Subscribe on iTunes! Subscribe on Google Play Podcast RSS Feed   Horizon Hot Yoga continues to add opportunities and workshops for both beginners and those with experienced practices. They’re also making it easy to be flexible in where you practice. Come in for a physically-distanced class, or stay home and join them online. Learn more about their new opportunities and how you can get started or take your practice to the next level. SHOW NOTES: [00:27] What’s new at Horizon Hot Yoga [01:54] Things to look forward to [06:50] Horizon’s Kundalini Class [09:42] Specials for newcomers [11:01] Horizon’s Workshops [13:34] Reinventing Horizon through COVID [16:58] Find Horizon Hot Yoga online LINKS & RESOURCES: Horizon Hot Yoga on Lifestyle Frisco | Website | Facebook | Instagram Connect with Lifestyle Frisco on:  YouTube Facebook Instagram Twitter LinkedIn Transcript Machine-generated. Welcome to the Frisco Podcast. I’m your host, Scott Ellis. And on this episode, we are bringing back Mary Von Ahnen from Horizon Hot Yoga. And, uh, Mary, how are ya? Feeling great, thanks. I know it’s been a year or so since we had a chance to sit down and talk and, oh, certainly a lot has happened, especially in 2020. So, uh, wanted to kind of catch up with you and hear what’s new at the studio and what you guys have going on. Yeah, so we, um, we’re so fortunate that we are still growing. Um, obviously we’re very limited in our class sizes since we have to, you know, keep the social distancing. But we, we get new students every week. So, there are people right now who want to take yoga. Um, and we’re excited about that. How are you guys handling most of your classes? Is it, are you doing able to do some in-person or is it all virtual or how is it kind of breaking down right now? No, I guess when we look at the positives of COVID, which sometimes is hard to do, one of the things that it forced us to do was to redesign our business model so that we could offer online classes. And we still do offer online, um, almost every day of the week. I think we have six, um, six online classes. But, almost all of our classes are in person. They’re just, like I said, very limited in size. And we have a huge cleaning protocol, you know? People need to wear masks until they’re on their mat, because once they’re on their mat, they, they’re socially distanced. Our rooms are taped so that your mat is separated, your body is separated from the next person. There’s been a change. Yeah. I’m sure that’s been a little bit of an adjustment for you as it has been for a lot of Frisco businesses. Um, I know one of the things we talked about the last time was that you guys were pretty big on was visiting, uh, instructors. Uh, you’d have, you know, special- people who were specialists or have competed and done very well, that would come through and do certain types of classes or certain things for you, guys. Is there anything like that that we have to look forward to? Yeah, definitely. Um, so we- Hot 26, which is the classic Bikram yoga, uh, has been our fastest-growing and most successful format. Um, most of our classes these days completely sell out, uh, with the limited capacity, of course. And we are having two visiting teachers, one in February and one in April, who are coming to do, um, some workshops around the basic beginner series that we offer and also intermediate and advanced, um, because we have not, so far, offered intermediate and advanced as classes. But, this will give the students a chance to try on the more-advanced style and see if they like it. And then, they like it, we like it; bring it on. So we’re really excited about that and also just about the growth of that format, in general. And then, you know, we’ve tried to kind of supplant with the inability to bring on visiting teachers from around the world. We’ve challenged our own teacher community to step up with their own talent, um, which is considerable. And so, they’re offering their own workshops, which have been very successful. We, I guess two or three weeks ago, we had a handstand/forearm stand workshop that was, um, oversold. So we, uh, our own teachers have been able to bring a little bit of what we used to be able to do with visiting teachers. Yeah, I know you guys have some exceptional teachers that are there on a regular basis. The Handstand Workshop sounds interesting. Uh, what, what is the, you know, for those of us that maybe are still very, uh beginner-level, what is the, the, the advantage of doing something like a Handstand Workshop? Why would I want to go do that? What am I learning there? A lot of the more advanced practitioners do incorporate handstands into their practice. It’s very common. So, this workshop was just designed if you are interested in learning how to incorporate handstands, headstands, forearm stands into your practice, but haven’t done it, yet. This workshop was designed to show you how to do that with hand placement, with shoulder-stretching, et cetera. And if you already had handstands, headstands incorporated, it just gave you a few extra tips. And it’s totally a choice. I mean, there’s, there’s nothing in our dialogue that our teachers give that force people to try to do a handstand if they’re not ready for that. But, there’s certain places in every class where a teacher will suggest, “If you have a handstand practice, you can take your handstands now.” Would you consider that as a part of someone’s practice to be intermediate or advanced, or is it something that beginners can also incorporate? Oh, I think beginners can absolutely incorporate it. It’s, you know, it’s um, and …