New yoga studio on Ninth Street provides place for students to 'refresh'

If midterms are stressing you out, walk over to the yoga studio on Ninth Street, which opened earlier this year.

The studio, called “Yoga Off East,” was founded by Duke alum Kathy Smith in April and is located in the back of the restaurant Happy + Hale, a juice and salad bar. The studio was opened in collaboration with the owners of Happy + Hale, and Smith noted that the businesses share the same space because they wanted there to be a “fresh, clean place where healthy food would be accessible after exercise.” 

“One of the difficulties we face is that the studio is tucked away inside Happy + Hale and is hard to find,” Smith said. “I just want students to know that Yoga Off East is a container of time and safe space where they can drop by and de-stress and walk back refreshed.” 

Yoga Off East aims to teach “flow yoga”—popularly known as “vinyasa”—which is a “restorative” form of yoga, she added. It occasionally offers a “Run Club” where people from the local community come together to participate in two mile long run. The studio will soon be also offering courses in meditation.

Although a few Duke students currently attend classes at the studio, it has not been extremely popular among those on campus. First-year students said they wanted to take advantage of the free yoga lessons offered at the Brodie Recreation Center. Additionally, several upperclassmen explained that they find that the walk down to Ninth Street is time-consuming.

However, Smith noted the advantages of her studio’s location off campus. 

“Our studio is a great alternative because the gym on campus can be distracting sometimes, and we have awesome instructors here who love to share their expertise,” she said. 

Smith, a former Duke tennis star who graduated in 2001, said she practiced yoga to alleviate pain after sustaining a sports injury to her shoulder.

Following a successful recovery, Smith earned a master’s degree in cultural anthropology from the University of Oregon, where she wrote a paper on the commercialization of yoga in the U.S. That propelled her to obtain certification as a professional yoga instructor, she explained. 

Smith went on to serve as the head coach of the women’s tennis team at Princeton University for five years and recently moved back to Durham, where she conceived the idea for Yoga Off East. Her husband Ramsey Smith is head coach of the Duke men’s tennis team. 

This is also not the first time Smith has brought yoga to Duke students. She has led the Duke baseball team in yoga workouts, and has worked with men’s tennis and women’s lacrosse teams.