When Home Becomes a Yogic Design Studio
Helen Pape is a Designer/Artist/Yoga Instructor at AKQA.
You can find her on Instagram.
On day 1 of Victoria's lockdown, I coincidentally moved into a new home, with a new flatmate, and a very new lifestyle.
Supermarket shelves were at their apocalyptic peak (rather empty) and I was feeling incredibly uncomfortable.
Tears were shed, but not too many, for tissues and toilet paper were a scarcity.
During Covid I’ve been counting myself lucky that my job as a designer at AKQA has remained relatively unchanged, and in many ways I’ve been able to focus more deeply due to the space and distraction-free environment that is my bubble; home.
At the same time, the lack of human connection has been challenging and for that I am grateful that my agency has embraced and prioritised initiatives that sustain culture and community.
It took about a day for our work radio station WFH.FM to launch, and not much longer for live-streamed Yoga classes to start flowing.
Perhaps out of unconscious necessity, we counteracted feelings of uncertainty and discomfort through inclusive platforms that built routine and rhythm and allowed people to connect and express themselves creatively.
Two years prior to Covid, Yoga Instructors Marissa Galang, Lauren Miller and myself, held weekly lunchtime yoga classes for our colleagues from a vacant retail space within our office building. When the office closed down we naturally transitioned to teaching from our living rooms. We felt it was important to create a time in the work-week for connection through a practice that embodied self-care and surrendering to the present moment.
Teaching live yoga classes online was something I’d never done before and very quickly I felt a stark contrast between teaching online and in-person.
Without students in the room, the visual and auditory feedback I would usually receive from students was eliminated. I felt like I was talking to myself and imagining and guessing how students might be feeling at any given moment. For me a special part of yoga is the shared connection to breathing; it’s what fills the room with a rhythm and a pulse.
When everyone is inhaling and exhaling in harmony, the breath becomes a fuel that drives the energy of the class and creates a buzz which just hasn’t been possible to emulate virtually.
On the flip side, practicing yoga online can be a beautiful experience because it takes full advantage of a practice that is innately inward and intimate, and therefore absolutely makes sense as an experience from the comfort of a home environment.
One of our avid students, AKQA Creative Technologist Melanie Huang, had the idea to build an online space for our recorded classes, and with the help of Creative Technologist Gerard Mason, through a collaborative effort we designed www.akqa.yoga.
Whilst Covid has been and still is unsettling, I’m sure I’ll hold fond memories of adapting to a new home, with my new flatmate and our new lifestyle. It’s been a time where we turned our small flat into a creative sanctuary; converting the living room into a yoga and design studio, the wardrobe into music recording booth, and driveway into a fitness zone.
I think having a creative outlet has been essential to feeling like there is movement and progress at a time where it could be quite easy to fall into feelings of stagnation and lack of motivation. I have found that no matter what is going on around me, I hold comfort knowing that it only takes a small amount of space to roll out my precious yoga mat.
Please enjoy the short 10 minute ‘Yoga Nidra’ audio clip I have created and adapted from the book ‘Yoga Nidra by Swami Satyananda Saraswati’. Yoga Nidra is a type of meditation that guides the minds eye systematically through the body parts one by one as a way to relax and take attention from the outer world thoughts to an inner felt experience. It is best practiced lying down in a quiet space.
