(RNS) — At the New York City yoga studios she frequented in the 2010s, Rosana Rodriguez sometimes found herself the only Latina in the room. “I felt really intimidated,” said the 58-year-old native New Yorker. Predominantly white studios and expensive monthly fees gave her and others in her community the impression that wellness spaces “weren’t for them.”
But the practice of yoga itself, Rodriguez said, saved her life. It was a consistent stress-reduction technique after an abusive relationship and losing her job.
During yoga nidra — or guided meditation in the Savasana posture, often at the end of class — Rodriguez caught herself translating what her teacher said into Spanish, sparking a “revelation.” “I wanted to bring this level of healing to my community,” she said.
Rodriguez soon founded Yogiando NYC, the first Spanish-English bilingual studio in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan, which has a majority Hispanic population. Offering weekly $10 yin yoga classes at Yogiando, which is a made-up word to mean “doing yoga,” since 2017, Rodriguez said the space became a hub of solace where Spanish-speakers could share their anxieties about anything from immigration to family to their jobs with one another.
“One of the things that I have prided myself in creating for this community is a safe space,” she said. “The closing meditation is that I’m saying to them, ‘You are held and p …