Yoga classes aren’t always about bending and twisting to your body’s limits. Sometimes, yoga is about lying still, breathing deeply and letting a three-month old puppy run across your legs. On Aug. 30, the latter was the case at The Solstice Method. Since April, Nevin Diamond, owner of Hollywood Health Club, welcomed the yoga studio by making a dedicated space available for classes in the East Park Avenue location.
Sydney Rosenberg, the owner of The Solstice Method, has been offering small-group yoga sessions, for up to eight people per class, in a sensory-friendly environment which is inclusive to people with developmental disabilities — utilizing sound-dampening doors and walls and obscuring the gym’s fluorescent overhead lighting. Rosenberg studied kriya yoga in India, which focuses on deep breathing and meditative poses, rather than more highly active movements.
Rosenberg offered two puppy yoga sessions throughout the afternoon, in conjunction with V.I.P. Small Dog Sitting which provides services across the Town of Hempstead. Latoya Benjamin, owner of V.I.P. Small Dog Sitting, brought eight small-sized dogs to the studio. Mattie and Milo, a pair of goldendoodles, four years old and 10 months old, respectively; Oreo, a six-year-old shih tzu who also serves as the company mascot; and five three-month-old shih tzu puppies descended from Oreo himself.
Rosemary Cook came from Atlantic Beach to take the class with her son, Leonardo, and stepsons Ravi and Kash Hadpawat. “We knew [Sydney] as a babysitter,” Cook explained. “And then, when she got into holistic yoga, including for children with special needs, we wanted to support in any way we could.”
In October, Rosenberg will be relocating to Austin Boulevard in Island Park and expanding into a larger facility which can accommodate 10 to 12 people per class. “A problem that I do encounter is that, once you say, ‘It’s inclusive,’ a lot of people go, ‘That’s not for me. I don’t need inclusivity,’” Rosenberg explained. “But everybody’s one accident, one mishap from disability. A disability affects everybody in their life, whether they know somebody with it or you are disabled yourself at some point.”