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Noble Yoga Studio owner Dolly Reno. (file photo/Vernon Matters Staff)
Indigenous-owned yoga studio

A ‘Noble’ venture gaining ground

Mar 6, 2023 | 10:00 AM

A new downtown Vernon yoga studio is attracting attention for all the right reasons.

Owner Dolly Reno has taken great care in the design and selection of materials for the 2,500 square foot studio on the ground floor of The Hamlets building on 30th Street.

“I choose Noble Yoga because often we define noble as royalty or a hierarchy and I think there is another definition of noble and that has to do with morales, and comes from being a good person,” Reno told Vernon Matters.

“The second part of the name noble is my ancestry; one side of my family is Indigenous on my father’s side, so being that I’m First Nations, I really want to honour my ancestry.”

Every material in the space Reno described as noble, with everything made of wood, stone or metal and no plastics.

Sourcing sustainable items for the business also extends into the yoga clothing and mats the studio carries.

“There is consciousness in every product we carry, we try to keep everything as local to B.C. as possible. If we go outside of that, we are looking for sustainability and also who is making the product: can we connect with them can we talk with them?” Reno said.

(file photo/Vernon Matters Staff)

At the heart of the studio is the practice room, which features infrared heating and special lighting.

“For me, that is where I do my deep healing work, if I could be so emotional in saying that. When we go to a yoga class, we are looking for a few things: it is a place to do physical work but yoga also has a meditative quality. You’re dropping in, and there is something that happens to your breath, the way that you think, that ultimately impacts the way that you feel,” Reno stated.

“I think yoga is really good medicine for anxiety and there is a lot of that in the world, and so to support that practise in a holistic way, from every angle, is to look at the lights, the colour of the room, having the right props, what is the temperature, so when people walk in there, they let go of everything else.”

(submitted photo)

The business opened in late September 2022, and now employs two people along with nine instructors, and is growing quickly.

“I think that there is a gap between where I am now and where I need to be, obviously to make the business sustainable in the long term. With the response, we have about 200 members in only five months, so that is a really strong community right out of the gate,” Reno said.

For information on classes and memberships click here.

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