Talking yoga with the owner behind the fast-growing Yoga Studio 90

Stressed out? Sweat it out! So says April Hill, whose Yoga Studio 90 is celebrating its 15th anniversary in Baton Rouge this year.

Her studio offers both warm and hot forms of yoga, as well as hot Pilates. It has locations in Baton Rouge and St. Francisville, and it will soon be celebrating an August grand opening of its Denham Springs location.

With International Yoga Day this Saturday, June 21, Hill says it’s an excellent time to consider stretching and strengthening both the body and the mind through yoga. The ancient exercise, which likely originated in India, has stood the test of time for thousands of years. One in six U.S. adults say they practice yoga, according to data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2024.

“It’s a great way to get a great body and a long, lean physique, but what it does on the inside is amazing,” Hill says. “It helps decrease anxiety, provides clarity. It actually gives you energy and decreases pain.”

Hill has practiced regularly for over 20 years now. She discovered Bikram yoga, sometimes called hot yoga, in 2002 and fell in love with the heat. Practiced in spaces heated to temperatures from 103 F-105 F, it includes 26 poses and two breathing exercises. 

“When your body is warmer, you have a lot more fluidity, and your muscles are more responsive to being shaped and strengthened. You’re going to have a greater chance of injury if you’re doing that in a cold environment,” she says. “(The heat) is a huge part of the cardiovascular component, which is going to make your heart stronger and healthier.”

One of the big benefits of hot yoga that Hill loves is the detox that comes with sweating. She notices it leaves her with a nice “glow” and that people have told her their skin looks best leaving the studio.

“Your body was created to sweat to get rid of impurities,” she says. “You want to get rid of that through the pores of your body, and it actually allows you to cool down when you sweat.”

Today, Hill says she doesn’t go more than three days off the mat. Her favorite pose is the bow pose, because it stretches her in all the right places. She’s a mom to three and loves the way it stretches muscles she found got cramped as she began her motherhood journey.

“A lot of people find us because they have Crohn’s disease, fibromyalgia, arthritis—and they choose this workout because the heat has such an impact on detoxing the impurities out of your body, at the same time as increasing your strength,” Hill says.

When Hill and her husband relocated to the Dallas-Fort Worth area years ago, she found a hot yoga studio and practiced five days a week. She also became a licensed aesthetician.

“When I moved to Fort Worth, I had an opportunity to leave my corporate America job and pursue something that I’d always been interested in. Obviously, that was hot yoga, but it was also skincare,” Hill says. “At the same time, my love for yoga was just booming, and I began to see how moving my body and the sweat were so complementary to the skin.”

When Hill and her husband moved back to Baton Rouge, she made the decision to open her own hot yoga studio in October 2010.

“I knew what this workout did for me physically, mentally and emotionally,” she says. She wondered, “How can I bring this to as many people as possible?”

Clients ranging from age 10 to 80, who not only want to be in good shape but also be strong, regularly practice at her studio in Baton Rouge. She also has a channel, YS90 OnDemand, that was introduced after COVID-19.

She says she’s been training athletes, hailing everywhere from Parkview Baptist School and Catholic High School to LSU Baseball and LSU Gymnastics, for 13 years.

“They now are paying clients. I don’t take that for granted; that is such a privilege and honor,” she says.

Hill also wants to bust the myth that yoga is for people who have experience—that couldn’t be further from the truth, she says. 

“We don’t come into this world with flexibility. Our mindset is not flexible, our physical body is not flexible without challenging it,” she says. “I believe that the reason yoga continues to grow, continues to be very popular, is because people who really give it a chance don’t just see the physical changes, but they feel it on the inside.”

Yoga Studio 90 is at 17650 Highland Road in Baton Rouge. Find more information about it on its website and Instagram.