BETA
This is a BETA experience. You may opt-out by clicking here

More From Forbes

Edit Story

Laughing Lotus Yoga Centers Want To Spread Its Lotus Flow

Following
This article is more than 10 years old.

Thousands of yogis released a resounding ‘ommmmm’ as they sat on yoga mats just inches apart from one another in the middle of New York’s Time Square as the sun set. World renowned yogi Dana Flynn guided their practice that solstice evening. To be invited to lead such a public yoga session reflects Flynn’s influence in the yoga world. People want to feel Flynn, leaving her with the challenge of how to scale her Laughing Lotus Yoga Centers and Lotus Flow style of vinyasa yoga without requiring her to actually be there.

Laughing Lotus (LL) Yoga Centers are bi-coastal, in New York and in San Francisco. Flynn flies around the world to teach. What has helped Flynn attract an international following is her ability to create a party-like sense of fun and freedom in her practice. Now her challenge is to scale her party to a point where she doesn’t need to be physically present for people to get the experience of LL.

Behind its mystical exterior, yoga is a booming $10.4 billion a year industry, which includes yoga centers, retreats, clothing, and all things related to the yoga lifestyle. An estimated 20 million Americans practice yoga. According to Yoga Journal’s regular bi-annual surveys, the number continues to grow.

Like any other entrepreneurs, Flynn wants to maximize growth opportunities for her business in this industry.

The ‘Janis Joplin’ of the Yoga World

Dana Trixie Flynn has been called the “Janis Joplin” of the yoga world.

This rock n’ roller yogi also has some serious business chops. After graduating from Cornell, Flynn became a Smith Barney stock broker on Wall Street and set records for her class. Just before Wall Street crashed in 1987, she left her job and bought a Greek luncheonette in Hell’s Kitchen. With no entrepreneurial experience, the then 25 year old made “Trixies” one of the most famed restaurants of the 1980s. Each night after clearing away the dining tables, celebrities and regulars came together for a dance party. Her party-girl persona even landed her a role with MTV as one of its “veejays” and she spent years interviewing rock stars.

But Flynn said after running Trixies for five years, she realized she was changing and the “restaurant no longer served me.” She discovered yoga when it was still relatively new to New York and she pursued it further.

Flynn shared in a reflective essay, “It was surprising for me to find yoga, yet all the ingredients were always there - my love for music, movement and friends. This was my opportunity for awakening.”

Not before long, Flynn went from student to teacher, then business owner and yoga star. Now Flynn even teaches others on how to get into the business of yoga.

The birth of Laughing Lotus and Lotus Flow

“What is laughter? Laughter is the glorious sound of a soul waking up” is the quote that inspired the name, “Laughing Lotus.” The lotus is a timeless symbol of awakening and transformation.

“Laughter, joy, and celebration” constitutes LL’s signature style of vinyasa yoga, Lotus Flow, which is spread by the teachers trained at LL when they leave for their own studios.

I was introduced to Flynn by one of my own mentors, Christine Chen, an Emmy-winning broadcast journalist turned New York-based wellness author/writer/yoga instructor who apprenticed with Flynn and now teaches fundamentals of Lotus Flow at LL.

Whenever I visit New York, I take one of Chen’s yoga classes. I could see a marked difference in her style after she had started apprenticing with Flynn. I understood what Chen meant when she described Lotus Flow as “a beautiful mash up of playful and physically interesting sequences, musical healing, celebration, and deep devotion.”

Flynn and her Lotus Flow co-creator and LL co-founder, Jasmine Tarkeshi, started teaching a community class together on a rooftop playground in New York in 1997.

Two years later, they decided to open the first official Laughing Lotus Yoga Center. They rented a 600-square-foot space above a jazz club in Greenwich Village. “By the end of the year, after paying all the bills, I think we made $5 each,” recounted Flynn.

The classes became so popular, they realized they needed to expand. With $300,000 borrowed from their parents, they built out a 4000 square foot studio in Chelsea. They washed and painted murals on the wall. It was much grander than anything they had ever had. And they waited. And waited. No one came.

“We had to start from scratch. It was really humbling. It's hard to be creative when you're nervous about having to pay rent,” said Flynn. So she did what she knew how to do best: throw a party.

“No one was doing that at the time,” she said. She tapped into the community around her and created a new one. She threw potlucks and parties to raise money for community causes, such as a student who was recovering from cancer. Slowly, people started coming.

LL has now two branches, one in New York and the other in San Francisco; Flynn runs the East and Tarkeshi the West.  They share the same branding and have a partnership but they operate financially as separate businesses. According to Flynn,  LL New York drew 70,000 people in 2012. Last year, over 80,000 came through its doors.

Despite the increasing popularity of yoga, Alison West pointed out, “Most studios just scrape by.” West is the Executive Director of Yoga for New York, which aims to grow and promote the yoga industry in New York.

West said there are over hundreds of yoga studios in New York. Yoga classes can be roughly put into three categories: 1) big, corporate managed gyms or yoga centers 2) small one-roomed studios and 3) large yoga centers led by well-known yogis (like Laughing Lotus and West’s own Yoga Union).

To succeed in business, yoga studios like LL have gotten creative in extending their services beyond yoga classes.

How to grow the business (i.e., scale the party)

Three years ago, LL expanded and remodeled to include space for dance and music, a glitter bar, and even walls with the names of deities inscribed in graffiti. Profits generated from events held at the yoga center now make up 15% of LL New York’s income. Moreover, the events draw people back to the center, even after they have graduated from their teacher training programs.

Like other small businesses, LL has reached a crossroad in determining what’s next. LL can expand horizontally with more studios or vertically, with new lines of business in the yoga industry. Because of the rising real estate costs, the next frontier for studios in New York is Brooklyn. Flynn said she tried to expand there but hasn’t found the right place yet.

To remain an industry leader, even with a 5000-year old tradition like yoga, you must constantly be innovating.

Three months ago, LL started to experiment with selling access to online yoga classes as a way to make LL yoga accessible to those are sick, out-of-town, or who cannot afford the studio classes ($20/class). Now there are nearly 100 subscribers who hail from all over the world, including from England, Australia, Germany, and even India. They want to grow the number of subscribers.

Like many other small businesses, they are bumping against glitches as they leverage technology to grow.

Vimeo has been down this week,” sighed Leo Rising, LL’s Cosmic Personality (a.k.a, the operations manager). “There have been some unhappy yogis out there.”

Eventually, LL plans to create an online teachers’ certification series. Flynn said they don’t have specific growth targets yet for the online classes, but “I feel real confident it’s popular and we’re making more friends worldwide through this vehicle.”

To expand LL beyond New York and San Francisco, Flynn has considered licensing the Laughing Lotus name to those yoga centers committed to teaching Lotus Flow yoga with the expectation their teachers would come to the LL headquarters to learn. “I need a partner to take it to the next step,” said Flynn.

Of creating Lotus Flow, Flynn said, “It took me years to learn how to move like myself.”

After 25 years of teaching, Flynn is still trying to figure out the best way to build her yoga empire by letting it flow.