Come fall, the people of Scotts Addition will have a place to practice their rocket yoga. What you’re not up on the latest trend? Come on Richmond I thought you were “hip.”
Come fall, the people of Scotts Addition will have a place to practice their rocket yoga. What you’re not up on the latest trend? Come on Richmond I thought you were “hip.”
Adrian McCavitt and Lauren Davis will open their own yoga studio, The Yoga Dojo at 1219 Highpoint Ave. in Scotts Addition in October, which will focus on Rocket Yoga.
McCavitt and Davis, both trained at Asta Yoga in San Francisco, the home base of “Rocket,” and up until recently, taught yoga at Shockoe Slip Yoga. The pair have been dreaming to teach their poses to others for a few years now.
“Really the only reason why we created the yoga studio is because we wanted to have Rocket Yoga in Richmond, which wasn’t represented, it’s a style that was created in San Francisco,” McCavitt said.
Rocket is a form of Vinyasa, which is a movement between poses in yoga. It was launched in the 1980s by Larry Schultz in California and is a spin on Ashtanga Vinyasa, but without all the restrictions. A more modified version more or less. Schultz’s yoga was first called “Rocket Yoga” by Bob Weir of The Grateful Dead, because Weir said, “It gets you there faster.”
Students are encouraged to make their own interpretation of the traditional asana and can remove or modify binding postures that tend to cause students to get stuck in the traditional series, according to The Yoga Dojo’s website.
“It’s the original Vinyasa, but instead of asking yogis to form to this style of yoga we’re forming the style of yoga to each individual yogi so there’s tons of modifications which is the point of the Rocket,” Mccavitt said. “There’s so much room for self-interpretation.”
The two put the moves in motion about a year ago and leased the 1,000 square-foot space at the corner of Highpoint Avenue and Marshall in July. Davis and McCavitt are currently in the construction phase and renovating the inside for their October opening.
The Yoga Dojo will feature a 900 square-foot main yoga studio for classes and then a small space for retail to sell tee shirts, tank tops and other apparel. Davis said The Yoga Dojo will have a couple classes on the schedule for beginners. The majority of classes will be “all levels”. The studio will offer four classes during the week, morning classes on Saturday and a morning and evening class on Sunday.
McCavitt, 33, lives in the neighborhood and was walking his girlfriend’s dog one day and he saw the space and reached out to Davis, who also lives in the area, to see if she would be interested in setting up shop there.
“We walked in and fell in love,” said 34-year-old Davis.
The space has been empty for more than a few months, but was previously Hong Kong Custom Tailor which has since moved across the street.
Davis, who has a degree from VCU, has been steadily putting all her efforts into The Yoga Dojo, but she also works full time over at Light Tape in Scotts Addition. McCavitt is now spending all his time working to get The Yoga Dojo up and running.
McCavitt traveled back and forth from Seattle to Richmond for a while before finally settling here 12 years ago to teach at Shockoe Slip Yoga the past few years. The two met each other through mutual friends quite some time ago and eventually reunited through yoga.
“Lauren came in and took one of my Rocket classes,” he said. “A year later she’s been there every single day.”
Rocket yoga may be on the rise in California and other places, but not so much locally.
“That {Shockoe Slip} was where the Rocket was contained,” McCavitt said. “In Richmond the only people that are teaching Rocket are Lauren and myself.”
To say McCavitt was dedicated to perfecting his craft is quite the understatement.
“I started practicing yoga a few years ago and it was all self-taught,” he said. “I read and studied anatomy books and practiced hours and hours a day, I pretty much locked myself in room and did nothing but practice,” he said.
From there, he wanted to take it to the next level.
“What I really wanted to do was give back by teaching it to people,” he said.
And the style is catching on according to Mccavitt from practicing gymnasts to professional ballerina and experienced yogis all the way to people who have never stepped foot in a yoga class.
“The Rocket fits for all of them,” he said. “The community we have really been seeing grow is two schools of people poking their heads in the doors just trying to find out what it’s all about because unique style and then people really familiar with yoga and really dedicated to high level forms of yoga as well.”
And you may need to be a tad familiar with yoga in general, but the two say they will gradually get you where you need to be.
“We teach from the ground up you do not have to be able to touch your toes or any comprehension of a hand stand, we’ll get you there,” added Davis.
And with yoga studios popping up in RVA faster than you can say go into “downward dog”, one wonders why the duo picked Scotts Addition.
“I grew up right across the street on Kensington for a long time and my girlfriend and I live at the preserves now,” Mccavitt said. “This is our hood this is all local to us, it doesn’t have that vanilla shell retail vibe which is what we want.”
When they open The Yoga Dojo in October, Mccavitt and Davis will be the two main teachers along with their friend Mackenzie Cherry teaching primary series on Sundays.
The studio will offer monthly unlimited memberships, five, 10, and 20 class packs and drop in classes. The first class will be free and there will be membership deals the first month.
And as far as their favorite position? Yoga wise that is…Mccavitt said he enjoys handstands or a hand balance variation. For Davis, it’s the deep backbends or inverted deep backbends like Scorpions.
Check out their crazy poses and follow the progress of The Yoga Dojo on their social media pages @adrian_mccavitt and @flowwithlo
