Pilgrimage of the Heart Yoga

Pilgrimage of the Heart Yoga began as a small gift boutique store in 1999. My inspiration was to create a business that could spread spiritual energy and be a viable business. I told my teacher, Sri Chinmoy (1931-2007,) about the idea and he offered the name: The Pilgrimage of the Heart. My mother, who was a doctor and passed away in 2003, provided the seed money for the adventure.
The Pilgrimage of the Heart operated as a gift shop and operated for 4 years in what is today the East Room lounge. Three years later the space next door, the current East Room, became available. We did some remodeling and soon the gift shop expanded to fill the entire space.

In 2005 the then manager of the store decided to pursue other interests. It had operated all those prior years with myself being something of an absentee owner. Faced with the prospect of being more intimately involved with the enterprise I decided to shift the focus of the business to yoga. Since the early days of Jyoti-Bihanga I had always preferred the service industry to selling merchandise.

It was in 2005 that we created the first yoga room, which is the current East Studio Lounge area. A young architect named Matt Gries created the design. Sean O’Shea was my main yoga advisor at this time. He had recently opened a studio of his own in La Jolla and was happy to give me advice on my studio. I also studied with him privately for 14 months, up until the time of his passing, learning to teach yoga. We hit the nail on the head: within a few months the yoga room, which held 12 yogis, was operating at full capacity. We then created the East Room, as it is known now, and used the Lounge area as a reception area.