Local Focus: Ashram Yoga Challenges the Body to Strengthen the Mind

THEY SAY do what you love and the rest will come. That’s certainly what happened for Gary Olson, director of programs at in Kirkland.

A lifelong yogi and accomplished martial arts practitioner, Olson has spent decades training, studying and practicing these ancient arts. Over the years, he participated in intensive, months-long training to gain expertise in various yoga disciplines, including Siddha, Hatha and Bikram yoga, as well as Transcendental Meditation. He practiced daily, eventually inter-mixing power yoga classes into his routine.

“The difference with my style is that all the yoga techniques I use are the ones I find effective – (I'm) talking about the level of awareness I can achieve," says Olson. "Beyond the physical, it is totally about producing consciousness and awareness. That’s always the desired effect: consciousness and awareness.”

After completing a 60-day challenge during which he took 60 Bikram yoga classes, he began to recognize that while he found the method extremely effective, he felt something was missing. He began to develop his own style, combining elements of traditional and Bikram yoga with stretching and the mental discipline of martial arts. In 2000, he completed instructor training and began teaching while refining his own unique power yoga system.

As Olson taught classes using his unique yoga structure at studios throughout the area, he began to develop a following. Eventually, he had 400 to 500 students following him from class to class. Classes were selling out and students were clamoring to find out where they could find him next.

That’s when some students approached him about raising money to build a studio of his own. In 2006 The Ashram Yoga on Rose Hill opened, privately funded by students.

The Ashram features two yoga practice rooms. The main room, where classes are practiced in temperatures between 111-120 degrees, accommodates up to 60 students. The smaller studio, where cooler classes and are held, holds up to 25. Designed by Olson and several students, the studio includes important details, such as flooring that absorbs the heat, making practitioners feel like they are working on a heated blanket.

Olson’s style is intense. “I teach lots of different yoga styles and classes, but the main class is power yoga,” he says.

His power yoga system is typically practiced in a heated room where students must tap their mental strength in order to withstand the intense physical demands of the heat and poses.

“I had been a client here before I became a manager, and I was impressed,” says general manager Kris Rooke. “I just couldn’t figure out how this guy was getting 60 people at noon on a Friday to sweat in 120 degrees -- and they were enjoying it. Gary would say ‘it’s not me, it’s them.’ And now that I’m a manager I see that he’s right. It’s our community of members and what they want, but it’s also the gifts of this gentleman. He walks in the room and does his yoga thing and leaves people totally transformed and wanting to change that day.”

THE COMMUNITY is large and varied. “What’s really interesting about the community is we have professional NFL players, Sea Gals, soccer moms, Microsoft executives -- such a varied background,” says Rooke. “As a whole, there is a sense of union. They’ll sweat together, then they network. It seems to seep into the rest of their time together. Someone can come in in despair and leave ready to transform their life because if they can handle working in 120 degrees, what can’t they handle?”

With the popularity of Olson’s style and the demand for classes, Olson has hired a team of qualified yoga instructors who he trains in his style. Classes are offered throughout the day, seven days a week. Som 300 to 600 students visit the studio every day.

Classes are available at a drop-in rate, with a punch card for a certain number of classes, or with one of several unlimited memberships. First-time student specials include a buy-one-get-one-free class purchase, one week of unlimited classes for $35 or one unlimited month for $70.

“The Ashram is available to anyone who wants yoga,” says Olson. “We don’t discriminate for financial reasons. We bring yoga to everyone who wants yoga. (The focus) is about the mind at The Ashram, about being emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually. At the Ashram we are trying to produce a different effect. It’s not all about the poses, but more about trying to control the mind, the heartrate - more focus on the mental.”

What’s next for The Ashram? “We’d like to expand,” says Olson. “I would love to open in Seattle. We have lots of students who drive in from all over the area, so that would make it more convenient – Seattle would be more centrally located, and maybe a little bigger.”

For now, though, Olson encourages new students to come give The Ashram a try. 

"It’s a very personal and different experience for everyone who tries it," he says. "Everyone comes to not only The Ashram, but to yoga for different reasons. Whatever someone seems to need for balance in their life, they can get it from yoga. To me, very simply, yoga is a controlled mind.”