School of Yoga class.

Laurie Blakeney (far right, in background) leads an Iyengar yoga class at the Ann Arbor School of Yoga. Its building is for sale, and the AASY community is wondering whether the new owners will continue to rent to the yoga studio. | Mark Bialek

There’s a secret room in the basement of the Ann Arbor School of Yoga (AASY). Below the studio space, behind the changing areas, there’s a room where three huge shelves groan under the weight of Blakeney’s collection of yoga books. Her students are allowed to read the books, but not take them home, so many of them peruse the private library before and after class.

Blakeney herself first came into contact with yoga through books. “I was initially intrigued by the philosophy of it,” she says. “I was a teenager who read a lot, including a lot of philosophy, and when I read about yoga, it clicked with me.”

She teaches Iyengar yoga at the AASY, which was developed by B.K.S. Iyengar, who brought it to the United States in the 1970s. Some of Iyengar’s first classes in the U.S. were at the Ann Arbor YMCA, and he continued to visit over several decades, strengthening the bond between Ann Arbor and Iyengar yoga.

In 1971, nineteen-year-old Blakeney stumbled upon a class at that same YMCA, taught by two women who’d learned from Iyengar’s bestselling book, Light on Yoga. Six years later, she was teaching Iyengar yoga herself, first at a school on Fourth Ave., then in rented space at the Rudolf Steiner School, Wayne State, and other venues.

“I drove around in my station wagon and taught everywhere,” Blakeney says. Before Covid, she taught workshops all over North America, and she still takes a yearly trip to India to deepen her practice.

Her current venue is AASY, around the corner from the Y where she took her first classes. The building was once a Methodist Church, then a men’s shelter, then stood empty for several years. When the current owners bought it, they invested in a remodel in partnership with Blakeney. The result is a newly sacred space, with yoga practiced in what was once the sanctuary, which retains its high ceiling and polished wood floors.

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Fellow teacher Becca Lindsay jokingly calls AASY “the yoga church,” but other students also describe the deep spiritual peace they get from practicing there. Karen Park puts it this way: “If you’re losing your way in life, it’s like a rudder, it kind of brings you back on track.” Other students say Iyengar yoga has helped them through tough college programs, difficult breakups, even broken bones.

Blakeney teaches almost all the classes, runs the business side of the school, and has built a community of students who describe her as a treasure. Student Julie Baldwin credits Blakeney as her inspiration to research yoga for musicians as her master’s thesis. Becca Lindsay asked Blakeney to officiate her wedding. Recently, Blakeney and Lindsay have spun off a nonprofit branch, which teaches $5 drop-in classes every Sunday.

But the school might be a victim of its own success. In commercial real estate, having a steady tenant increases the building’s value, and Blakeney’s rent has gone up every year. Owner Ed Shaffran has decided that now is the time to sell. “My partner and I are at a stage in our lives where it makes sense to liquidate some of our shared assets for estate planning purposes,” Shaffran says.

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When the building changes hands, Blakeney and her students hope the new owners will continue to rent to AASY, but student Vicki Engel is still concerned.

“Laurie has preserved the spirit of the building, and with so many changes happening across the Ann Arbor landscape, it’s hard to think that this might potentially be another bit of our history erased,” Engel says.

For now, a group of students has formed a committee to try to save the business, and no idea is off the table, including inviting in other groups or courting foreign investors. But with the building not officially listed for sale yet, those ideas are on hold.

Which leaves students waiting and worrying. Cynthia Smith is already mourning the loss. “At a time when it feels like many meaningful places and experiences are being monetized and ‘optimized,’ I think of this place as a sacred space,” she says. “With its history and its functionality, it’s a shame for it to be sold and likely transformed into something exclusive and transient for the times. It’s hard not to feel grief.”

As for Blakeney, she isn’t sure what she’s going to do. “I don’t have the answers about the future. Until I know, myself, what I’m going to be doing, I’d just as soon not speculate, or have other people speculate.

“Someone’s going to want this building. And it would be really lovely if that someone said, ‘Yes, I believe in Iyengar yoga and the history that it has within Ann Arbor.’ We’ll see if that happens.”

This article has been edited since it appeared in the November 2025 Observer. An attribution for a quote was reworded for accuracy.