Good Neighbor Podcast: Cobb County

E47: Finding Your Path: How Yoga Creates Community Beyond the Mat

• Milli M. & Belinda Fleming • Episode 47

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What does it truly mean to connect with your body in our constantly distracted world? Belinda Fleming of Sol Yoga Studio opens up about creating a sanctuary where movement, breath, and mindfulness combine to help people reconnect with themselves.

"The obstacles are the path," Belinda shares, revealing how yoga offers practical tools for navigating life's challenges. Having personally experienced how yoga supported her through divorce, she's passionate about making these ancient practices accessible to everyone. Sol Yoga Studio deliberately creates a welcoming environment for beginners, recognizing that trying something new can feel intimidating.

From heated vinyasa flows to gentle yin stretching, the studio offers diverse class options based on individual preferences and needs. Perhaps most intriguing is their aerial yoga program, where participants literally turn their practice upside down in silk hammocks suspended from the ceiling. Belinda addresses common misconceptions, particularly emphasizing that yoga isn't tied to any religion but offers spiritual tools that complement any belief system.

Beyond the studio walls, Sol Yoga builds community through retreats in breathtaking locations like the Blue Ridge Mountains and Costa Rica. These immersive experiences allow practitioners to deepen their practice while forming meaningful connections. Whether you're looking to touch your toes or find inner peace, Sol Yoga Studio invites you to discover how the eight-limb path of yoga might transform your relationship with yourself and the world around you.

Ready to experience transformation from the inside out? Visit SolYogaWestCobb.com to learn about classes for all ages and abilities, from children to seniors, beginners to advanced practitioners.

Speaker 1:

This is the Good Neighbor Podcast, the place where local businesses and neighbors come together. Here's your host, Millie M.

Speaker 2:

Hello everybody and welcome to the Good Neighbor Podcast. I'm Millie M. Are you in need of a dynamic yoga studio? Well, one might be closer than you think. I have the pleasure of introducing your good neighbor, belinda Fleming of Soul Yoga Studio. Hello, belinda, how are you?

Speaker 3:

Hi, how are you, millie? It's so good to be here today and I'm so appreciative of this opportunity to share about Soul Yoga.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, I'm doing well. Thank you for asking. We are so excited to learn all about you and your business. Tell us more about Soul.

Speaker 3:

It's just a wonderful place to move and breathe and reconnect with your mind, body and spirit. We opened the studio as a space for people to come and experience movement experience, meditation experience, breathing techniques and putting it all together under the ancient practices of yoga, and our yoga studio offers a lot of different quality classes depending on what each person is looking for. We really welcome beginners. We have a special place in our heart for people that have never experienced yoga. We know sometimes starting something new can be really intimidating and we create a very welcoming space for yoga students beginners, intermediate level, even advanced and it's just an opportunity to take beginner yoga classes.

Speaker 3:

We offer vinyasa. We have unheated and heated. What I have found in all of the years of teaching yoga is that people do have preferences. They have preferences about if they want to be seated and do a deep stretch class, and that um is something that we offer. It's called Yen Y, I, n yes, and um the other. The other side of that would be a heated vinyasa class, which is more rigorous and a lot of movement, um, but at the end we do have a lovely pose called Shavasana, and I don't know if you've ever seen t-shirts that say I'm just here for the Shavasana. We've got that too, if that's what you're looking for.

Speaker 2:

That's amazing. I love that you have such a variety of things that people can get into and you would think it would be common, common, but people need to remember to breathe it's true.

Speaker 3:

It's true. I think we get so busy and we get wrapped up in our day-to-day and we're very goal oriented. It is nice to step into soul and have a respite, a nice place to recharge and like-minded community. We do offer a couple of other styles of yoga. We have what's called an aerial yoga class and it's a lot of fun. It's really challenging. Literally up in the air, literally up in the air. Yes, yes.

Speaker 2:

I gotta find out. That sounds exciting.

Speaker 3:

I gotta find out. That sounds exciting. So we have a lot of fun in that class. We laugh, we get, you know, get turned upside down. So you're in these silk aerial hammocks and we're coinciding it with yoga, the practice of yoga, and doing a lot of things that you might do on your yoga mat, in the air, in your aerial hammock. So it's a lot of fun.

Speaker 2:

So yes, I'd love for you to come and try it. I'm coming because anything new and exciting and that just really just lit me up. So tell me, how did you get into the business? What made you say you know what? I'm going to open a yoga studio and we're going to have people up in the air.

Speaker 3:

Well, I'll tell you, I've always loved fitness and I've always been active, even as a teenager, even when I was in college.

Speaker 3:

I believe I became certified as an aerobic instructor back in the day of Jane Fonda. So I'm telling my age now, but I just realized that yoga is a practice that can carry you through the rest of your life, whereas maybe some higher impact activities, fitness things such as running, which I do love to run as well but I have found that as I'm aging I'm middle aged that I do need the balance of more flexibility in my life. I need the balance of more solace, of sitting and breathing and learning how to meditate, and you'd be surprised how many people are walking through life and really don't know how to sit with their breath or sit with this idea of not doing all the time. So it really is a lovely place and a space, and I felt that there was a need in my own life and I wanted to open it up to others, and I'm deeply committed to an authentic, open space that offers people an opportunity to reconnect to themselves.

Speaker 2:

I love that. The breath is definitely reconnecting to self and we live such sedentary lifestyles that just you know, getting in there, I took a stretch class once and I was like this isn't what I wanted. It was what I needed, you know, because we do sit in all that weight and we don't get out and move as much as we should. So stretching those areas is definitely important. So what are some myths or misconceptions about your industry or what you do in particular?

Speaker 3:

Well, I think a lot of people think in order to come to a yoga class, they already have to be very flexible, and that is not the truth at all. Actually, that is the opposite. If you're very inflexible, then I highly recommend yoga for you, because sometimes, if we're thinking that we're inflexible, we've already created a self-limiting belief about ourself and it trickles over into every aspect of our life. So coming to yoga isn't just about being flexible. There's a saying that it's really not if you can touch your toes. It's the journey on the way to touching the toes right. How do we get there? What is your mindset? It really is more about finding your rhythm and finding your way back to connection to the physical body. We hear a lot these days about somatic therapies.

Speaker 3:

And somatic really is just a term. That means are you connected to your body? If you're constantly in your headspace, there may be a big disconnect with this yoking of mind, body and spirit. And the yoga term is a Sanskrit word and most of the terms in yoga come from the language of Sanskrit, ancient, ancient years ago, language that we still use today. But when we translate the word yoga into the English language, it is yoking or uniting of the mind, the body. Into the English language it is yoking or uniting of the mind, the body and the spirit.

Speaker 3:

And we do study the eight limb path of yoga which has been handed down for thousands of years by Patanjali, and one aspect of the eight limb path is breathing, one aspect is the movement, and there are so many other aspects of walking this yogic path of nonviolence, of self-love. You know we have the niyamas and niyamas which tell us how to, how to exist with others and how to build our own relationship of accountability to ourselves. So it's so much more than just being touching your toes or being inflexible or being flexible. So that's that's probably the biggest thing I would love to put out there is that it's so much more than just if you can or can't touch your toes.

Speaker 2:

I love that you focus on beginners and helping them understand that and all those principles that you talked about, because one of the myths that that I encountered is the because it's a spiritual thing as well, I think a lot of people associate it with religion. So how do you kind of how do you kind of defeat that misconception that in order to be involved with yoga, or yoga is connected to some type of religious practice, because all of those things are Christian principles? You know that you spoke about.

Speaker 3:

Absolutely, and every religion is welcome to participate in movement and breath and connect spirit. We all have a human spirit, regardless of what our religious affiliation is, and yoga is not trying to convert anyone to Hinduism. That may be what most people think. Oh, they're trying to convert me to a Buddhism or a Hinduism, and even though the roots of the practice were started in India, there is no religious affiliation for yoga.

Speaker 3:

It truly isn't religion. It's spiritual based and it's really about this idea of connecting to your human spirit and when, believe it or not, we've been in business for eight years and we've never had anyone come into the yoga studio and be offended by anything that we do that feels that it's offensive to their religious beliefs. And that is a really something that I take seriously, because it's important that we are all individuals and we all have the freedom to choose what we believe and who we believe in and our source of divine nature. We do talk about those things in some of the practices, depending on what our Dharma teaching is for the month, but we're never trying to impact anyone's belief system, whatever their religious belief is. It's more of a spiritual connection to your source and and people really respect that. I'm glad you brought that question up, thank you.

Speaker 2:

No, no worries, I love yoga and I also grew up in the church and I just feel like sometimes there's this hesitation for people to meditate or to do yoga because they do associate it with Hinduism or Buddhism or some other type of religion and, like you said, it is a connection to whatever spirit you or whatever divine God you believe in. So who are your target customers and how do you attract them? Like I say, it sounds like you deal with beginners a lot, but who do you really like to work with?

Speaker 3:

Um, so we have, of course, the usual Instagram account, we have the social media account and then Google Business. Is is usually how people find us. Once they found us, then they follow us on the other social media platforms. New students when they come to the yoga studio how did you find us? And they say, oh, I've typed in yoga studio near me and I'm so, I'm so grateful that that we have google business and we keep, we try to keep that account updated and that is the number one way. And then, of course, the other most important way is through um community, community telling others and bringing their friends and bringing their families.

Speaker 3:

And we do offer children's yoga. We have special events that we do in the summer. Sometimes we have special aerial events because the children really do love the aerial yoga, but anyone's welcome. A lot of times moms want to do yoga with their daughters or with their sons and maybe they're eight or nine or 10 years old, and it depends on each individual child if it's a fit. Some of our classes are 60 minutes and that may be a fit for an eight, nine or 10 year old. That's able to. You know, keep the attention for that period of time. Keep the attention for that period of time. But for some others, for some other children, that may be too much right. So we very much individualize what ages can come in and out of the classes. But primarily I would say our demographic is anyone from the age of 15, all the way up to the age of 80, 85. So yeah, Beautiful, beautiful.

Speaker 2:

So outside of work, what do you like to do for fun?

Speaker 3:

Well, for fun, I like to travel around the world and lead yoga. I just returned from Huatuco, mexico, and that's in the Oaxaca region of Mexico, on the Pacific Ocean side, and so I was teaching yoga every day while I was there. But it was also an enjoyable vacation with my daughter, who is about to be graduating from high school and going away to college. So that's what I do, for fun is incorporate, yeah.

Speaker 2:

You know we love what you do and you know talking about yoga being spiritual.

Speaker 3:

You know I feel closer to God when I'm in nature than any other time, so I bet that is just an amazing experience the country and we offer a yoga retreat, usually up in the Blue Ridge Mountains, so not too far away, and we love that sense of community. That's a little bit different being outside of the yoga studio. And, again, our retreats anytime we're traveling across, you know, across the world, or are just up into the Blue Ridge Mountains, it's always open to everyone. We try to include families, we include couples, we include people that are solo and want to be a part of community. So our upcoming yoga retreat for this fall will be in Costa Rica, and so if you go to our website, which is soulyogawestcobcom, you can click on workshops and retreats and you can see all the details and opportunities to come with us to Costa Rica in September.

Speaker 2:

Perfect, perfect. So let's just switch gears a little bit. Can you describe a hardship or a life challenge that you overcame and how it made you stronger?

Speaker 3:

I actually have gone through a divorce recently in the past five years.

Speaker 1:

And.

Speaker 3:

I feel like that was a very difficult time in my life and I feel like if I didn't have the tools of yoga and the support of the yoga community, it would have felt much more difficult and um, but I was able to come through that stronger and more resilient. And, but I was able to come through that stronger and more resilient. And, as you know, an example to other women that there is life after divorce, so that would be the most recent thing that comes to mind so beautiful, I'm glad you had that community to lean on.

Speaker 2:

And there definitely is life after divorce. I'm a witness to that as well. So please tell our listeners one thing that you would like for them to remember about Soul Yoga.

Speaker 3:

More than anything, soul is a community of connection and a space where people can experience transformation, regardless of what obstacle they're facing. There is a saying that the obstacles are the path and it's how we show up, and what tools do we have to navigate those obstacles? And Soul is a place where people can learn the tools and use the tools and experience transformation from inside out.

Speaker 2:

So beautiful, and can you tell our listeners that website one more time and how they can get in touch with you?

Speaker 3:

Yes, I'd be happy to Thanks Millie. It is SOLYogaWestCobbcom.

Speaker 2:

Perfect. Thank you so much for being here. We really enjoyed having you. I'm coming to get up in the air and I'm probably going to Costa Rica too, so I love it.

Speaker 3:

I'm going to hold you to it, cannot wait to meet you at Seoul and namaste.

Speaker 1:

Thank you for listening to the good neighbor podcast. To nominate your favorite local businesses to be featured on the show, go to gnpcobbcountycom. That's gnpcobbcountycom, or call 470-470-4506.