked experiences that change the way I look at or feel about something. When this happens in such a way that you feel it in your body, the experience is stronger. At the NamasDay weekend this experience came to me by way of Marni Scarloff's two hour hip-opener class. 

I love hip-openers because of the emotional release they provide. Someone else in class joked that they'd be over in the corner crying most of the class. And so with this being a 2 hour hip opener class I fully expected it to be one where I might be a little emotional and get a bit weepy in pidgeon pose. 

And while this happened, something else happened too.

I ended up having the good luck of being Marni's demonstration prop for pigeon pose. After watching me do pigeon pose on my own, I raised up and she had me start entering into it again. But this time she began making super tiny adjustments all over my body from the very beginning. A slight modification in my foot, straightening my leg, moving my shoulder, raising my arms. All over my whole body, tiny tiny modifications. And I hadn't even started to bend forward over my knee yet.

All of this was taking strength. It was hard. And I was thinking, pigeon pose was always an intense but effortless pose for me. Yet here I was this time sweating from the effort.

And that's when it hit me: That with the right modifications, the source of our struggle is also the source of our strength. That where we are weak, we can become strong. That where we feel pain, we can find joy. That the light can come from the same place as the darkness.

My physical body seems to have absorbed this lesson, and the feeling I have in my hips now is less sorrow and more power.

The name of the class was Transformative Hip-Openers - which is more spot on than I could have realized.

The importance of counterposes

I ended the day with a celebratory class led by Leo Rising, Alex Auder and Noah Julian. But my lesson this time came not during the class itself which was wonderful (This crew gave some of the best adjustments I've felt), but instead came at the cocktail party after. 

A few of us were hanging out talking and all of a sudden Leo says something to the effect of "I'm sorry....but sometimes you just need to get a counterpose in there!"

It was one of those things where my mind instantly re-focuses on something. Counterposes, yes! Why are these counterposes so important? What happens without them? Why does this seem to be such an important insight?

We know the answer almost intuitively.

If you're doing a twist in one direction, and you keep pushing and pushing and pushing, without ever offering a counter-pose, not only do you feel off-balance you actually feel some pain in the direction you were going. It's not that the twist in the one direction is bad - it's that by itself it's incomplete.

I started wondering, where else in our lives might we need more counterposes, and what might they look like?

A reminder to try something new

We ended the night with some fun at Johnny Gillespie's house, founder of Empowered Yoga. In his basement he keeps what essentially amounts to a full on cross-fit gym. With weights, bars and dumbbells aplenty, people started messing around with the equipment just a bit. A couple of us hung on the horizontal bar hanging from the ceiling.

When I did this, my lower back released instantly. Full on cracking and opening all within my lower back.

We evolved from a species that can climb trees, and yet it had been years since I felt the full weight of my body being supported by my hands. Johnny quipped that he got a kick out of yogi's that were so able to feeling their bodies, but who rarely took the time to feel what it feels like to hold a five pound weight over their heads.

It reminded me that for as much benefit as yoga provides, I enjoy the occasional thing that's different. This combined with the Acro Yoga lesson has me wanting to try out some more arial and acrobatic things I've had on my mind for a while, and that trying something new can feel very good indeed.

Effort first, payoff later

And of course the lesson I always learn at these events is how much work and effort putting these things on takes, but that ultimately it seems very rewarding and worthwhile. Mary, Becca, Carly and everyone at Philly Area Yoga and the NamasDay festival are a constant inspiration for what a small group of people can accomplish. We're so happy they continue to involve us with their festival, and if you're looking to check out a wonderful event I highly recommend it.

We'll be back in Philly for their Spring event - we hope to see some of you there!

Introducing Apple Watch Registrations

There are a couple big promises we've made to our customers. Namely that we would always strive to put them and their needs ahead of ours, and that as technology advanced we would keep up in a way that benefited them.

Exactly a year ago today we announced custom iPhone applications for our customers. We wanted studios to have an option to have their own app in the App Store, so their students could have a direct connection to them. We believe today, like we believed then, that companies like mindbody who are working hard to become marketplaces, are working to turn your beautiful studio into a commodity.

We want to give our customers, and their students, something different.

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When you consider what happens from the time you think about going to a yoga class, to the time you go to class, there are still actually a number of steps. You check your availability, look up the studio schedule, and possibly register. This is of course easily done with our iPhone apps, but how could it be easier?

How could we make something that might result in people doing more yoga?  How might people get the idea to go to yoga more often, and commit to going, more quickly? And not yoga just anywhere, but specifically at your studio.

After wearing the Apple Watch, I immediately felt it's screen was the most valuable screen-real-estate of any device I owned. One of the reasons we made the white-label app is we wanted to make something so good and so useful, that people would feel compelled to put it on their home screens.

What could we make such that people would want to put it on their watches?

The answer was clear almost immediately. The very first thing I wanted to be able to see on the Apple Watch, that I could not, was the ability to view the schedule at Tula Yoga Studio. How great I thought, if I could always see the next class time. What if every time I glanced at my watch, I was also gently reminded of the next class at the studio I go to? 

As time based events, a yoga class is the perfect information to display on a watch face. 

I am beyond thrilled to announce today that all of our customers with a custom iPhone app, will all be receiving an Apple Watch app as well. Moving forward, the Mudra plan will come with not just a custom iPhone app for your students, but also a custom watch app. 

This app allows your students to not only view your schedule, but also register for class with a tap of the screen. It's beautifully frictionless for your students, and it is our finest interpretation of how software should empower your studio and put you and your brand front and center.

We're still making a few small design updates and getting a few final things ready for the rollout, but we knew now was the time to share this with you. We hope you love it as much as we do.

There is no additional cost, and submissions will begin rolling out over the next two weeks. Check out the video below to see it in action.

Your own icon on the watch! Check out the Tula Swirls!