New Orleans Yoga Tour

In New Orleans, you can get your yoga spicy or mild, and it's all good.

By Colleen Morton

Maybe because the average temperature and humidity from May until sometime in late September hovers around 90 degrees, few yoga classes in New Orleans deliberately turn up the heat. A unique, small-town city that doesn't like to push itself, it expertly models the mantra Relax. Cool off. Watch the world go by, and is consequently a perfect place for yoga. New Orleans isn't fussy about names either—unless you're distinguishing between, say, crawfish etouffee and a crawfish boil—and the range of styles and approaches to yoga in New Orleans reflects that laid-back manner, with few teachers defining themselves by one style or school.

Yoga classes are available in most neighborhoods, in a range of places—fitness centers, hotels, churches, universities, parks, private homes—but the three main New Orleans studios are all located within a few blocks of Carrollton Avenue, a main artery that runs from the Mississippi on the southern border of the city to the centrally located City Park.

The streetcar, which runs along St. Charles Avenue, passing elaborate estates, Tulane University, and Audubon Park before turning up Carrollton, will take you a short walk away from one of the city's longtime teachers: Alvina. Alvina has been a figure on the New Orleans yoga scene for 27 years, and teaches out of a studio she built above a chiropractor's office on Oak Street. Alvina's background as a ballet dancer is evident in the bar and mirrors on the walls (which help her and her students keep an eye on their alignment, "checking but not making judgments"). Her background as a painter and folk art collector show too in her appreciation of teaching yoga as "painting with people. My yoga has always come from the same place my art does: looking, seeing things freshly." Diagnosed with systemic lupus 30 years ago, Alvina is particularly sensitive to the therapeutic possibilities of yoga, and to the view of yoga postures as part of a dynamic flow. "I used to think I was digging for the perfect image," she says, "but everything is always shifting." Alvina teaches Monday through Saturday at her studio, and most classes are open to drop-ins. She also leads a popular retreat annually to San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. Late in the evening, you can return to Oak Street to witness local blues guitar phenomenon John Mooney at the Maple Leaf.

Laura Ates, founder of the New Orleans Yoga Center, has been around about as long as Alvina, and the two both tell entertaining stories about their attempts to introduce yoga in New Orleans when yoga still needed an introduction—to the board members of hospitals, universities, hotels, police, naval stations, the YMCA—and before they had studios of their own. Ates has been practicing yoga since her grandfather taught her to meditate at age 13, and teaching for 29 years. She runs both the mid-city and uptown branches of her center, where she and her small staff of four teachers offer a variety of classes—from Power to "Rhythm" Yoga, and an ongoing series in the "Yoga of Visual Art." Ates's explicit goal is to "celebrate the intuitive arts," and the vibe at this down-to-earth center is indeed creativity and warmth. The center offers workshops, a Spirit in Music concert series, a weekly Monday night chanting class (at the uptown Crown Center), and a well-attended once-a-month Sunday Chant & Tea at the mid-city Heart Center, led by Se·n Johnson. After class, stop at PJ's Coffee and Tea on Carrollton to sample one of their delicious daily brews over ice.

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