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Owner In A Position To Help People

CANDACE C. MUNDY/TAMPA TRIBUNE

Chay Prieto, instructor for a Hatha Flow yoga class at The Lotus Pond, 6201 Lynn Rd., offers a blessing to each student at the end of the class. Prieto puts her hands over their faces and says in her mind "thank you for your support and may love, peace and happiness be with you".

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By JASON GEARY, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 26, 2008

Updated: 01/24/2008 09:34 pm

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CITRUS PARK - With flute music playing softly over speakers, Chay Prieto took her class through various positions meant to strengthen their bodies and calm their minds.

The shoes of her yoga students, much like their worries, were left outside the classroom. Balancing and stretching, they contorted their bodies to various ancient postures.

"Nice, subtle movements," Prieto urged them. "It doesn't have to be anything forceful."

The Lotus Pond opened this month on Lynn Road in Citrus Park.

The combination yoga studio and school is tucked inside a spacious log home with high cathedral ceilings and rich dark wood walls and floors. The home sits on 4 1/2 acres of lush wooded property.

"It's really hard to find something affordable that has land around it that can be considered commercial but yet is out in the country," owner Val Spies said. "That's a pretty tricky thing to find."

Spies, who owns another yoga studio on Kennedy Boulevard in Tampa, said she wants the studio to be an oasis for yoga enthusiasts. She also plans to host corporate retreats there.

"I wanted somewhere people could really congregate before and after class and get to know other people of like minds and build a bit of a community," she said.

Diego Hernandez, 38, of Citrus Park, said he has been enjoying the serene atmosphere and camaraderie of the Lotus Pond.

"It's a peaceful environment," said Hernandez, a psychologist who has signed up for a year's worth of unlimited yoga sessions. "It's close to nature. They try to build a major sense of community."

Practicing yoga and eating better, Michael Abner, 37, of South Tampa, said he was able to lose about 30 pounds in the past several months and improve his overall health. He has visited both of Spies' yoga studios.

Diane Gailit, 54, of Land O' Lakes, said she is able to use various yoga techniques during her everyday life to "take a breath or a moment to relax and let everything go."

"It's very, very stress relieving," she said.

Spies said yoga can train people to focus their thoughts in a more positive manner.

"You have to recognize that you decide whether your mind is busy and chattering and making you crazy or if your mind is calm and peaceful," she said. "Ultimately, you decide. Although we feel like we are just along for the ride, we are not."

Spies, 53, has spent several years proclaiming the benefits of yoga and attracting customers at her other studio, Yoga at the Lotus Room, on Kennedy.

Prior to that, she worked in the airline industry for about 20 years.

"Originally, I was a corporate manager," Spies said. "I was working with employees and realized people were having a really difficult time dealing with stress in their lives."

Often, she had the task of telling people that they weren't performing well or might be losing their jobs.

"I just realized that I wanted to be on a different end of people's lives," she said. "I wanted to be in a position where I could help people deal with the stress in their lives."

In 2003, she had been contemplating making a change in her life and taking an early retirement package.

At that time, she had been practicing yoga about seven years after a friend invited her to a class. A co-worker brought in a story about a woman who quit her corporate job to open a yoga studio.

"It hit me," Spies said. "That's it. That's what I should do. It just made so much sense."

She wasted no time. She left her job in September 2003 and opened Yoga at the Lotus Room in December.

"I wasn't even a teacher," she recalled. "I didn't even have a teacher to teach at my studio ... that's leaping without a net and hoping the net will appear."

But soon teachers and students began to appear. Spies estimates that more than 5,000 people have signed up for classes since 2003.

Two years ago, she began to think about getting additional space.

Customers were also asking Spies to offer more opportunities to get together. Spies has organized trips to Costa Rica and Georgia as well as local kayak and beach excursions.

"I've always been really drawn to nature," Spies said. "Nature brings on that extra level of peacefulness and stillness. I really wanted to bring that into what I was offering in the studio."

Transforming a log home into a yoga studio hasn't been easy.

"Both locations needed tons of work, which means hard physical work for my husband and I and our friends," she said. "Yoga studios are not million-dollar businesses where you can just hire everything out."

Spies said she also is planning to have an outdoor classroom to bring students closer to nature.

"We have a design and everything, but we haven't built it yet," she said. "It's going to be a nice outdoor studio with a high ceiling. It's going to be screened-in so you can enjoy the outdoors."

IF YOU GO

WHAT: The Lotus Pond

WHERE: 6201 Lynn Road

WHAT: Yoga at the Lotus Room

WHERE: 1101 W. Kennedy Blvd.

INFORMATION: For information about class schedules, prices and a teacher training program, call (813) 254-6777 or visit http://www.yogalotus room.com/

Reporter Jason Geary can be reached at (813) 865-1505 or jgeary@tampatrib.com.

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