YogaWorks Dupont Circle

With decent amenities and a manageable class size, Yogaworks Dupont makes for an ideal yoga environment. Add in complimentary tea and a wide range of yoga apparel and accessories for sale, and it’s easy to make a morning of going to the studio. Even though the Yogaworks name brings some cache, a mixed bag of instructors and lackluster space makes this Yogaworks outpost less ideal than locations in other cities.

RUNDOWN

WORKOUT

Our Vinyasa class didn’t follow the traditional Sun A, Sun B, working up to a peak pose beginning. Sometimes we’re into the variation, but in this class, it didn’t work for us as much. We spent a lot of time in warrior 2, triangle, and reverse warrior, some fine classic poses (albeit not particularly challenging) to anchor a much too long flow. The long and slow approach started at the beginning of class (with extended time in forward fold to half-standing forward fold) and was echoed again at the end with a long meditation. Though the class did cover most of the basics of flowing, some inversions, and some restorative posing, it skewed much more level 1 than 2, leaving us a bit underwhelmed.

INSTRUCTOR

From the first few minutes of class, we knew we were going to be distracted. Rachel’s voice is very sing song-y, rising up and down in a way that felt more news-ready than yoga-y. We would’ve gotten over it if she’d given us great verbal adjustments, but she erred on the side of sticking to walking us through the poses. We wish she’d given more advanced options to appeal to the level 2 crowd rather than sticking with the level 1 cueing. Her hands-on adjustments were solid, but we didn’t walk out feeling particularly inspired.

SPACE

Yogaworks is an ideal place to spend a Saturday morning: get your sweat on and drink some complimentary tea while you shop around the yoga apparel for sale. The studio is a bit spread out—there are studios on three different floors—and the ambiance is very different in each. We practiced in one with no windows (save a skylight) but saw that other studios had better natural lighting. Even though we felt like we were in an elementary school gymnasium, class wasn’t super full, which allowed us to spread out. Yogaworks Dupont Circle was the wide array of props available (blankets, blocks, bolsters, etc.) to get deeper during class.

The second floor had a locker room with a hodge-podge of post-sweat amenities (dry shampoo, shower stuff, deodorant) but no individual lockers to store your goodies in or towels to dry off with.