Here's where we planted the seeds of Garden of Yoga in Northcote. It looks like a garage from the outside, but since the previous owner of our place was a DJ, she'd already fully insulated and fixed up the inside, and filled the space with good vibes!

Our original plan was to find a warehouse space that we could fix up to live and work in, and it turns out the those types of spaces were all gone in the inner North, so we pivoted to looking for a little house with a big shed that we could convert to a yoga studio. We are so grateful to have found this place for our studio here in Northcote - it was really the only suitable spot we saw within our budget. And turns out we love living in this neighbourhood!

We loved this place from the beginning, and had a little chat to the owner - our place has lots of quirky little touches and we told her how we loved them all. She later told us that she'd done a visualisation on the morning of the auction, with us as the buyers, and her lovely cat Lola even sat next us while the auction was happening. It felt like it was meant to be!

We bought our place in March 2012, but it took us a while to get the engineering plans and find a builder to help get our little studio aerial yoga ready!

The next step was installing structural beams. I also got our builder to swap out some of the corrugated metal roofing and replace with clear to let more natural light. It was quite hard to find anyone who would take this little job on, and when I finally found someone, it was still a bumpy road. I hardly took any photos during these phase because it was so stressful. Our builder was very unpredictable and kept disappearing and not answering his phone for weeks at a time. The big mirror you can see here were actually an apology gift from him after not showing up for a long time.

It was a weird time because I felt very grateful that we found this place and I know that having a home at all is a massive privilege, but it also seemed like the dream of opening an actual studio was getting pushed further and further away.

Plus I felt bad that our builder was obviously struggling with his life, but it was also very frustrating that he was unreliable. Especially since i'd prepaid him for some of the work that felt like it was never going to get completed.

He actually disappeared entirely while the job was still unfinished and I ended doing lots of DIY. Luckily the hammock beams were one of the first things to go in so I was confident they were installed properly.

Painting the outside was fun though (and helped to disguise some of the wonky spots).

Here's what the roof looked like from the inside. Do you recognise the pressed metal, art and fiddle leaf fig?

They all found their way into our new studio. Plus I repurposed the structural beams as shelving.

I was super excited to share with my Pilates mentor Louise Taube, who was also a big inspiration for creating a home studio space.

I only had room for 3 hammocks total (no separate teachers hammock), and the because it was such a little space I decided to make the whole floor padded. This end up being a bit of problem though since the floor was so uneven it was hard to get the puzzle pieces to stay together, especially when they expanded on hot days (I used lots of carpet tape).

Here's the reason our floor was wonky - it was made from manhole covers sitting in sand! I ended up having to take some of them out to concrete a smoother surface - but Studio Cat Nagano appreciated the little path we made from the ones we removed.

The wet sarong over the door way was also a feature of hot days!

Later I added a whirly gig to the roof as well which helped a lot, but with just fans and no air conditioning I just had to cancel classes when the weather got too hot. I still have so much appreciation for our air conditioning in the new studio!

This is also where we started The Flow Artists Podcast - you can see Andrew Keast here in the hammock - we let him out for the actual interview though

We learned so much from our guests that actually shaped the design out our new studio - including no mirrors which was advised by body images advocates Janet Lowndes and Sarah Harry since they can be distracting for many people.

Looking back now, I don't know how we fit so much into such a small space!

Here's a little movie showing our studio in action - I would set it up like this for studio pilates sessions.

We had some great times in our first little studio space, but we always knew we'd outgrow at some stage. So we began the process of seeking planning permission and getting everything in order to build our bigger space!

We have so much gratitude to our family, friends and community who have supported us along the way - we really wouldn't be here without you!

Shout out to long time friend of the studio Julia Graziani shown here in the back hammock and Lauren Lederman for this great photo!