Rainbow Yoga

The air in the Dominica Club is always cool, and while the yoga teacher sweeps the floor the air fills with the refreshing smell of Bay Leaf oil, well known for its antibacterial and healthy qualities, and great for mixing with the soap water. After an afternoon running errands in the hot and humid, noisy and chaotic village Roseau is, this smell together with greetings and a brief chat with more or less the same group of women and few men have a true meditative effect on me. When the class starts, every time exactly on the minute, possibly the only event on the entire island not captured by island time, I am already relaxed.

If you are in or around Roseau, there is rarely a day you won’t be able to enjoy a class of yoga. Of course, several of the larger hotels and lodges offers yoga classes, but a Rainbow Yoga class at the ancient Dominica Club, the walls full of memories from great and glorious days, is definitely much funnier.

The class lasts for an hour and a half and is mainly a flowing series of yoga exercises designed to work all parts of the body, combined with some Pilates’ movements and plenty of stretching. The final relaxation is thorough, but it always seems like the final quiet moment when we are supposed to visualize a beautiful rainbow, or a beautiful green, or a beautiful sunset in the mind’s eye, is too short. It is one of the few moments a week I get to not think of anything; not concentrating, not making the least of an effort, much less thinking about rainbows or sunsets or colors, my entire body completely relaxed, me, just being.

The roof is really high and the building a typically old colonial one. Except for a large veranda, it consists of not much more than one giant room. Apart from the yoga it is being used for steel drum classes and carnival rehearsals, and behind it there are a couple of tennis courts, even though they seem in quite some need for a bit of restoration. This summer the Dominica Club will also host the first ever Irie Eco Summer School. There is yoga on the schedule every day, our son is already enrolled!

I usually take the five o’clock class, and as there is a half an hour gap between the classes, there is also plenty of time for some more chatting and information sharing after class. As in every small community, which Dominica as a country, as definitely Roseau as a capital is, information travels not so much through official channels as through the grapevines. Announcements are made; there is a hike up the Morne Diablotin on Saturday, you should go to Harlem Plaza for lunch this week, they have a lot of activities going on for the African Liberation Day, there is an art exhibition at the Community Center in Newtown, cooking classes at Aliance Francaise have started again or just information on why X or Y is not attending class today: her son is visiting or she went to Martinique, will be back on Sunday. Someone brings free mangoes, someone else sells a cookbook.

How to do this: For latest information on hours and classes, see Rainbow Yoga’s homepage, but mainly it is Monday and Wednesday, at five and seven p.m. and at Tuesdays and Thursdays at 10.00 a.m. Yoga mats are available but be sure to bring insect repellent and maybe a cloth to cover you feet with, for final relaxation. Sometimes the mosquitoes hit hard.

How to get there: The Dominica Club, or Legion Hall, is at the corner of Legion and High street in Roseau. Coming from the town center the easiest way is to pass the Fort Young Hotel and Public Library, then take the next street to the left, just after the pink Congress building. That is High Street and the Dominica Club is the last house on the left hand side, however the main entrance is found around the corner, on Legion Street.