07/05/2026
Hello beautiful people,
This will be a long message. If you choose to read it, please do so with no distractions around. If there is one message worth reading, this would be it. In this message, I share my thoughts about the studio, yoga, my teaching, the potential for growth, and the possibility of partnership and investment. I thank you in advance for taking the time to read this. (Reading time: approximately 8–10 minutes.)
It’s been 14 days since I last saw you all. Somehow it feels like a lifetime ago. A chapter that suddenly changed pages. One day I was there, the next day I was teaching the last class. And what an amazing class that was—one I will remember for a long time.
After I left Riga, many of you asked why I left so suddenly. I have witnessed more people in my life disappear than anybody I know. When my students stop showing up to class and I don’t see them anymore, I often wonder what happened to them. I can only wish them well and hope to see them again. Sometimes they return, and I’m happy to see them. But often, I never do. Their presence fades into memory.
I don’t want to just disappear from your life without saying anything. I feel like you are my family. Even if we don’t really know each other, we shared the hot yoga room together. I feel like we mirror each other. Somehow, we’ve become one. It may be hard to explain, but this yoga connects us.
My life has been a spontaneous adventure. Riga was an unexpected surprise that came during Christmas in 2022. In January 2023, a new journey began when I arrived in Riga with a clear intention to reopen your Bikram hot yoga studio. For 3.5 years, we managed to keep it open, even during my 5-month absence every summer.
Honestly, I was hoping to have both yoga rooms open by the third year. I did not achieve this. However, I did manage to keep about 40–60 regular students coming. I did my best to motivate, inspire, and teach you during the 90-minute class why you should work hard to keep yoga in your life.
Look, I totally get it, life is not always easy. Actually, most of the time it’s hard and requires energy and purpose to keep going. In class, I would always remind you to congratulate yourself for having the courage to come and practice hot yoga. Just by showing up, you’ve already succeeded. I would explain that your yoga practice is like a gas station that fuels you with energy and purpose to live your life and complete your daily responsibilities.
It’s hard work and it’s not always easy. In class, I tried to get you to focus on your breath and not think, to make it easier on you. My goal was for you to complete your class, enjoy your time, and come back again. Why? Because I teach what I live. And in life, I have discovered that yoga helps me live a life worth living.
Yoga is so much more than stretching and sweating. It is a 90-minute meditation with your breath and your body. During those 90 minutes when I practice Bikram hot yoga, I am the happiest, and nothing more than awareness is required for me to feel that.
The more awareness I have, the happier I am. I have often told you that the success of your class depends on the amount of awareness you bring to your breath and your body. The more conscious breaths you take, the more successful your class is.
That’s what I have been trying to teach you: stand still, don’t move, just breathe. Observe your breath. Observe your body. Observe your mind. Don’t think, just breathe and observe.
The postures are only tools we use to bring the mind back home into the body. Often, when we get stuck in our thoughts, we detach from our body and the present moment. Thinking takes us away from our home, our body.
Our mind knows only two dimensions: the future or the past. The mind is uncomfortable in the present moment and doesn’t know how to stay there. And how sad it is to live life in our minds and miss all the beautiful things happening in the Now.
I would remind you in class: all the beautiful things are happening in the present moment. You can explore the universe within, observe yourself from the inside out. Return your attention back to your breath. Observe your body. Do you feel anything? Your body is communicating with you. Are you listening? Meditation means you learn how to listen.
For the 40–60 of you who still come to yoga, I say: continue working hard to keep yoga in your life. Because when you step out of the yoga studio, life outside will also work very hard to try and keep you away from your yoga mat. If you manage to win and actually come to class, and you do it enough times, it becomes easier. But you will still need to work hard.
When you stand on your yoga mat, remember: practice your yoga with full attention, practice slowly, practice honestly, and practice patiently. Patience is success in yoga.
You are your own teacher. You need to be the most intelligent person when you practice yoga, and learn to listen to your body and become one with it. Respect your body’s limitations. If at the end of your class you feel injured or in physical pain, then something wasn’t done right. Yoga should not leave you hurt or injured. You must learn to slow down, listen more carefully, use more patience, and put your ego away.
You see, I told you yoga is so much more than just doing the postures. Yoga is your mirror. In most cases, the way you live your life is the way you practice your yoga. Change the way you practice yoga, and naturally your life will change. This is a deep subject that you must experience for yourself.
My beautiful yogis in Riga, I wish for us to continue practicing together for many years to come. We have discovered something that I often tell you—you are lucky to have in your life. So many people don’t even know yoga exists or that it can be used to improve the quality of One’s life. Your yoga practice is a key you carry with you, and this key can open many doors, as it has for me.
All the signs show me that the Bikram Yoga Riga studio wants to stay open. More and more people are getting involved. There are students showing interest in learning how to teach Bikram yoga through my teacher training program. Yoga teachers are contacting me about collaborating and helping with the studio’s evolution. The owner, Janis, is suggesting renovations and giving the studio a fresh new look. Our website creator, Alex, is working on a new website and an easier way to schedule classes and keep track of them. And there are countless people offering their help to expand our reach so more people can discover yoga and its benefits.
And lastly, growing our juicing and yellow Koncentrates, which so many of you love, will help people strengthen their immune systems and give them nutrition to fuel their busy lives. It’s truly a remarkable time. Our journey has just begun. And this journey can only continue if you are interested in keeping it so. None of this is possible without you. Where your attention goes, energy flows. The more people that give their attention to this studio, the more energy will flow around it. It’s not easy, but it’s simple.
Now feels like the right time to say it. Our Bikram Yoga Riga studio is open for people to join as partners and/or investors. Are you one of them? Or maybe you know somebody?
If yes, then let’s talk. Let’s see if we can create a vision together. Look, I’ve told you before—I don’t need Riga to have yoga in my life. But I do wish to help Riga keep its yoga studio, so people have a place where they can return home to themselves.
At the same time, I also understand that I cannot carry this vision alone anymore. To grow something meaningful and lasting, I need the right people beside me.
The space you have for yoga is a very special place. It helped me have many breakthroughs in my own practice, and I discovered a new voice that helped me reach more people through my teaching. I can only imagine what it has done for you, as I’ve heard so much positive feedback from students who practiced there.
This is a pretty long message that started with a single thought I knew I should write down. However, I didn’t expect it to be 2,000 words long.
As promised at the beginning of the message, I will tell you why I left Riga so suddenly.
I felt a calling to leave Riga earlier than I had originally planned. My life, as long as I remember, has been a spontaneous adventure because I listened to these callings. I tried to push my departure from Riga as far back as I could.
While many amazing things are happening in Riga, with people coming together to keep the studio open and new potential for growth, what many of you may not know is that in Slovenia I have another project that I put on hold while I was in Riga.
Here, I have been blessed with a beautiful piece of land on top of a mountain, surrounded by nature. I have been planning to build a Zen-type garden with ecological off-grid living. It is a place where people can slow down, reconnect, and work on themselves.
This is a Zen transformation that has officially started in Voglarji, Slovenia. This is my mission and purpose.
One day, even before the project is completed, all of you are invited to come, detach from the concrete jungle, and return home to nature and yourself. Explore your deeper inner sense at inaSense Retreats in Voglarji, near the Soča River.
The world is changing fast. And so are we.
Leave a ☀️ emoji if you managed to read this entire message. I promise you a gift if you do.
Namaste
With love,
Denis
your yoga teacher with Tibetan singing bowls
