FIERCE GRACE

ATHLEISURE LIST: NYC, London, Brazil, Sweden, Ireland and Rome

We took a class at Fierce Grace when it first opened. Although we have taken a few hot yoga classes and have a go to that we enjoy, we had to add another to the list with this studio that just came to the States after the success that it has enjoyed overseas!

Fierce Grace is a revolutionary system of 8 interconnected classes, and is the brainchild of one of the UK’s most well known teachers, Michele Pernetta (who led our class). The studio is owned by 3 yoga teachers. Tricia Donegan, a renowned teacher in the NY yoga scene and owner of the original Bikram studio on Allen St., Kelly Isaac entrepreneur, yoga teacher and business partner of clothing brand Yogangster and Michele Pernetta, an ex-fashion and costume designer, and one of the UK’s most respected yoga teachers and founder of Fierce Grace, who brought hot yoga to the UK in 1994. FGNYC isn’t a franchise, it is a deeply personal project, a transformation of a loved studio into the hottest yoga brand in the UK.

They represent 45 years of yoga teaching experience. They will be hands on running workshops, events, trainings and bringing the Fierce Grace manifesto to the Lower East Side, in its irreverent, down to earth, no-nonsense way.

“Fierce Grace is the perfect fit for the yoga community I’ve built here, it’s the logical next step. It’s a brilliant yoga system that welcomes all body types and levels, has inspiring classes - from strength and fitness classes, to slow deep classes, flowing classes to great music and alignment and injury classes, but all in an integrated system that brings continuity and safety," says Pernetta.

Fierce Grace launched in 2013 and currently has over 20 locations with the NYC studio opening a month ago. There are currently six Fierce Grace studios in London, with a brand new one opening in the summer, and classes offered in ten more UK locations including the prestigious David LLoyd clubs, as well as licensed studios in

Dublin Ireland, New York City and in-Rome, Italy. There are studios offering running the business, teaching there, the method in Ohio, Cincinnati, Washington DC, Sweden, Sao Paolo, and Brazil. There are instructors trained to teach the Fierce Grace method globally.

In the UK, they have collaborated from time to time with UK brands such as "Yes to” and Jason, Aveda, Vita Coco, and they have their own in-house juice man/chef called Davide who makes organic juices.

At Fierce Grace, they value simple, safe poses that everyone can do and the repetition of template poses has huge benefits. From Pernetta's Ashtanga Vinyasa's practice she believes in the value of a more flow-based practice and how non-static movements, such as Sun Salutations, which develop a sense of freedom and non-rigidity can al and mental level. As the body is so complex, one needs a large number of asanas in order to approach the body from every angle and to confuse weak or dormant muscles and habitual physical patterns. To this end, the Fierce Grace system is a system of classes that encompass all these qualities and contains nearly 200 poses. This ensures the entire body is used and moved in every way possible.