Conscious Choice: YogaNow: Chicago's Green Studio

April 2007 | Yoga Chat

YogaNow: Chicago's Green Studio

By Cara Jepsen

YogaNow Gold Coast boasts renewable bamboo floors, earthen sculptures, energy-efficient appliances and lights, and recycled doors. It also features arched windows, clay plaster in warm earth tones and potted plants for plenty of oxygen. Students use natural rubber mats and renewable cork blocks…and there’s a bike rack out front.

“It’s good for the health of the planet and for everybody involved from the construction workers to the teachers to the students who come to YogaNow,” explains Amy Beth Treciokas about her decision to build a green yoga studio.

But its two massage rooms, sauna, steam room, large kitchen and two showers make it as much a spa as a hippie hangout.

“The original idea for the studio was like East Bank Club, but with eco-friendly interiors; very high-end finishes, and comfortable for your average lawyer/doctor—yet earthen and eco-feeling,” says Treciokas, whose grandfather shared his love of nature with her when she was a child. “I wanted it to be accessible to Gold Coast people but also to introduce them to new things in a subtle way.”

She opened her first YogaNow in Edgewater in 2003 and was planning her downtown location two years later when she began dating natural builder Miguel Elliott (the couple will wed in April). “He introduced me to all of these cool new eco-friendly materials,” says Treciokas. “And the people selling them were people I knew as yoga students.”

The flooring in the dressing area is Marmolium, made of linseed oil, wood flour, rosin, jute and limestone. The doors were dyed with natural stain from Greenmaker Supply.

The walls are insulated with recycled denim jeans. Rather than painting them, Elliot applied a mixture of clay, sand, straw, casein (a milk protein) and mica—which makes them sparkle.

“We tried to avoid chemicals and use only materials that come straight from the earth,” says Elliott, who also did the intricate tilework in the bathrooms. “Sometimes the green materials were a little more expensive, but it was worth it if in the long run we were letting out less VOC’s.

Going green was also more expensive for Lisa Faremouth Weber, who opened Evanston’s green Heaven Meets Earth yoga studio in 2005. “I couldn’t do it any other way,” she says. “I’m passionate about taking care of the Earth—not only for reasons of global warming, but also because of the spiritual implications.”

Treciokas agrees. “[Ashtanga vinyasa yoga guru] Pattabhi Jois says ‘Saucha is seeing God in everyone.’ When we can see clearly and know that since we are all one; if we harm anyone we do harm to ourselves and if we do good and benefit anyone we do good and benefit ourselves. It just is the right thing to do.”

She ran into interference between Elliot and the general contractor. “He thought it was a little silly and would often say, ‘Why don’t you just do it this way,’” she says.

“When he saw me making the meditation dome he shook his head and was like, ‘I’ve seen it all now,’” says Elliott.

His cob sculptures also include a Mayan pyramid over the entrance, a heated bench, an “Om” symbol and trees. He found the clay at an excavation site on Ashland Avenue. “It was going to go to a landfill,” says Elliott, who soaked it with water and then used his feet to mix it with river sand and straw from a local farm. He had help from volunteers.

“Kids came, women came with no construction experience at all and put their positive energy into the structure,” he says. “I’d like to see more of that incorporated into the green movement.”

Trecioka says that anyone planning to open a yoga studio should consider going green. “Why wouldn’t you help the environment? Because we’re all one. If we harm mother nature, we harm ourselves.”

YogaNow will be hosting the Movement Pavilion at the Green Festival, Sat-Sun April 21-22. Visit greenfestivals.org for more information. Weber, Treciokas and Elliott will appear on a panel about Green Living on May 5 at Yoga Journal Conference in Lake Geneva

(yogajournal.com). For more on YogaNow, visit yoganowchicago.com. To learn more about Elliott’s projects, visit ChiCobCo.com.

Cara Jepsen is a Chicago-based writer and yoga instructor. Visit carajepsen.com.

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