A quiet place to nest and heal
The Nest Space opened four months ago and is owned by Banesa Tseki and her business partner, Anesu Mbizo. “I started doing yoga 10 years ago when I was in Cape Town and realised that most spaces were full of white people and there was no space for people of colour who are spiritually conscious,” said Tseki.
Now 29, Tseki used to suffer from depression and anxiety and seeing doctors who gave her medicine didn’t help because she would just end up numb. “Then I met a doctor who did kickboxing and introduced me to it. It helped me whenever I got panic attacks.”
She also met a woman who introduced her to kundalini yoga and, after two years of training, she became a certified teacher.
Because many yoga studios are mainly white and so are the instructors, it’s important for Tseki and Mbizo to make the yoga space more inclusive, not only when it comes to race but when it comes to sexuality and gender.
Most of her clients are young black professionals whom she describes as activists and young creatives between the ages of 20 and 30.
“This specific age group is looking for alternative ways to heal and spaces that make you comfortable allows the healing process to start,” she says.
The studio has shiny wooden floors and interesting features such as African traditional masks, plants, healing crystals, a shelf full of books by authors from Africa and the diaspora and a corner with a couch where you can just take in the lesson while you sip some tea (no sugar and no coffee at the studio)
“We built the studio like this so that people know who we are,” she says. “Part of apartheid and colonialism is mental instability and inferiority complex and we’re trying to take back that power.”
Being in a space you can relate to uplifts your spirit, and yoga in particular is spiritual. But at The Nest Space ethnicity is connected to spirituality. For a newbie, I finally realised that yoga should be for everyone.