A Big Little Yoga Studio
When Lindsay Gardner opened Sweet Yoga in 2013, she had only one goal: find a place to take her private yoga clients. She had accumulated clients from her years at the Sports and Fitness Edge, but they didn’t have a space available for her to use. When she first entered the little studio in the Hinesburg Village Center, it had old carpet, multicolored walls, and was in a state of disarray. There wasn’t even a toilet. Her family questioned her decision, didn’t see what she saw, and didn’t see what the space could be. Now, nearly 12 years later, Sweet Yoga has welcomed hundreds, maybe thousands, of people through the doors, and changed the lives, and health, of many.
Using a small space, she never had grand dreams of big yoga classes or community-building, but now one of her favorite things about the studio has become the Hinesburg community itself. The connections and the friendships she has made have been one of the reasons she has stayed open through the challenges that every small business faces. Covid hit in-person, close contact businesses like yoga studios hard. Many studios closed during the pandemic, but the private session business model that Sweet Yoga employs helped her stay afloat during those trying times. She also was heart-warmed by those in the community who donated when close contact businesses were forced to shut down and close their doors but still had to pay rent.
It’s the community in Hinesburg that makes the studio what it is today.
It is a place where people can come for self-care. One of the best things Lindsay has witnessed since opening has been that people from different sides of the ever-increasingly divisive political lines come together and leave their differences and their political party at the door. People that may not agree at town meetings can set aside their differences and come together, smile, laugh and breathe with each other.
Being able to see past our differences strengthens the community as a whole.
It’s great to watch people that may have known each other for years but had town politics differences, finally talk and become friends.
Sweet Yoga has become a place where people come together with the common goal of being healthier and happier.
For we all inherently want the same things, right?
Health, happiness, peace, prosperity, for ourselves and our loved ones. We are not that different from each other, no matter how differently we may feel about certain issues, and the studio has become a place where people can come and recognize the humanity in each other, as well as get healthier.
So, while the landscape may look a little different on the outside, with new owner David Palmer buying the building (at 90 Mechanicsville Road) and 116 Wine and Spirits moving in right next door where the Lighthouse Baptist Church used to be, what’s on the inside at Sweet Yoga hasn’t changed, and the community of yogis continues to grow.
For more information go to sweetyogavt.com or email Lindsay at sweetyogahf@gmail.com.
