Kefi YogaYoga Studio<\/p>\n
The Greek word kefi has no perfect English translation. It gestures toward<\/p>\n
joy, passion, the ineffable pleasure of being fully alive \u2014 what Angeliki<\/p>\n
Papadakis describes as \u201can overpowering emotion you have when you completely let go in the moment, release inhibitions, and allow yourself to joyfully feel the life pulsing through your body and soul.\u201d It is also, not<\/p>\n
coincidentally, exactly what people describe when they walk into her studio<\/p>\n
on Crenshaw Boulevard in Torrance.<\/p>\n
That studio exists because of a pandemic, a Greek family, and, somewhat less directly, a Torrance parks worker who just needed to stretch.<\/p>\n
When COVID shuttered the corporate yoga studios in the South Bay, Papadakis \u2014 Angel to her students \u2014 took her practice outside. It started in her mother\u2019s backyard, with her brother Petros \u2014 former USC tailback, team captain, and now Fox Sports college football analyst \u2014 who needed somewhere to channel his energy with the season on hold and young children underfoot. Then her mother wanted a class. Then cousins started showing up. Then her father started cooking shrimp pasta for everyone, and it turned, as she puts it, into a Greek festival every day.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, something else was happening across the South Bay. Yoga teachers who had been laid off by the corporate studios were quietly keeping the flame alive \u2014 slipping out to cliffsides in Palos Verdes, parks in Torrance, any flat outdoor surface that would hold a mat. They weren\u2019t advertising. They were just practicing, and teaching anyone who showed up. \u201cInstructors need to teach and students need their practice,\u201d Papadakis said, \u201cespecially during times of uncertainty.\u201d Word passed between them in the way of people who share a devotion: I heard you\u2019re still doing yoga. Oh \u2014 I heard you are, too.<\/p>\n
Eventually the scattered circles converged at Hickory Park in Torrance,<\/p>\n
setting up mats in the open air at 11 a.m. \u2014 every day, rain or shine,<\/p>\n
through all of it. Papadakis half-expected someone from Parks and Recreation to come over and shut them down. Instead, one morning the worker whose route took him through the park stopped to watch. There was no trash to collect. The bathrooms didn\u2019t need restocking. He looked at Papadakis and asked, quietly, if it was okay if he stretched a little. Of course it was.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s what this is,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s so simple. You hold the space,<\/p>\n
and people find their connection.\u201d<\/p>\n
Papadakis came to yoga by a longer road than most. She grew up dancing \u2014 seriously, training alongside fellow San Pedro native Missy Copeland in a rigorous juvenile ballet program \u2014 and was raised in a family that ran Papadakis Taverna in San Pedro for over 35 years, a restaurant where, as she puts it, every night felt like a party. She went on to become<\/p>\n
a choreographer and then, in a pivot she now describes as something between ambition and naivety, a civil litigator. She practiced law in Los Angeles and San Francisco for years, teaching yoga on the side to keep her body and mind intact, before the pandemic gave her what she calls the hard shift she needed. She has not looked back.<\/p>\n
On April 1, 2021, Kefi Yoga opened at 23812 Crenshaw Blvd. in Torrance.<\/p>\n
The studio now has eight instructors \u2014 all of them, Papadakis says, teachers who are also perpetual students, their egos checked at the door. Kefi has paid for all of them to pursue their 500-hour certifications, an unusual investment for a studio of its size. One instructor, Sunina Mishra, came directly from the Mysore school in India and leads mantra and pranayama classes in Sanskrit \u2014 a practice that some corporate studios have quietly banned. \u201cAs long as I can support it, I will,\u201d Papadakis said.<\/p>\n
The studio offers up to nine classes a day, from restorative yin to heated<\/p>\n
Sculpt combining weights with vinyasa, most rooms warmed to between 90 and 105 degrees. On weekends, Papadakis\u2019s husband, who roasts his own organic single-origin beans under the Kefi Coffee label, brews fresh coffee for students after class. There is always iced tea and crisp apples.<\/p>\n
First-timers get three classes for three dollars, because Papadakis believes<\/p>\n
the door should open for everyone.<\/p>\n
The ambitions keep expanding. Sunday kids\u2019 yoga runs while parents practice. A chair-based class for elderly and injured students is in development. A formal teacher training program is being built. Community partnerships with CASA of Los Angeles and the Palos Verdes school district bring yoga to children in the juvenile justice system and to kids who might otherwise be sitting alone at recess.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really believe that if everyone had yoga in their lives, the world would<\/p>\n
be a better place,\u201d Papadakis said. \u201cAnd with everything happening with AI<\/p>\n
and technology, we have to connect with our own humanity to keep that part of ourselves sacred. It\u2019s the only thing that differentiates us.\u201d<\/p>\n
That Easy Reader readers chose Kefi as the best yoga studio in the South<\/p>\n
Bay is no surprise to anyone who has walked through the door. Kefi is not<\/p>\n
a place you go to do yoga. It\u2019s a place you go to remember what you are.<\/p>\n
Kefi Yoga<\/p>\n
23812 Crenshaw Blvd., Torrance<\/p>\n
(310) 683-5605<\/p>\n