The studio
मौन — the Sanskrit word for silence, and for the practice of keeping it.
MAUNA opened in March 2021 in one room with eleven mats, most of them borrowed. Pema had left a large commercial studio in Lalitpur with the specific intention of running something too small to be profitable in the same way, and for the first year that is exactly what it was.
The Garden Room came in 2022 and the Alcove in 2023, when the tailor next door moved out. Nothing about the building is ideal — it is a third floor above a paper shop with no lift and a stairwell that is cold in January — and we have decided to be straightforward about that rather than photograph around it.
What the building does have is light. Every room faces east or south, the windows are original, and from about a quarter past six the sun comes across the boards of the Long Room in a way that no amount of money would have bought us.
Three rooms
16 mats
The first room you walk into and the one most classes run in. Sixteen mats in two rows, east-facing windows that get the sun until about half past nine, and a floor we had sanded rather than replaced because the old boards were better. There is no mirror in here, on purpose.
10 classes a week
10 mats
Smaller, warmer and full of plants that Nima has strong opinions about. Ten mats, a wall of props, and enough heat retained from the roof that yin and restorative classes live here through the winter.
6 classes a week
8 mats
Eight mats in the corner furthest from the street, set up before every class with a bolster and a folded blanket each. Breathwork and the Friday silence run here because it is the only room where you can hear everyone breathing.
4 classes a week
The stairs. The studio is on the third floor and the building has no lift. There are 48 stairs from the street, with a handrail on the right and a landing halfway. If that is a barrier, say so when you write — Sarita teaches a ground-floor chair class two streets away on Wednesdays and we would rather send you there than have you struggle.
Start here
Pick an hour, tell us it is your first, and someone will meet you at the top of the stairs.