May 8, 2017

Meet Art Grigorian of Yoga on Brand in Glendale

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Art Grigorian.

Art, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
I discovered yoga at age of 21 through books and continued practicing and exploring because it just felt good. After practicing for 10 years alone at home, I gradually started to open up to the possibility of teaching and finding ways to convey the message of yoga to anyone else who would be interest in it. My early inspiration was one of the “real” yogis around Steve Ross, who btw is teaching in and around LA and is still one of the most sought after teachers around. He is considered the Guru of LA. He is more than that for me. He is perhaps one of the few enlightened, whatever that means, guys around – if not the only one. Steve’s humor and lightheartedness cracked a hole in the thick, serious and inaccessible facade of BKS Iyengar’s Light on Yoga book that I was buried under and made studying yoga more accessible for me. I was lucky enough to have stumbled upon Steve’s teachings. Then through Steve I took a class, just one class with Eddie Ellner – who is the owner of the fantastic Yoga Soup studio in Santa Barbara, and I was instantly blown away by the things he said during that class. I remember thinking “who the hell is this guy?” Here was a guy who didn’t even have the flexibility to do a proper lunge, was uttering the most eloquent words that made me let go of whatever I was grinding through, striving and stressing through my poses, and just left me with perfect clarity. I will never forget that moment. After that, through my sister, I was introduced to another great teacher, a distant disciple of the grand Paramahansa Yogananda, expressively poetic and a sufi mystic Naader Shagagi. I did my training with him and right away he gave me a teaching position at his studio, Curative Yoga in Pasadena, about 8 years ago. I owe Naader a big debt of gratitude because of opening his doors to me and letting me have the freedom to teach and freedom to evolve at my own pace. And that I did. I taught, I grew, I kept studying and practicing. In 2014, I went to India to study Mysore Ashtanga with Sharath Jois for 3 months. I had already been established in the practice of Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga a few years before that. After coming back from India, I continued teaching at Curative Studio in Pasadena until last year when I decided to open up my own studio in my hometown Glendale. Yoga on Brand is what the name turned out to be. With the help of my family, my students and teachers, I was able to open up the doors of my new studio. Our doors have been open to public 7 months now. We are a new studio but we are quickly growing. Our student base is expanding and connecting to our great teachers. We offer variety of classes in different styles. We do workshops, kirtans, concerts, art exhibitions, and are open to host anything else a creative mind can conceive of.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
I’d say it has pretty much been a smooth road because of the way I choose to approach anything. I don’t rush through things and I don’t push and pull through decisions. If there is anything that I have learned from my life experience is to trust the universe and not my little egoic brain to set things in motion and let me play my little part in this vast and beautiful amusement park we call life.

Please tell us about Yoga on Brand.
My studio name is Yoga on Brand. We teach a variety of yoga classes. We do concerts, kirtans, workshops, children’s classes, art shows, and we are open to anything else a creative mind can conceive of.

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I’d say I would have been a bit more careful with how I chose to spend the loan I had borrow for the studio.

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