Grow Yoga in Glassboro opened its doors this past weekend with fanfare that attracted more than 200 people.

The March 26 grand opening held free yoga classes all day as well as discounts on memberships and yoga apparel.

The studio, located on William Dalton Drive in the ShopRite shopping center, boasts two rooms-the main room that fits 45 yoga mats and is always heated to 90 degrees, and the multi-purpose room used for meditation, pre-postnatal yoga and seedling care (child care) which stays at a comfortable 75 degrees.

“We get to offer a lot of different classes here at Grow and we’re really, really excited about it,” said Desi Melonas, co-owner of Grow Yoga.

Among those classes is yin yoga, which Melonas described as a flow yoga that primarily focuses on stretching.

“You don’t use any gravity,” Melonas said. “There’s no holding your body weight up yourself, you just stretch and you get a deeper stretch than you would otherwise.”

Another popular class offered is Baptiste power vinyasa yoga, vinyasa meaning “movement with breath.”

“It’s kind of like a moving meditation,” Melonas said. “If you are really insistent and intentional on your breath work, it can be really helpful and stress-releasing.”

Other practices offered are power yoga, sweat, revive and restore yoga, kid yoga, and meditation.

Grow Yoga also offers classes for children on the autism spectrum.

A one-month membership for unlimited yoga starts at $100 and is $65 for students with ID. There is also a 10 percent discount for service workers such as teachers, police officers, and firefighters.

The yoga studio also offers a Fair Trade program in which you can work for free yoga. Two shifts a week, either working the front desk or participating in deep cleaning the studio, can get you unlimited free yoga. Three shifts a week earn you free yoga for yourself and your spouse, partner, or child.

The second Grow Yoga (the original studio is located in Galloway, New Jersey) strives to support the local community. All carpentry and artwork designs in the studio were done by local artists Lou Fermonte and Dylan Gregory.

The studio will also be selling merchandise from local vendors such as Lululemon, MBrace Jewelry, and vegan bites from Heart Beat Kitchen, a vegan restaurant from Westmont, New Jersey.

“They actually do things to strengthen the community, which I think is hard to find,” said Kyle Schachner of Atlantic City.

Schachner started practicing yoga about a year ago and completely fell in love with the practice. He now interns at Grow Yoga as a public relations major at Atlantic Cape Community College.

“Being a student myself, yoga forces you to learn things you can’t learn in a classroom,” Schachner said. “You can learn about things like mindfulness and self-inquiry. Yoga makes me feel at peace because I’m a very restless person.”

Schachner practices in the Galloway studio, but came to the grand opening to support those involved.

“There’s a good amount of people from Galloway in there supporting,” he said. “The turnout is great.”

According to Melonas, about 100 people signed up for memberships on opening day alone.

Grow Yoga is open seven days a week and offers classes between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m.

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