Urban Asanas
“I’m brash, I’m an Amazon, I don’t bite my tongue, and I’m not for everybody,” begins Jyll Hubbard, owner of Urban Asanas yoga studio. “But the people who get it, they get it.” In fact so many folks get Jyll that, after nearly 15 years of teaching yoga at other studios across New York City, her classes grew so popular she decided to build her own.
“I was like, ‘I am going to open my own fucking place, and I am going to open a place for Black girls,’” Jyll says of Urban Asanas, which she opened six years ago in Crown Heights. She specifically wanted to make space for Black women in light of friends’ stories of sometimes feeling excluded from the yoga community
“Real talk — it’s taken me a minute to build the diversity I have now,” Jyll, 52, says. “But after years of tweaking, I’ve done enough to make a safe space where all people can come and purge, cry, laugh, yell, and there’s never any judgement.”
Sitting in on Jyll’s classes on a recent weekend, it was clear she is her students’ biggest cheerleader. Whether teaching a packed power yoga session or an intimate workshop for women coming home from incarceration, she warmly connects with each student, challenging them while energetically letting them know that They Got This. “It’s so important for people to just come and let loose,” she says.
In that spirit, Urban Asanas offers Vinyasa and Hatha at all levels, often with soul music and hip-hop (sometimes with live DJs), as well as community classes on a $10-17 sliding scale.
“For six years my prices have been $15 for 90 minutes, and I just changed my prices to $17 in September,” Jyll says. “But I still have a policy that I don’t turn anyone away at the door. I’m going to pay my bills; I’m good. It’s just that I know what this space brings for people.”
“ But after years of tweaking, I’ve done enough to make a safe space where all people can come and purge, cry, laugh, yell, and there’s never any judgement.”
In addition to being a yoga teacher for the past 20 years, Jyll is a doula who also does reiki and Thai massage. In order to pursue all her areas of interest and expertise, she has plans to expand Urban Asanas with a wellness studio. Construction is already underway for a new wing that will provide services including acupuncture, massage, reiki, and an infrared sauna. Of course, her first love of yoga will always be in the mix.
“Yoga is beyond a posture; yoga is how you live and treat people, human to human,” she says. “This is my calling and my gift. That I know is true.”
843 Sterling Place, 347-305-3558, urbanasanas.com
