Amara Yoga & Arts

Mar 2023

I have been practicing yoga for 13 years. I've been to many yoga studios around the country in my life, but Amara is the first studio I've ever chosen to get a membership to. Every class I've attended has been wonderful. The teachers are excellent, respectful, and kind. The other students are very welcoming, as well. I'm so happy to have found a yoga studio to call home in Urbana.

Jan 2019

I decided to try out this studio while visiting my parents over the holidays. The studio is beautiful, however, the classes were a much lower intensity than I'm used to. The "hot yoga" is only heated to 80 degrees and there is no humidity system from what I could tell, the classes I'm used to are around 110 degrees with at least 80 percent humidity. The instructors were not friendly towards me at all. From the 3 classes I went to the instructors all talked to new students but for some reason never me. I assuming that my modification to make the classes more challenging annoyed them. The classes didn't have a great a flow and the instructors didn't use terms that I was familiar with. I have been practicing on and off for 10 years and have been practicing daily at CorePower yoga for 2 years. If you are a beginner I think you will be happy at this studio but if you practice regularly at a high intensity level don't waste your time.

Dec 2018

Overall, I will continue to go to Amara to take beginning classes. I've been on the $30 trial and have been taking lots of different classes with different instructors. Some are terrific and very talented and others are more disappointing. Linda and Billie are both amazing, for instance. However, I'm really disappointed in some of the practices here too. There's one instructor who runs her own business selling essential oils in addition to teaching yoga and she is constantly pushing her product during her classes. She's so eager to sell the oils that she put some on my arms during a pose without asking me first. I'm actually slightly allergic to some scents, so I was trying to hold back a sneeze while doing downward dog. She overall seemed more interested in making more money supporting her oil business than actually doing yoga instruction. That's really not cool and I would prefer not to be pressured into buying items based on pseudoscience in the future.