By Isha Khawaja
There is no need to commute downtown to Manhattan in order to connect to your happy place.
Nestled by Yankee Stadium, Sweet Water Dance & Yoga (SWDY) is a haven for lovers of dance and yoga. If you are like me and love practicing yoga and meditation, it can be difficult finding your go-to yoga studio at Fordham. The only yoga studios that are most popularly known by students are typically deep downtown in Manhattan which can be time consuming if you want to find serenity during a hectic week of classes and internships. SWDY is accessible to members of the Bronx community as well as all New Yorkers and is only a 20 minute subway ride from 59th Street on either the East or West side.
The Bronx is notoriously the unhealthiest borough of New York City, and this studio is one of the first few pioneers to actively address this problem. SWDY offers a wide range of dance, yoga, pilates, barre, boot camp and pole fitness classes taught by professional instructors who truly reflect the Bronx and Uptown community, all at an affordable price.
SWDY actively eliminates the dominant white narrative that is mostly present throughout yoga studios across the country. It can be intimidating to try a challenging yoga class when the instructor and the rest of the class does not look like you or speak the same language as you. Here, you can take Salsa classes taught by Cubans, take Hip-Hop workshops from Bronx natives and take yoga classes taught entirely in Spanish.
The studio effortlessly incorporates Bronx culture into all their classes. There is no other studio in New York City that will play Cardi B and Bruno Mars’ “Finesse” while flowing through the warrior sequence.
In the vinyasa class that I took, the instructor, Teniece Divya, was challenging yet invigorating. With the assistance of blocks, she made us hold a variation of splits on each side of our leg for three minutes. This challenges not only one’s physical, but also one’s mental flexibility. Not going to lie, in the first minute I was internally screaming. But, at the exact moment that I wanted to give up, Teniece said something that immediately changed my perspective: “What do you do when things get tough? Do you just complain and quit? NO! You take a deep breath and push through.” I did just that.