× Expand Photography courtesy of The Bee's Knees Yoga Bee's Knees instructors (from left) Candice Shaw, Nichole DiGiuseppi, and Dannielle Roach demonstrate different variations of a meditation pose. "This is how we teach," DiGiuseppi says. "All levels and abilities within the same class."

“It doesn’t matter who you are, the benefits of yoga are great for anybody,” says Nichole DiGiuseppi, founder of The Bee’s Knees Yoga, which opens on August 3 at 2309 Highway K., O'Fallon, Missouri. DiGiuseppi wanted to open a space where people who had been turned off by traditional yoga classes could feel comfortable practicing again. The Bee’s Knees accomplishes this through a trauma-sensitive approach.

How does a trauma-sensitive instructor differ from a mainstream one? The most important thing for DiGiuseppi is getting students’ consent before the instructor touches them. In regular yoga classes, hands-on corrections from instructors can be common. At Bee’s Knees, students receive a card before class that they can use to alert the instructor whether they want the instructor to physically correct their poses.

Another distinction between Bee’s Knees and other studios? The instructors at Bee’s Knees use gender-neutral language and have renamed some poses that could be triggering. For example, the “hands and knees” pose is called “table-top,” and a trauma-sensitive instructor might say “set your feet wide” where a traditional instructor would say “spread your legs.”

It may seem like a small modification, but DiGiuseppi says it can have a huge impact on students’ ability to feel comfortable in the class.

The studio also welcomes students who don’t feel comfortable wearing tight-fitting yoga clothes. Wear basketball shorts, wear sweatpants, you don’t have to worry about people judging you, DiGiuseppi says.

× Expand Photography courtesy of The Bee's Knees Yoga.

DiGiuseppi started yoga almost a decade ago while searching for ways to relieve her lower back pain. She has been an instructor for five years, and received her Accessible Yoga Teacher Certificate earlier this year after training with Amber Karnes of Body Positive Yoga. Now that she has her own space, she’s hoping to offer trauma-sensitive training to yoga instructors across the St. Louis metro area. She says trauma-informed and accessible classes are becoming more mainstream, but they are still not as common as they should be.

“You don't have to be a certain age or certain size,” DiGiuseppi says. “You don't need any prerequisites to get the benefits out of it. But you do need a teacher and a studio who understands and is able to not make you feel like you're excluded from the rest of the class.”

In addition to the various styles of yoga and pilates, the studio will offer a special weekly class for the LGBTQ+ community as well as a weekly donation-based class—”Yoga For A Cause”— to raise money for different organizations. The classes at Bee's Knees are divided into style of yoga, such as Yoga Basics, Hatha, and Vinyasa, but not into skill-level. The instructors instead will provide versions of varying difficulty in each class.

“People think it's more physical, but it's more of a spiritual practice than it is physical,” DiGiuseppi says. “It's about connecting with your breath and bringing awareness back to your body and calming your mind. And anybody can do it.”