Kula's history is a short but full story, feel free to scroll down to any of the interesting topics.

In 2003, a friend from a yoga retreat contacted me (Adam Ballenger) about moving to Utah to help with a great new studio. Not long before that at a yoga retreat with John Friend in Southern Utah, I met my friend and a host of others at Inner Harmony Yoga Retreat. Having grown very tired of the heat and the larger city life in Scottsdale/Phoenix Arizona, I was convinced I should think about moving out of AZ and that I could probably use yoga as a great stepping stone.

Visit

When I first visited Salt Lake I was met by Scott Moore and his wife Celest. Scott and Celest drove me around, showed me the area for what was to become a great yoga community and took me to lunch. We ate at Sage's Cafe wear I remarked that this would also be a great area for a studio and I got to meet Peter the then owner of Soma yoga studio. Overall the visit was a success and I moved to Utah with the sole intentions of helping to develope a great yoga community while absorbing whatever tuttalidge I could on starting and running a studio and maybe one day becoming a part of the ownership of a studio.

Getting Sick

After just a couple of months of living in Utah and spending just about every waking moment working on this great yoga community, I came down with a very strange brain infection that without a joke, just about killed me. That story is a longer and more entertaining one so we'll save it till later. Being sick though really introduced me to the strength of the people in the community and the general level of locals ability to gather. Myself being the sick one, I got a great first hand view of how the locals in Salt Lake are really about community, how they pride themselves on it and put great effort into it. I spent a great amount of time down at Salt Lake Regional Hospital, the place of my brain and heart surgeries and through all the buss rides, and what not, I became a little engrained in the area of Sugarhouse and the area around both the hospital and the studio.

Getting sick and having a strong brush with both fatality and disability changes your perspectives, goals and motivations and eventually I set out from the studio I was working in for almost two years and decided to take a stab at my own studio.

A new beginning and an old studio

Through all my ealry work in Salt Lake, I found out how much I really wanted to offer my all in the for of a yoga studio. In 2005, when the owners of YOGA SPACE Studio approached me about their internist to close the studio I decided to take on the task of reviving a studio in need and working on all the finer aspects of owning, running, teaching and to say the least "CLEANING" my own studio. Having been delayed in my Anusara Yoga Certification by all the illnesses, injuries, moves and what not I was finally able to finish the status of certification and make YOGA SPACE Studio Salt Lake Cities first studio that was primarily an Anusara Yoga studio. YOGA SPACE was also a place that others in the community began to show some outrageous commitment. Students that would drive 30, 40 65 minutes just to come out to the Big Cottonwood area to take classes or workshops continually blew me away. Some of the instructors like Jen Hecht who also drove a good distance to teach at a smaller studio with little student traffic began to step forward. Matt Newman, a previous student also made great moves towards the far out community. Matt's help in renovating the studio and eventually his help as an new instructor again greatly encouraged me about the strength of the community at hand.

Eventually all good things change or come to an end and in the early months of 2007 it became obvious that the new land owners were going to be difficult about renewing the lease for the old studio. Although the possibilities were not gone, the difficulties began to out weigh the effort and the search for a new location began.

Something in a familiar place

After having gone through the phase of sickness and recover and right into reviving a sinking studio the prospect of traveling abroad to teach seemed tempting or the idea of beginning a small, simple, low overhead operation by myself sounded quiet nice as well. The option of a large very involving studio business seemed out of reach and maybe out of my individual effort. My friend and yoga instructor Matt Newman who had been working in remodeling houses and properties for some time had a real estate person over one afternoon while I was visiting and the topic of properties came up. Matt has shared some internist in the studio business and although we had discussed various idea most of them had been closer to ideals and fantasies. The real estate person shared a listing of a facility that fit the large studio business to a "T", the location, the size and shape of the space, the visibility and so on. Although 3,200+ sq/ft of completely un-developed space in no way matched the small one man operation the perfect-ness of the space was exciting. Matt, myself and the realtor made a visit to the property that afternoon only to find out that it was even better in person. The location of the property was almost exactly between that Sage's cafe wear I had first remarked this was a good place for a studio and the hospital wear I had such great experiences and felt some familiar with the area.

After spending the past few rugged years doing the house remodeling thing Matt also shared an excitement at the prospect of a new kind of endeavor. The completely open space enticed me to be able to develop a yoga studio that accounted for the use of every inch and made the most of every simplistically organized wall and corner. Matt saw a great opportunity to take what he had used to influence his residential work and infuse the "Green" aspect of building into a yoga studio as well as to create a unique and special place to both teach and study yoga. With those ideas and influences a business partnership was created and so was a studio.

Kula is a unique almost all environmentally friendly, low to non-toxic, highly energy efficient, almost 100 % recycled garbage, yoga studio. In the attempt to make the studio a community setting the effort was put forth to make the studio as community friendly or environmentally friendly as possible. You may not notice the denim insulated walls, the flow through water heaters, the eucalyptus flooring or the soy based finishes and paints but they are there so the community doesn't have to pay for them later. The comfort you have from this work may not even be distinguishable but in some degree I'm sure it is there. Like your carbon footprint, the biggest footprint Kula wants to leave in in your heart and it's a green Kula print that's very healthy for your heart as well as the community.

Kula

Because the studio was a coming together of many things, the invitation to move to Utah, myself and the area, Matt and the Anusara yoga, Matt and myself, the overall community with yoga, the teachers, the students and more, the Sanskrit word for "coming together" "community" and even sometimes used to describe "the Heart", the word "Kula" seemed like an obvious decision. Kula in a short word describes so much of what is in the intention and the hopes of the studio. Not only community or coming together but coming together in prospect of moving forward.

In just a few short years a culmination of so many gatherings, introductions, meetings, influences and more have manifested in a facility that hopes to culminate in even more unseen delights.

Thank you to:

All the students

All the Teachers

John Friend & Desiree Rumbaugh (Anusara Yoga)

Matt Newman

Ken Ballenger

and many more.......