By Danielle Furfaro
The Brooklyn Paper
What do you get when you combine a yoga studio and a hot-dog-serving bar? If you answered pregnant, you were close.
Bushwick’s Cobra Club made headlines last year when it first paired yoga with booze and gourmet frankfurters[1] , but it has now upped the ante by offering yoga classes for pregnant ladies and new moms and their tots. Participants say that the pre- and neonatal stretch sessions are a recipe for little yoga masters.
“We get very silly,” teacher Ria Cooper said of her toddler classes. “We play music and freeze yoga. We go on imaginary adventures and sometimes we go to Old MacDonald’s farm.”
The business on Wyckoff Avenue near Jefferson Street disturbed a few chakras among devotees of the Hindu-derived form of exercise when it opened last year with a saloon in the front and a meditation station in the back, but its owners say that students around the borough often find themselves hard up for a place to socialize over the hair of the downward dog after class. And given the proliferation of high-priced strollers that has accompanied the rapid gentrification of the neighborhood, the addition of classes for tots and the not-yet-born to the bar that is a cafe by day was as natural a progression as a sun salutation, one owner told us.
“In the past year, we have had a lot of parents come by with their kids for coffee,” said owner NIkki Coch, who is nine months pregnant. “There are a lot of families moving to Bushwick and I want to make this a nice, relaxing place.”
Religious feelings were far from the minds of many of the pregnant women in the class, who said they signed up just to keep in shape and keep the discomfort of carrying a child at bay.
“My experience with the pre-natal yoga is so gentle and my doctor is so encouraging,” said Christine Selhi. “When you’re pregnant, you’re constantly out of breath and constantly sore, so you need something to counteract that.”
And the Cobra Club might be home to a yoga studio and a bar, but spirits and spirituality are two things that do not mix for the moms and moms-to-be, Coch said.
“They aren’t having a shot of whiskey on the way out with their toddler,” she said.
The Cobra Club [6 Wyckoff Ave. between Jefferson and Troutman streets in Bushwick, (917) 719–1138, www.cobraclubbk.com[2] ].
©2013 Community Newspaper Group
References
- ^ made headlines last year when it first paired yoga with booze and gourmet frankfurters (www.brooklynpaper.com)
- ^ www.cobraclubbk.com (www.cobraclubbk.com)
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