Live mindfully

Many of us watched the construction of the new yoga center with anticipation. Well, the Tahoe Yoga & Wellness Center will finally have its open house April 28-29. There will be free yoga and tai chi classes on the hour from 10 a.m.-3 p.m., and free mini-masssage sessions starting at noon. The Tahoe Yoga & Wellness Center is at 1085 S. Virginia St., 348-9642. Our subject, Mojohito Tchudi, is a tai chi teacher at the center. Further information, like schedules, can be found at www.tahoeyoga.com.

Tahoe Yoga & Wellness Center just opened this week, right?

We’ve been open for about 10 weeks now, but we are doing our big, gala open-house weekend this weekend. We really just want to invite as many people to come in and check out the space and meet our teachers and our therapists and Walter, who’s the owner, and just get a feel for who we are and what we offer.

I met Walter at Earth Day. He seems pretty mellow—earthy. Is that kind of the idea, to enhance a certain amount of … mellowness, peace of mind?

We have a very relaxed, very beautiful center. We encourage people to come in and hang out. We have a lounge, and we always have tea brewing. We’ve got books on the shelves and oftentimes, before or after classes, we have teachers and students hanging out and sitting on our love seats and on our meditation cushions and talking about yoga and other things that are going on—in wellness and in the city.

I see here the center offers ayurveda, what does that entail?

Ayurveda is a form of Eastern medicine. Ayurvedic treatments that we offer are massage, body work and hot-oil treatments that are designed for pulling toxins out of the system and encouraging systemic relaxation.

You teach tai chi?

Tai chi is a mindfulness practice. It’s a meditation that uses movement as the focus for drawing the mind into the present moment. While its primary intention is as a meditative practice, it also has really wonderful benefits for the physical body and the energetic body.

Are there acupuncturists there?

We have an acupuncturist at the Truckee center, but we don’t have any acupuncture in the Reno center right now.

What type of yoga do you guys mainly practice?

We have teachers who practice all different forms. Some of the offerings that we have here that aren’t as common are Tibetan heart yoga, which is a form of yoga that uses guided meditations and visualizations from a specific Tibetan Buddhist lineage that the Dalai Lama is a part of. There’s also yin yoga, which is unique in town, which emphasizes long relaxed holds that work on stretching and releasing the joints and the connective tissue rather than stretching muscles and doing strength development.

What’s being offered with the grand opening weekend?

We have 50-minute mini classes every hour on the hour, starting at 10 through 3 in the afternoon, both Saturday and Sunday. All of those classes are open to beginners, and people just need to bring themselves. Our 2-for-1 special is good through the end of April. Any new student who comes in and buys their first drop-in class, it’s buy one, get one free. And any of our existing students, if they bring in a new person, two get in for the price of one.

Got anything special for kids?

Right now, we don’t have anything special for kids on our menu, but a number of our teachers do have experience working with young people.

Anything else you’d like to add?

That our center is a beautiful place to come in off the street—we’re right downtown—and take a break from the hustle and bustle. It’s really a temple in here. We just want to invite people to come inside, take a deep breath, have a tea, and appreciate the alternative that coming in here offers in comparison to all the other busy things we do in our lives.