Today we’d like to introduce you to Mary Von Ahnen.
Horizon Hot Yoga is a community of people on a journey through life with yoga, exploring the depths of our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. We welcome you to a place of friendship and self-realization. Come to discover your own horizon and let us support your journey.
Horizon Hot Yoga is dedicated to helping students meet their goals, wherever they are in their journey toward greater health. The studio is 3,450 square feet of possibility… we are all about exploration and learning. Owners Mike and Mary Von Ahnen started Horizon Hot Yoga as students. They are not teachers. It is unique in the yoga community that studio owners are not first teachers.
Our single-minded passion and life dream at Horizon Hot Yoga is to support our student community. In our two yoga rooms, we offer a variety of yoga practices to sample or master. From multiple styles of Vinyasa, Yin, and Restorative Yoga, to Hot 26, Bikram-style.
Mary: I was working out at a gym regularly with a personal trainer. She suggested I try Bikram yoga. After one class, I was hooked and never went back to the gym. I weighed well over 200 pounds when I began my Bikram practice in 2007.
At first, it was very hard. But I practiced regularly, four times a week, and I began to see changes. I was a super-charged, type A personality at the beginning and didn’t want anything to do with a community. I had gone to the gym for exercise, and that’s why I was going to yoga. But I found after a while that, not only was I losing weight steadily, but I felt different. I tried my best to use the 90-minute class as a “moving meditation.”
Although my mind strayed a thousand times in the room, I just brought my focus back to the posture. And I began to calm down. My blood pressure fell from a level that nearly brought me to medication to the lower end of normal. I started talking to people in the locker room and found I really liked them. They listened when I had struggles, and I supported them as well. Soon I knew the specific classes where I would see “my gals,” and I looked forward to those days.
I lightened up, in yoga, in my body weight, and in my life. I felt I belonged at my studio. Teachers, staff, and students all knew me, and that felt great. My life was changing significantly because of my yoga practice. I was mastering some of the postures, but in others, I was still a novice. And it didn’t matter. The environment was caring, not competitive. We were all in the room to work on ourselves, not worry about whether others were better than we were.
In 2013, I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. This was a huge blow, and at the time, I thought I would never again have a normal life. Postures that had been so easy for me were now impossible. I could not touch my toes. All my joints were swollen. I sat out many poses and felt like weeping. Coincidentally, someone else at the studio had been diagnosed at the same time with a similar condition. I had support. And I had wonderful teachers who told me to keep at it.
Over time, between being tenacious with my yoga practice and following the medical advice of my doctor, I healed. I still have many modifications to my postures that teachers helped me develop so that I can practice safely and comfortably. Anyone who has had injury or illness can do yoga with expert teacher advice on how to do postures a little differently to support the needs of a specific situation. I am so glad I did not give up but rather, asked for help in how to continue my practice.
With the opening of Horizon Hot Yoga in Frisco, which offers so many styles of yoga, I have been able to try them all. Although Hot 26 is where I started, I now enjoy Restorative, Vinyasa in many styles, and Yin. More than ten years after starting my practice, I have lost nearly 80 pounds, and I have to say I (mostly) wear my life like a loose garment. Although I may always be type A, I find I do not have to maintain such a tight control on everything.
Our Frisco Yoga community in Horizon Hot Yoga is now my home. It is an honor and a privilege to practice as a student with each and every one of you. Horizon Hot Yoga is a community of people on a journey through life with yoga, exploring the depths of our physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being. We welcome you to a place of friendship and self-realization. Come to discover your own horizon and let us support your journey.
“There is no ‘right or wrong’ yoga. All the styles of yoga meet the needs of students WHERE THEY ARE. Because we are always learning, as we try various kinds of yoga, and we grow with every new exploration, we wanted to open a studio where students could have one membership, and have multiple options.”
– Mary Von Ahnen, Horizon Hot Yoga Studio Co-owner
Mike: For much of my adult life, I have had a regular exercise practice. For most of that time, I enjoyed my home stationary bike. I’m a wargame buff, and I had a whole set up around my bike that allowed me to conquer various countries while I got in my cardiovascular workout. Mary started her yoga in 2007 and wanted me to try it, but honestly, I saw no need. I enjoyed the benefits of cycling.
It fit my schedule and allowed me to pursue a fun hobby. I could see how the yoga was working in Mary’s life but didn’t necessarily think I needed what she was getting out of it. About three years ago, however, I started having knee issues, and my biking was exacerbating the condition.
I tried a brace but finally realized I needed to do something different. I told Mary I would give Bikram yoga a try with her. It was extremely challenging, more so than I had imagined. But I loved that challenge and could see pretty quickly why Mary stuck with it.
Many things happened to me in my first year of yoga. The chronic lower back pain that I had suffered with for much of my life disappeared. My knees stopped bothering me. I lost more than 40 pounds. And I developed a genuine passion for yoga exploration. I wanted to learn more about why yoga makes such a difference. And I was also intrigued with branching out from Bikram.
I took the opportunity when I traveled to try to find a yoga class to take so I could experience different teachers and studios. I always learned something (and picked up some pretty cool t-shirts!) Mary, and I also went on our first yoga retreat in Mexico and loved it. Unlike previous vacations we had taken together, where we came back wishing we had exercised more and eaten less, this time we ate healthy food the entire week and deepened our yoga practiced. We decided from then on; our vacations would be built around yoga retreats.
Every chance I get, I learn more about various kinds of yoga. One of the reasons our studio offers Restorative yoga is that, during one of our retreats, I attended a multi-day seminar on the benefits and practices of this wonderful, healing yoga. We are so excited to be able to bring yogis from all over the country, and special seminars, to Horizon Hot Yoga so we can share with our students how exciting it is to learn new things about how to enrich our lives through yoga.
I have had a serious, dedicated practice for a long time now and, although my story is different than Mary’s, I have experienced profound changes in my life. I have been delighted to hear the stories of so many yoga students and teachers who have transformed their lives as well.
Horizon Hot Yoga is Mary’s and my dream. We are building our home and are so happy to share it with all of you. We feel it is our calling to promote this wonderful practice of yoga to as many people as we can reach.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Mike and I have had a smooth road because we have the Dream Team and an amazing group of yoga students who love being with us every day. That said, we have had challenges. We were all new to the Frisco community, which was very different than Dallas where we lived and had practiced yoga for many years.
We had to get used to the “rhythm” of our students and adjust our schedule and yoga styles accordingly. Also, a big part of our vision was to offer many styles of yoga to our students, but Mike and I came from a background of Hot 26 (Bikram) yoga. Bikram is a very structured practice… same postures every class. Vinyasa yoga was initially our most popular yoga style at our studio.
In Vinyasa, every class is different, choreographed especially by the teacher; therefore, students follow a specific teacher to classes much more than they do in a Bikram class. These were differences we had to learn and adapt to.
Now, our students have tried Hot 26, and it is our fastest-growing style! I feel we have encountered very few issues growing the studio because we have such a strong Studio Director who hand-picked each and every one of our teachers.
These teachers have attracted such a loyal group of students that it is a pleasure for us to run the business… showing up in our community feels more like coming home than running a business.
Horizon Hot Yoga – what should we know? What do you guys do best? What sets you apart from the competition?
We founded Horizon Hot Yoga as a place to explore. We are known for the variety of styles that students cannot find anywhere else in the area, with heated and non-heated classes. (Hot 26, Vinyasa, Sculpt, Sacred Geometry Vinyasa, Ashtanga, Yin, and Kids Yoga are all offered at our studio… many of these styles are unique to us in our area.) We are most proud of the community we have all built together.
We believe yoga is for everyone, and our community reflects huge diversity… so many nationalities, ages, body types, etc. We all mix so well because our common bond is a belief that yoga is life-changing. We recently surveyed our student population, and “Community” was one of the most-often mentioned benefits of being at our studio. We offer things like Friday Vino and Vinyasa classes, where students can practice yoga and then have a glass of wine together afterwards.
We want to be a place of support, fun, and possibility and feel we have created this. We also offer holistic services at our studio… nutrition counseling, massage, and yoga. We believe yoga is practiced in life, not just on a mat. We want our studio, and all the services and classes we offer, to contribute to a healthy, happy, and fulfilling life for our yogis.
What moment in your career do you look back most fondly on?
We held a six-month anniversary celebration/official grand opening party. This was a 3-day event that was kicked off with a ribbon cutting and included special deals, clothing pop-up shops, and a free day of yoga. We had SO many people come to the events and classes.
Walking in seeing 20 people packed in a class (a huge class for a studio opens only six months), watching students talking for a half-hour or more after class because they are all now friends, seeing other small business owners show up for our ribbon cutting and offering us support… these were amazing things to see as owners.
We were so proud of our studio, and really, the pride was in our team… our staff, our teachers, the yogis who have committed to our “home.”
Pricing:
- 1-month intro unlimited classes (first-time student) $79
- 1-week unlimited classes $39
- 1-month unlimited autopay $119
- 3 month unlimited $349
- 6 month unlimited $649
- 1 year unlimited (includes mat and towel service) $1099
- Single class $20
- 10 classes $160
- 20 classes $290
- 60-minute massage $50
- Private lesson $90
Contact Info:
- Address: 7151 Preston Road Frisco, TX 75034
- Website: www.horizonhotyoga.com
- Phone: (469) 664-0110
- Email: contact@horizonhotyoga.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/horizonhotyoga
- Facebook: facebook.com/horizonhotyoga
- Yelp: yelp.com/biz/horizon-hot-yoga-frisco
Getting in touch: VoyageDallas is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
