Macon Magazine

APRIL/MAY 2022 | maconmagazine.com 49 HOMEGROWN YOGA Rachel Gerrity opened her second location of Homegrown Yoga in 2021 after her studio in Warner Robins proved prosperous. "These are my roots. I live in Macon. And I'd always known that I wanted a space in Macon, as well," she said. However, the second location wasn't in her immediate timeline — until suddenly it was. "I was driving down Vineville Avenue and saw this building for sale. I wasn't on the search for a building, but I saw this used car dealership that had an outdoor space. What I knew from COVID was that even if COVID disappeared, people like being outside. So, I immediately called the realtor and went and looked at it and knew that was the space," Gerrity said. "I think if I hadn't found that, I wasn't going to lease an indoor yoga space. I didn't feel like that was where I wanted to go. The thought was there, I saw the building and it all kind of came together." Gerrity faced serious obstacles opening her new location during a lockdown, such as the absence of foot traffic on a business that depends on in- person activity, as well as another vital component to the yoga practice. "The biggest way that we've ever marketed the studio is through open houses. We couldn't do that, so the challenge was, how do we market ourselves without actually having to get a ton of people in the door at one time? We learned how to market ourselves with Facebook Live or we got out of the studio and did this 'All Roads Lead to Home' class at the Museum of Aviation and the Museum of Arts and Sciences. We did one at Fall Line Brewing Co., where we took people into an outdoor space that was much bigger than ours," she said. "There's also the challenge of breathing. Yoga is about breathing, so there's the challenge of creating an environment where people feel safe to come into a room with strangers and we tell them to inhale and exhale — and that's hard." Now, as we are easing back to normal, Gerrity said she feels like Homegrown Yoga has settled into a groove that feels like home. She believes the pandemic, "highlighted that taking care of ourselves is much more important than people thought. The pandemic was a wakeup call for people to take care of themselves and a marketing tool for what we do. People, now more than ever, have said to me that yoga is something that I really need at this time, so it affirmed my belief that yoga is not going to be some fad that comes in and out." Homegrown Yoga offers sunrise classes, hot yoga, meditation classes and kids' classes, and they utilize their unique outdoor space for various practices. "It's a nice little oasis back there. On a night when it's really nice and pretty, we head outside and set up a sound system out there and so it gives you a yoga studio experience, but with the idea of fresh air and being able to spread out," she said. No matter your age, yoga can be for you. "Yoga is such an accessible practice that we have people of all ages hopping into all of our classes. We do have classes that are more low-key, physically, for people who are new or have degenerative diseases. Yoga is not a form of exercise that anyone ages out of," she said. LEFT: WAYNE WOODARD IS THE CO-OWNER OF AMBITIOUS GRAPHICS IN DOWNTOWN MACON. PHOTO BY EXODUS PHOTOGRAPHY. RIGHT: RACHEL GERRITY OWNS HOMEGROWN YOGA, WHICH HAS LOCATIONS IN MACON AND WARNER ROBINS.

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