The Tiny Detail That Made a Huge Difference in My Last Hot Yoga Class

Yoga Habit | Photo via Facebook

Yoga studios are like coffee shops: There are too many to count (a quick Yelp search brings up 221 in Philly), and they all serve up a similar product. So, like a coffee shop, it’s the tiny but significant details that keep you coming back to your yoga studio. (Same goes for the tiny but significant details that make you say “NEVER again.”) So today, I’m going to tell you about an oh-so-tiny detail — as tiny as the scone samples at La Colombe’s Fishtown location that keep me going back for my financially irresponsible daily morning latte — that made Fairmount’s new Yoga Habit a studio that I would totally call my yoga studio.

Drumroll, please. Here it is: A cold, wet towel.

Let me explain: Yoga Habit is a power yoga studio, so classes are taught in a heated classroom set to a very balmy 90 degrees. And not only are the classes hot, they are also intense. The kind of intense that makes you whimper like a wounded animal when you hear the sound “Ch” come out of the instructor’s mouth and you know there’s another Chaturanga in your near future.

By the time the hourlong class I took on opening weekend was over, my face was the color of a perfectly ripe summer tomato, my baby hairs were plastered to my forehead, and ALL I wanted to do was have someone spray me down with a hose. So when we laid down into Savasana (praise the lord) at the end of class and I heard the instructor, the awesome Alicia, say that she was going to leave a cold towel on the left-hand corner of each person’s mat, I almost screamed “HOLY CRAP YASSSS” out loud. Don’t worry: I Caught myself.

I covered my face with the cool towel during the last two minutes of class, and the entire time, all I was thinking was, “I wish every hot yoga studio did this,” the same way I wish every coffee shop had a complimentary sparkling water tap, á la La Colombe. I’d like to think the cold towel helped to transform my face from beet red to strawberry-ice-cream pink (a definite improvement), though my car’s rearview mirror told a different story as I drove home a few minutes later. But, if nothing else, it made the end of class so much more pleasant.

I’ve never had a hot yoga studio offer up a cold towel at the end of a yoga class (though when I ran up to her after class screaming “Oh my god, COLD TOWELS! You’re a GENIUS!” Yoga Habit owner Jen Wendowski did tell me that Grace and Glory’s Philadelphia location used to). And don’t get me wrong: The instruction and the space at Yoga Habit both were wonderful enough to make Yoga Habit a studio to go back to, but it’s that tiny detail — that could seem insignificant to some but was so, so big to me — that put Yoga Habit on my go-to list for hot yoga.

So now, a question: Are there any stand-out tiny-but-oh-so-awesome details at certain fitness or yoga studios that keep you going back? Scream ’em out in the comments!

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