Temple Bar Yoga is a small, independent yoga studio on Cow’s Lane, in Dublin’s Temple Bar. We have been teaching here since 2005.
What we teach
Alignment runs through everything. Precise instruction, careful observation, hands-on correction and intelligent use of props, in classes of no more than twelve. Our Align classes are the most concentrated form of that work, and our flow, stillness and chair-based classes carry the same thread.
Align is our own. It grew out of Iyengar practice — Greg trained in the system for sixteen years, with certificates awarded from Introductory level in 2002 through to Intermediate Level 3 in 2016 — and from that tradition we take clarity of instruction, attention to detail, intelligent alignment and skilful sequencing.
He stopped using the Iyengar name in 2020, and we have set aside some of the more rigid parts of the tradition since. What is taught now has its own character.
We teach complete beginners and people who have practised for twenty years, often in the same room. Neither gets short-changed, because twelve people is a number one teacher can actually see.
What we believe
Yoga is something to be learnt, not simply followed.
Most people can copy a shape from the front of a room. Fewer are ever told what their back leg is doing, or why it matters, or what to change. That attention to detail is the thing worth paying for, and it is what we spend our time on.
Our teachers
Classes are taught by Greg Walsh, Melanie Taylor, Paul Donnelly, Cris Fuentes, Ewa Szczupak and Sharon Brady. Most trained here, on our own 200-hour programme, which is why the method holds from one class to the next — a student who likes Tuesday will recognise what happens on Thursday.
How we got here
Greg Walsh was introduced to yoga in his mid-twenties, travelling in Nepal. He began teaching in Dublin in 1999.
In 2003 he opened Prana Yoga Centre beside the Stag’s Head, two floors and a good deal of ambition. It was Dublin’s first city-centre yoga studio, and it ran for nearly three years.
Samadhi opened on 1 November 2005.
In June 2007 a friend who ran Drogheda’s only yoga studio decided to leave the town, and asked whether he would take it on. Samadhi Drogheda followed. It ran for fourteen years and closed in 2021. It did not survive the pandemic.
Teacher training has run every year since 2009.
In August 2023, after eighteen years, Samadhi became Temple Bar Yoga. The name says where we are and what we do.
Beyond the weekly timetable
We run one 200-hour yoga teacher training a year, alongside workshops and masterclasses, and annual retreats in Sougia in south-west Crete and on the Aran Islands. We are also registered to offer 500-hour training, though that programme has not yet run.
Where we are
The Wooden Building, Cow’s Lane, Temple Bar, Dublin 8.
A few minutes’ walk from Dame Street, and from the Jervis and Four Courts Luas stops. St Stephen’s Green is about ten minutes away.