This month we are celebrating a year of being a full-time yoga studio and with that comes a new look.
We have a new logo created by Kimberly Lavon. It’s a fresh new take on Just B Yoga that hopefully reflects our spirit and our vibe. We are gritty. We are urban. We are bold.
One year ago I left my 20-year career as a journalist to pursue my practice and growing a conscious commerce business.
It has been an intense, challenging and rewarding journey. We’ve invited amazing guest teachers for training. I’ve visited New York to discuss social media innovations. We’ve expanded our business offerings to include massage.
We’ve watched our neighborhood transform with the Board of Water & Light cogeneration plant coming online and the streetscaping of REO Town nearly complete. We joined the Greater Lansing Convention & Visitors Bureau and participated in our first Be A Tourist in Your Town. I was honored to receive the Tribute to Women Award from the Greater Lansing Women’s Center along with Judy Brown Clarke.
We are the #LoveLansing yoga studio. Or at least we want to be. Lansing is its people and we believe in Lansing. Just B Yoga is proof of the power of the people in this town and our connection – our yoga.
Our first Just B Yoga merchandise line was created by the immensely gifted and sadly missed Eddie Lahti
This year we created Lansing’s first and maybe the first LGBTQ Yoga class in the state of Michigan. It came about because of a student and a community that asked for it.
We brought Yoga of 12-Step Recovery to the Lansing area – training instructors on how to use yoga as a tool for substance abuse relapse prevention.
We’ve had the pleasure of working with so many Lovelansing organizations – LAFCU, Two Men & A Truck, MSHDA, Reach, Derby Vixens, The New Citizens Press, UnoDeuce, Juice Nation, Mid-MEAC, New World Flood, SLCDA, Preuss Pets, Annabelle’s Pet Station, FoodShed Farms – and many more.
This year has had its challenges. Construction and summer vacation have dropped attendance a bit at the studio this summer. Over the last year we increased our overhead when we took on the entire building. We lost parking next door because the owner has decided he will rebuild and restart his garage. But these are just bumps in the road as we grow and learn.
More than anything Just B Yoga is a social experiment and an extension of my personal practice.
It relies on the good will and generosity of you – our students and our general supporters.
It requires me to remain unattached to desired outcomes and extend the depths of my understanding of patience. It pushes me to listen to the needs of my students, to be aware of the needs of our greater community and to connect people, ideas, efforts where they had not been connected before.
That might look like LGBTQ yoga. That might look like a farmers market. It might look like painting a fence.
Thus our new logo.
We have outgrown our original logo, which was drawn by my friend Connie before our first yoga classes on the steps of the Capitol building Earth Day 2009. The notion of a studio and donation-based yoga hadn’t even been born. Just B Yoga isn’t a girl-only thing, which the dancer holding the B kind of represented.
Kimberly Lavon took on the challenge to set a new tone for Just B Yoga with the new logo. I think it fits us just right.
We will retire the old logo with fondness. It will still be around in some of our original material to remind us of the journey from one solo dancer to a community movement.
What do you think? Leave us a message.