The Funky Buddha Yoga Hothouse is getting flexible, and not just the yogi’s who attend. This December, Chris and Karrie Reinbold, founders of the The Funky Buddha, will stretch their business to Holland.
The Funky Buddha Yoga Hothouse, located in the Boland building at 1331 Lake Drive in Eastown, is a yoga studio where attendees (referred to as yogis) practice yoga in a 95 degree heated room.
Larissa Link, a yoga instructor at The Funky Buddha Hothouse, says once yoga found her, she never looked back. She took the assistant teaching class shortly after attending her first Funky Buddha class and hasn’t stopped moving forward. Link will be the yoga coordinator for the Holland location.
Link explains that the idea of the heat is that if you see the body as glass, when you heat glass, it is very moldable and shapeable and that’s what the heat does for the body, allowing yogis to find new space in their poses.
To those who are not familiar with yoga, Link explains, “The idea of yoga is to mold your body from the inside out – there’s no right or wrong. It’s the idea of making yourself into your own creation, and the heat adds that element of moldability. And it’s also the power vinyasa flow – you sweat a lot and get out lots of toxins. And that’s one of the benefits of hot yoga.”
She adds, “Yoga is more of a lifestyle. It’s not just an exercise to go to. It’s physical, but then it’s also mental and it can be spiritual.”
The Funky Buddha has been very successful since it opened in 2009, bringing in people from all over West Michigan. Currently, Holland does not have any yoga studios, and the only opportunity for yoga in Holland is one class offered at a gym. Yogis from Saugatauk are in the same position, with only a couple of classes offered at a gym, and Link explains that some of the members at The Funky Buddha are in a bind where they work at Herman Miller and live in Spring Lake and they still have to travel to Grand Rapids to practice at the hothouse. The expansion will make practicing hot yoga much more accessible for yogis travelling from the lakeshore when The Funky Buddha opens their second location in Holland this December.
The Holland-based Funky Buddha hothouse will be laid out very similar to the studio in Grand Rapids. It will feature natural cork floors and a temperature controlled room, holding about 65-70 students at a time. The new location will also have the same warm, welcoming, community-based atmosphere as the Grand Rapids location.
The schedule for the Holland location will start out a little smaller than the one offered in Grand Rapids, but every class that is offered in Grand Rapids will also be offered in Holland – The Basics, Power Vinyasa, Slow Flow, and so on, and members at either studio are able to practice at both locations.
On whether or not there were any plans for expanding further, Link says, “there’s no set plans, but they are very much into growth. That’s one of the things that is expected of teachers – to continually be in a growth process, so [it's the] same thing for the company. So, as we see what happens with Holland, we’ll go from there.”
Some newcomers want to check out yoga without buying a membership – just in case they don’t love it. (Be prepared to be hooked - they promise love at first downdog.) The Funky Buddha offers community drop-in classes for $5 on Sunday evenings at 7:30 p.m. All proceeds from the community classes go to a charity, and in October alone they had raised $680 for Kids Food Basket.
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