New Haven’s Soul Lab Hot Yoga Studio has gone into business

Staff Reporter

Courtesy of Courtney Brooks

Five months after opening, New Haven Soul Lab has taken the city’s fitness scene by storm, introducing locals and college students to the art of infrared heat yoga.

Founder Courtney Brooks In 2017, she opened her first Soul Lab studio in Old Saybrook. She chose to expand to Elm City in 2022, when she was in college at the University of New Haven and noticed there were no infrared studios nearby. Now, the New Haven studio is “buzzing” with business, according to Brooks, drawing newcomers — mostly local college students — to hot yoga.

“Yoga helps people heal from the inside out,” Brooks said. “So if you feel what’s inside you, everything around you will be better. Depending on the numbers and classes and how quickly the studio fills up, it was really important.

The white-walled New Haven studio is lit by large windows running down one side of the room and comfortably fits about 40 students on the floor. Under rows of infrared heat panels suspended from the ceiling, students practice vinyasa yoga — which involves moving through a series of linked hatha yoga poses called asanas — in temperatures of 80 to 90 degrees Fahrenheit. While beginner classes include no steam, advanced sessions add 75 percent humidity to the room.

According to Brooks, the benefits of hot yoga include increased flexibility and the ability to develop postures in addition to improving physical strength. She added that the guarantee to “sweat” in the sessions attracts all the need for physical fitness, allowing newcomers to gradually practice meditation and mindfulness.

“A lot of people avoid yoga because they don’t want to sit and meditate — their minds are too crazy,” Brooks said. But if you tell people, ‘You’re going to get in a room and sweat it out and have a good time and it’s going to be music,’ they don’t even realize they’re meditating. But they are doing it. That brings more people in the door.

Brooks and instructor Lori Bonazzoli, who have taught hot yoga classes for 20 years, told the News that the studio’s infrared heat creates a different experience for students than other forms of hot yoga. These systems can make breathing a challenge, according to Brooks, possibly creating a sense of suffocation in crowded studios. Infrared panels, however, heat objects and people directly, and the studio’s ventilation system circulates fresh air throughout the sessions.

Carolyn Miller, who teaches classes at the Old Saybrook studio, said other safety measures included in the studios include placing carpet markers, opening doors and turning on fans between sessions.

Maeve Hengan, 26, a member of the women’s team at Soul Sweat, says that although she doesn’t notice many differences between hot yoga and regular yoga, the key physical effects benefit her as an athlete. .

Heneghan wrote to the News: “I appreciate how flexible he is in terms of his abilities and how you feel.” “As an athlete, I love how hot yoga adds to my training in terms of stretching during my downtime.”

According to Brooks, session spots fill up quickly at both the Old Saybrook and New Haven studios. To meet the demand in New Haven, Soul Lab added more classes to their weekly schedule two weeks ago. Now, more than 20 are typically taught a week.

Bonazzoli, who previously owned Balance Yoga Studio in Westville, said her business at New Haven Soul Lab is growing at a rate she’s never seen before.

“I was the owner of another hot vinyasa studio in New Haven,” Bonazzoli said. “I mean, we weren’t open at the same time, but I remember starting to grow, and Courtney is growing tenfold. I have chills. And now I’m wearing a suit. So, it is very beautiful. It’s unbelievable.”

The studio has offered a scholarship program since December, in which a select few students receive free tuition for an entire semester. About 250 people applied for Brooks.

She linked the high applicant numbers to the challenges facing college students.

“There’s so much pressure on college students, it doesn’t matter whether you go to Yale or South — schoolwork, social life and sports pressure, all of that,” Brooks added. “Yoga has been at least a little bit of relief for them and a way for them to deal with and cope with all the stress they’re dealing with.”

Brooks currently has no plans to move to a larger studio in New Haven, but said there is room to expand to other cities in Connecticut and beyond in the future.

New Haven Soul Lab is located at 300 Crown Street.