My lockdown experience

By Susannah Savage

So many hats!

I wear a few different hats, and recently it has felt like a bit of a juggling act rapidly switching from one to the other and back again, and often wearing them all at once! I’m a yoga teacher, yoga centre owner, mum and epidemiologist – with the advent of COVID-19 finally everyone knows what that is.  When the news of the pandemic first came to light, my epidemiologist hat won out. I started scanning the data daily, analysing trends and plotting graphs, chatting with old colleagues about whether a vaccine was possible in any realistic timeframe, and trying to understand what was happening

Then I put on my yoga centre owner hat. I remember early meetings, with the Yogaloft team sitting on bolsters in the studio spread out to 2 metres apart in a big circle with the windows wide open as we discussed the ins and outs of coronavirus and what we were going to do. I remember realising how alarming it all seemed for many of our team, trying to reassure them that they could take steps to protect themselves, while simultaneously telling them all to persuade their parents to stay at home as soon as possible. I remember us all laughing about pavement-rage (Who does have right of way?) and quickly realising that things were about to change dramatically for all of us.

Supporting the Yogaloft community

We were already thinking about moving to online classes back in February, and had done some of the groundwork. For a while we tried to hang on and stay open, but then it became clear that this was not the right call, so we closed our doors and everyone went home, and didn’t come back for 4 months. That was a busy weekend. The Yogaloft team worked at an incredible pace to sort out a completely new timetable, all online, and to get the right technology in place to support it. We closed on Thursday evening, by Saturday morning had launched our new Yogaloft@Home timetable and by the following weekend had 65 livestreamed classes running per week, all taught by our regular studio teachers. We had to adapt fast – we were down to a tiny core team as we’d had to furlough most of our staff.

Looking back, it was an exciting time. Confusing, frightening and very sad, but also exciting. I was very focused then – and now – on supporting all the different groups of people linked to the studio. I really wanted to support our teachers by helping them to keep teaching if they wanted to. I wanted to support our wonderful students by continuing to give them the opportunity to join yoga classes to keep their body, mind and soul together. I also hoped to keep the studio afloat and connected to these two groups, because without them, Yogaloft is a couple of buildings. It was important to me that our front of house team stay connected – but how? They weren’t allowed to work on furlough, so we couldn’t have meetings. In the end we opted for optional catch up calls, where no work was discussed for them, but we just checked in to make sure everyone was ok, and to let them know what we were up to. Back then we had no idea how bad it was going to get. My trust that it would all be ok if we worked together helped me stay optimistic as we traversed some scary, choppy waters.

The reality is that the online yoga marketplace is a busy, competitive place, and it wasn’t long before we were joined online by everyone and their dog which meant that prices were pushed down. There were a few frightening weeks when I really had no idea how on earth we were going to survive. But, stepping back and looking at the bigger picture when there was so much suffering and sadness, I remember my thought process was pretty simple – if you lose the business, it’s just a business, not a life. Just do your best to keep it all going and we’ll see what happens.

A new way of life

So I did. We all did. While our neighbours chatted on their doorsteps and drank gin at 10am, we worked really hard. And now my mum hat needs a mention! I am the proud mum of Sammy who is about to turn two. This time with him has been incredible. Being at home meant we had a truly lovely time during lockdown. Yes, we were working hard, but we also had plenty of time in those first few weeks to put Sammy on the back of the bike and cycle around for our 1 hour exercise. We had our ideal daily routine of yoga practise with Sammy, breakfast, a bike ride, and then several hours playing pass-the-toddler while we took turns trying to work. It was a really special time and I feel very grateful for having had that time of just being quiet and at home.

Recent weeks have been different though. No childcare and my husband back at work teaching in a primary school has meant that I’m alone with Sammy all day. In the build up to reopening this has been incredibly hard. I never wanted to be one of those mums who is torn, trying to work and look after a child at the same time, but that’s how things had to be. Thank goodness for Peppa Pig! And as I write that, I feel guilt pangs that I’ve used cartoons to buy myself some work time. Sorry Sammy. I’ve been having to work late into the evening, sometimes until very late, just to have the chance to get through my inbox. It’s gone against all my principles about work/life balance, but if there was ever a time for flexibility, this is it.

Planning for reopening has been a huge, enormous, really massive job. (Did I make my point?) I’ve been speaking to all our teachers, trying to work out a schedule that works for them and us. Then everything had to be programmed in our systems from scratch and sent out to everyone. We had to unfreeze all the contracts and extend all the bundles and that was another huge task. It’s been like opening for the first time again. We’ve put a lot of thought in to how to lay out our studios so that everyone can move around the buildings safely and enjoy their classes without feeling compromised by proximity to others.

We’ve bought industrial quantities of hand sanitiser, miles of duct tape and the floor of Beethoven St looks like a board game with coloured lines and circles to stand on. We’ve tested out a few microphones and camcorders and had zoom meetings where we can’t hear each other at all, or are deafened by feedback, trying to get the studio systems right. It’s been a lot of fun working it all out as a team and we are really pleased with the end result. We hope you will be too.

Looking ahead

This has been a period of such deep reflection and change. Perhaps a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to question all the things that, until recently, we’ve taken for granted – health,  passing someone in the street without fear, the tube, hugging. It’s also been a time to re-assess. Before COVID-19 I lived in a street where I didn’t know my neighbours, rushed out to work every day and didn’t feel like I actually lived where I live.

I really hope we hold on to the beauty of the slower pace, knowing our neighbours, having more spontaneity, less planning and just appreciating a daily walk around the block. I’m hopeful that we will be returning to a world which has learnt a bit from these past months and that we hold on to this community spirit.  Bring on cars powered by lemons I say, and I can’t wait to get back into the studio and practise – safely – with my friends again.