The irony of travel is that when you’re a tourist, you want to experience a place like a local. But when you are the local, especially when you live in a world-class resort destination, you eye the tourists with envy as they enjoy everything your town is known for. The Steward — the Hollister Avenue hotel formerly known as Pacifica Suites — has bridged this divide with a free weekly yoga class that’s open to locals as well as hotel guests.
The first time I tried the outdoor class, accompanied by my friend Bonnie, it was chilly enough on a mid-December morning that the hotel guest we had followed to find the class ended up begging off, saying she was too cold. That left four of us — all locals — to set up our mats like spokes in a wheel with instructor Lily Rozhko as the hub. Rozhko led us through a practice that encouraged gratitude for our surroundings — not so much the recently rebranded hotel but the clear blue sky, the singing birds, and the sun that eventually warmed us enough so we could peel off our layers.
Rozhko doesn’t use a microphone, so at times she was competing with the traffic noise from Hollister and Highway 217, chatting hotel guests, and squawking seagulls. But her cues were easy to follow as she led us through warrior one and two, modified triangle, and standing forward bend. Afterwards, relaxed yet invigorated, Bonnie and I compared notes as we enjoyed a post-yoga breakfast on the patio of the Steward’s Terra Restaurant. I mused that it wasn’t the most physically demanding yoga class I’d ever taken. Bonnie, who teaches yoga herself, observed, “It was a yoga practice, not a class.” That is, the point was not to leave us physically wrung out but connected with our breath and with our hearts open.