Since 2004, numerous people have visited Divisadero's Yoga Garden SF to practice their crow pose, find relief in savasana or learn to do a headstand. The three-story yoga studio is always bustling, and its classes often sell out. But it started from humble beginnings—with only one studio—before it became the destination it is today.
Yoga Garden founders and business partners Marisa Toriggino and David Nelson opened their first studio in the Castro, way back in 1998. In 2004, they decided to make the move to 286 Divisadero—living on the two upper floors with their growing family, and running their business out of the ground floor.
Yoga Garden owners David Nelson and Marisa Toriggino.
The building was initially constructed as a Victorian home, but had undergone many iterations before the pair turned it into a yoga studio. Nelson told us that prior to buying the building, it had been the offices for Great Place To Work, a company that recognizes stellar workplaces through data collection. At some point, it was also used as a recording studio, possibly by KQED.
In 2009, five years after they opened, Nelson and Toriggino made the decision to expand. They moved out of their home upstairs, converting it into two more studios. The original studio is known as Earth; Water, on the second floor, is where their dining and living room used to be. Air, on the third floor, was formerly bedrooms.
Water, the second-floor studio. (Photo: Yoga Garden)
More studios gave Yoga Garden the ability to offer more varieties of yoga. In the beginning, it was a purely Iyengar studio, but it now also offers Hatha, Vinyasa, Restorative and alignment-based classes, with over 100 classes taught every week. "We realized that what our studio offered didn’t have to be limited by our personal practice," Nelson explained.
Of late, the studio is also beginning to offer more fitness-related classes, such as barre and BoxingYoga®. "We want to stay true to yoga, but also offer more fitness and athletics programs without a big investment in equipment," Nelson told us.
The third-floor Air studio. (Photo: Yoga Garden)
But despite the changes, Yoga Garden's goal has stayed the same: to build a vital community of teachers and students. They offer a yoga teacher training program with both basic and advanced-level certifications, as well as classes on offering certain types of instruction, such as prenatal yoga.
The studio employs between 30 and 40 teachers at any given time, many of them graduates of the training program. Teaching at Yoga Garden is so popular, in fact, that there's a waitlist for instructors who want to work at the studio. Nelson says that training teachers in-house is a big part of how the studio maintains its sense of community. "We're literally creating our next generation of teachers," he said.
At the same time, the current economic climate in San Francisco have made nurturing budding teachers increasingly challenging. As rents rise, teachers are finding it harder and harder to locate and secure housing, often having to move out of the city. "The economics of San Francisco really influence who we are as a studio," Nelson said.
To help out the studio's more popular teachers, many of whom regularly lead sold-out classes, Nelson and Toriggino recently expanded the third-floor Air studio to allow for more students—up to 30 at a time.
Photo: Yoga Garden
While Yoga Garden offers its fair share of advanced, crowded and physically challenging classes, it also aims to accommodate beginners. A free "introduction to yoga" class takes place twice a month, and there are numerous other beginner-level classes for those who are just getting started.
"It can be strange starting out," Nelson acknowledges. "People are partly talking in a different language, and you're sitting on the floor without your shoes on." His advice to newcomers: "Leave your preconceptions at the door. Come to at least three classes before you decide if it's for you or not."
As for what's next for Yoga Garden, Nelson hinted that another location may be in the works at some point. For now, building and maintaining a community at the existing location is his and Torrigino's top priority—and if you swing by the Garden on any evening, you'll see teachers and students coming together to do just that.
