Northern Greats: The Yoga Lounge

As she prepares to hold a mass yoga event marking the summer solstice, we speak to Yoga Lounge owner Jane Dowler for the latest in our series meeting residents of the Great Northern

Feature | 08 Jun 2015

Yoga has enjoyed a surge in popularity in recent years. From 20-minute 'express' sessions for busy workers trying to find peace on their lunchbreaks to intensive residential retreats, there seems to be a variety of this ancient practice for everyone, whatever their level or schedule.

Open for two years, The Yoga Lounge in Manchester's Great Northern Warehouse is the first dedicated Hot Yoga studio in the UK, offering a unique fusion of styles and sequences that keeps things challenging but remains accessible for beginners. Now, to celebrate the summer solstice on 21 June, the team behind The Yoga Lounge are planning a mass yoga event to take place in the square outside the GNW building. Ahead of this festival of sun worship, we spoke to founder Jane Dowler to find out more about the day, as well as her passion for yoga.

The Skinny: What was your inspiration behind setting up The Yoga Lounge?
Jane Dowler: I only started yoga when I was about 36. I was always quite fit – I did lots of runs and 10ks and half marathons and went to the gym – but as I got older... you kind of feel a bit less flexible, and achy. So I heard about hot yoga via Bikram [Bikram Yoga, in Manchester's Northern Quarter], and I absolutely fell in love with it. I was hooked; I gave up my gym membership, I was going four, five times a week.

I was in the changing rooms one day chatting to a girl about it, and she said you should Google 'hot yoga,' there's lots of different styles out there. Allie Hill – her studio is called Yoga Haven – I went on one of her retreats and I was just blown away by her method; it was as good as Bikram but better, because there was more variety. I follow someone called Baron Baptiste; I'm going training in New York in August, he's like a hot flow style. I've also been to Absolute Yoga in Thailand, another style of hot yoga. So I've just chosen the best bits of all of them, really, and fused them together to make The Yoga Lounge's style.

What does The Yoga Lounge's style involve?
We have our own signature sequence, the Hot 60. It's 60 minutes long, 40 postures, for the whole body and mind so it's a balanced sequence.

The heat is good because it makes your muscles more pliable. It's like when you heat metal up, it becomes quite loose, soft; that's what happens to your muscles. Hot yoga makes it more into a physical workout.

Can you tell us more about the yoga event you have planned for the summer solstice?
In yoga [for the summer solstice], traditionally, they do 108 salutations, to kind of cleanse.

In Times Square every year in New York they have a huge event that's like 13 years in. It's a change of season festival, and it's huge in NY, it's always on the telly – a bit like a marathon. It lasts about four hours. They don't practice [all] 108 salutations [there] purely because it would be quite intense for people, so they have a variety of teachers on, which is what we're gonna do. We're going to have a four-hour 'yoga-thon' with some of Manchester's best teachers. They're not just from The Yoga Lounge; Andrea Everingham, who owns One Yoga, is going to lead it. She's got 15 years' experience in Manchester as a yoga teacher and she's phenomenal in her energy; she's really good at getting the crowd going.

Have you held an event like this before?
It's the first time it's ever been done in the UK; they've never even done it in London. Maybe it's the weather! It was one of our teachers who suggested it. And then I thought, if we're going to do it we should do it for a charity. We've done some donation classes and most other teachers in Manchester have done donation classes for Nepal. So I've contacted UNICEF and they're going to support us. It's a free event but people can donate what they want. I've put it on Facebook and we've already got people who can't make it [but still] want to donate a couple of hundred pounds. Hopefully we'll raise quite a bit.

To sign up for the summer solstice yoga event on 21 June, contact The Yoga Lounge: theyogalounge.co.uk. Find The Yoga Lounge on Twitter at @theyogaloungeuk thegreatnorthern.com | @gnwarehouse