By Kevin Haas
Rock River Current
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ROCKFORD — The entryway to the new Sattva Yoga Spa, 1615 N. Alpine Road, is designed to feel more like your family living room than a business lobby.
There is no front desk or register. Instead, you slide your shoes off, hang your coat, and you can relax on a plush couch, pour a cup of tea, pull a book on yoga off the bookshelf or sit down at a mango wood table to read, eat or converse.
Owner and CEO Ally Ubiparipovic and COO Jaime Fagan composed the space to feel communal in the front and serene in the back. By the time you walk past the yoga studio and quiet meditation space to the reiki room and the spa with sauna and hot and cold plunge baths in the back, you no longer feel like you’re at the Edgebrook Shopping Center.
“That was the goal,” Fagan said. “To create an escape and an oasis for people.”
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Sattva Yoga Spa is billed as a neighborhood wellness escape situated in the center of the city. The space is devoted to providing you ways to quiet your mind and calm your nervous system.
Opening the spa and yoga studio is a project 16 months in the making. Ubiparipovic and Fagan held the final classes for what was 815 Yoga Collective at Rockford City Market in early 2023, but construction at the new space took longer than expected.
They decided to rebrand and rename the business when it became apparent that the new space they were creating offered something wholly different than 815 Yoga, which Ubiparipovic founded roughly seven years ago. Fagan started as a client of 815 Yoga before becoming COO.
The yoga studio itself can comfortably fit 20 participants, and there are 12 infrared panels hanging from the ceiling that glow down radiant heat for hot yoga classes.
“It feels, when you’re under them, like laying in the sunshine,” Ubiparipovic said. “All the benefits that you would get from an infrared sauna you get in this room when we have hot yoga.”
Sattva provides everything you need to participate in classes: black Manduka yoga mats, gray bolsters, towels and cork blocks. The space is laid out ahead of class so that all you need to do is show up and step onto your mat.
“When you walk in, we have the room all set up for you,” Ubiparipovic said. “We take meticulous care of everything so it’s super sanitary and super clean, but the idea is that luxury feel that you don’t have to do anything: just show up, sit down and we do the rest.”
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Classes started Monday at Sattva, and there will be one daily class throughout March. Starting in April, there will be a full schedule with three to four classes daily. The owners also plan to have spa services and the relaxing front community lounge available from 5 a.m. to 9 p.m. by then.
Classes can be reserved for $30 for one class, or there are $120 five packs and monthly and annual memberships available. The spa also offers a “karma membership” that allows qualified applicants who can’t afford the price to work in exchange for membership.
Past the yoga studio at Sattva is a quiet meditation room lit with candles and salt lamps. It’s a designated space for anyone who wants to take a few minutes or hours to quiet their mind.
Beyond that is the reiki room, where a reiki practitioner takes you through the healing practice designed to reduce stress and promote relaxation.
“The bulk of the session is really a hands off massage,” Ubiparipovic said. “It’s just this gentle, nurturing, healing thing where you relax and leave feeling like you had a massage.”
The private hot and cold spa at the rear of the space contains a hot soak tub heated to 104 degrees, a cold plunge tub that is 45 degrees, a rain shower and a traditional wet sauna. It can be reserved for one or two people.
The goal, Fagan and Ubiparipovic said, was to provide a space where you can reset your nervous system and find peace of mind.
About | Sattva Yoga Spa
Where: 1615 N. Alpine Road, Rockford (at the Edgebrook Shopping Center)
Contact: 815-520-1630; email info@sysrockford.com
On the web: sysrockford.com
On social: Instagram @sattva.yogaspa; Facebook @sattvayogaspa
Class schedule: Go HERE
This article is by Kevin Haas. Email him at khaas@rockrivercurrent.com or follow him on X at @KevinMHaas or Instagram @thekevinhaas and Threads @thekevinhaas