We know it can be challenging to begin yoga, so we have a page devoted to helping you get started.

However, we thought it might also be of interest to give you a brief background of yoga in Sacramento for context to guide your experience. Every yoga studio is different, and where you practice matters. 

Sacramento Yoga Local Studios vs Franchises

Sacramento has seen an infusion of yoga franchises such as Core Power and Y6 in the past few years. Franchises benefit from corporate direction and support in everything from teaching to marketing, making them more likely to survive than a comparable small business.

However, the standardization necessary to be a franchise also translates into a student experience that can feel repetitive. This may serve a newer student initially, but it can be monotonous for someone who has practiced for a while. 

Thus, as your practice progresses, expect to drive further to uplevel your skill. 

Yoga studios reflect the area they are in. Sacramento and places like Austin and Minneapolis are considered B markets. An A market, by contrast, is like San Francisco, New York, or Los Angeles. These cities all have large populations that can support a plethora of studios.

Most yoga studios in Sacramento are independently owned and operated. Like any small business, this creates challenges because you must have the dual skillsets of teaching yoga and running an enterprise.

This affects you as a student because yoga studios do not always stick around. According to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 1 in 5 will fail in the first two years, while just over half make it to the five-year mark.  

We’ve seen this effect in Sacramento, with many yoga studios closing shop.

However, there are pros to being a small entity, too, such as the ability to truly reflect a neighborhood. 

Bikram Yoga | Hot Yoga

Bikram yoga, also known as hot yoga, was once the most common form in the United States. This is the famous “hot” yoga that is 105°F. 

In 2000, Bill and Sandy McCauley opened Yoga Loka, a Bikram yoga studio in Sacramento. Bikram was founded by Bikram Choudhury, who tried to copyright the 26-posture sequence that is the hallmark of this style. Bill and Sandy were part of a group that successfully stopped this. While the ownership of Yoga Loka changed in 2017, we still have a soft spot in our hearts for Bill & Sandy because they wanted to keep yoga open to all. The case was Open Source Yoga Unity v. Bikram Choudhury (N.D. Cal., 4/1/05, No. C 03–3182 PJH).

If you’re interested in learning more about Bikram and/or Hot Yoga you can read a blog we wrote about it. 

Power Yoga

Sacramento’s yoga scene has been heavily power yoga centric. This style “builds a flow” sequence that you repeat several times. The original idea was to make yoga more fitness-oriented. You can read here our full article on how the term was coined and the characteristics of a class. 

Baron Baptiste, one of the yoga teachers who most influenced the rise of power yoga, trained the founders of Zuda Yoga in Sacramento, Spotted Dog in Folsom, and even Trevor Tice of Core Power Yoga. Zuda emerged from Deep in 2006 and spawned several local studios. 

Power yoga's strength is its fitness focus rather than prioritizing the philosophy of yoga.

Vinyasa Yoga

The term "vinyasa" causes a lot of confusion. In this blog, we sort it out for you. We define vinyasa as “a breath-initiated practice that connects every action of our life with the intention of moving towards what is sacred or most important to us.” 

Noteworthy yoga teacher Ganga White offers this about vinyasa, “[it} can be practiced in a vigorous dynamic and stimulating manner and also as a soft, gentle restorative practice.” Thus, you’ll find a variety of class types under vinyasa.

As a student that makes choosing a studio more difficult because vinyasa is such a wide umbrella. But it's worth the effort.

One Flow Yoga® is a vinyasa yoga studio. Vinyasa is the easiest yoga to learn to teach and the hardest to teach well, which is why all of our teachers undergo extensive mentorship–a rarity anywhere. It is also the most popular style of yoga. 

We choose to use the postures to do yoga, but the postures themselves are not yoga.

There are other types of yoga, but we’ve limited the discussion to those most popular in the United States, and Sacramento in particular. By the way, did you know all physical forms of yoga fall under the “Hatha Yoga” category? You can read about it here. 

Teacher Quality

If there’s one issue that combines all the forces mentioned above, including the type of yoga, market size, and franchise vs. local, it’s teacher quality—but not in the way you may think.

This is worth reading as a yoga student and/or someone interested in yoga teacher training.

Franchises, by definition, have to have a repeatable process and be able to teach many teachers quickly. The answer is to have a standard format. 

In practice, this means having a “script” or a sequence they memorize and then teach. In Bikram, this is called “the dialogue.” Still, whenever you encounter a franchise, you’ll likely experience a set teaching method, too.

This can be helpful to a new teacher, but it can also be limiting because all you know is one way of teaching.

Local studios have the advantage of being creative with their training approaches. However, this means there is a huge variation in what yoga studios offer in their teacher training. Want to know more? We wrote a thorough blog about how to become a yoga teacher here. 

Again, as a student, this affects whom you’ll learn from. 

The future of yoga is vibrant in Sacramento. New yoga studios continue entering the market while others evolve and improve. We think it’s the perfect time to begin to practice yoga.