A FEELING of calm engulfs you on stepping into Salaam Space. Idyllically located by the beach in Qantab, Salaam Space offers a variety of multimodal therapeutic and experiential practices that include Healing Yoga, Art Therapy and Relaxation, Sound Therapy, Stand Up Paddle Board Yoga as well as Oman-specific healing and cultural experiences.
Salaam Space was founded by Erica Shenton Zentner, who fell in love with yoga 20 years ago. She received training in Krishnamacharya classical lineage yoga under Yoga Vahini in Chennai where she graduated in a three-year post-graduate diploma programme for yoga therapy under the guidance of Saraswati Vasudevan as well as previously with Simon Borg-Olivier and Francoise Freedman (founder of Birthlight Institute of pre-and post-natal yoga).
Erica teaches yoga centred on deep academic as well as experiential knowledge while guiding her students to develop an intuitive engagement with the asana-pranayama-meditation techniques.
“We are a ‘love no hate’ space and we have a massive non-judgmental agenda. We are an inclusive space, we are a friendly space. Additionally, it’s also gorgeous but that for me is secondary to the values embodied in our thick white walls,” Erica tells Business Plus. Excerpts from the interview:
Please tell us about Salaam Space
Salaam Space was established in early 2019 as a manifestation of a dream to embody learnings from a long period spent living and practising therapeutic yoga. In September Salaam Space found its current home in Qantab in a charming fisherman’s house by the beach. The overarching ethos is to create peace through experiential practices. Harakati International LLC acquired Salaam Space as its cornerstone brand and absorbed into it the principle of life-affirming movement.
Please tell us about the modalities offered at Salaam Space
Salaam Space offers multimodal therapeutic and experiential practices including Healing Yoga, Art Therapy and Relaxation, Sound Therapy, Stand Up Paddle Board Yoga as well as Oman-specific healing and cultural experiences, including a philosophy of the fisherman activation, and a detailed discussion of herbalism in Oman with a henna experience. The studio is also a launch point for excursions through Harakati’s tourism division specifically for Wild Swimming, an invigorating practice of swimming long distances along the gorgeous coastline of Oman.
We are a “love no hate” space and we have a massive non-judgment agenda. We are an inclusive space, we are a friendly space.
Erica Shenton Zentner
How has Salaam Space evolved since its inception?
The pandemic provided an opportunity for reflection and expansion. We had honed our expertise initially in teaching one-on-one therapeutic yoga which yields a wide range of measurable health improvements. We decided to focus on the community in the first year following Covid and delivered large format yoga sessions, including a popular Full Moon series at Jumeirah Muscat Bay, and some international practitioner events like our Manifestation event. This felt appropriate at the time as people really wanted to gather and enjoy the company of like-minded individuals on growth journeys. The popularity of these events led to further bookings from tour companies who realised that the combination of the landscape of Oman and the global desire for holidays that included sports elements that are re-energising, Instagram-able, and safe for tourists, was strong. Additionally, we have been focused on corporate wellness through the provision of various programmes in partner organisations, the most popular of which is our Oud Meditation, a somatic meditation to a background of soothing music. We expanded from there into the provision of yoga mindfulness, arts, gymnastics and swimming for schools opening a swim school. These partnerships between institutions, businesses and other stakeholders are the key to our sustainability as a business. They also make an enormous impact on the overall wellness of our city environment simply due to the number of participants we are able to assist on a monthly basis.
Please share with us the programmes you conduct among various communities
As well as our business associations we take corporate social responsibility very seriously as a company. We often will run programmes gratis or at cost for population groups. Recent examples include yoga for caregivers and a programme of free individualised yoga for females suffering from PTSD as a result of sexual trauma. We work with some charitable institutions in the GCC including the Environment Society of Oman and we participate in initiatives surrounding mental health for higher education institutions around Muscat. I personally mentor a handful of BIPOC Yoga teachers and aspiring therapists each year who contact me from around the world.
How important is corporate wellness? What are the offerings from Salaam Space in that sphere?
As Harakati grows I understand each day more fully how important human capital is to the realisation of goals. If an organisation is able to adopt a whole of human approach to their employees they quickly realise that each individual is formed of their own values and motivations but the commonality of all humans is that we have both body and mind. The most efficient intervention that an organisation can make into corporate culture, in my opinion, is a genuine and sincere effort to engage their employees in corporate wellness conversations and programmes. Salaam Space can facilitate this; we take a tailored approach to each organisation and in the past delivered “Wellness Wednesdays” in situ, away days in our facilities, talks and sessions based on sound, art, yoga and music, and most recently we provided content for a fabulous app being developed in Oman by Remedy (an Omantel-incubated start-up) including GCC-specific meditations, affirmations and relaxations.
For someone who has not been to Salaam Space and is curious, what can he/she expect on visiting?
Peace. The overarching feeling that is described time and time again and that I experience each time I step into the studio is peace. We are a “love no hate” space and we have a massive non-judgment agenda. We are an inclusive space, we are a friendly space. Additionally, it’s also gorgeous but that for me is secondary to the values embodied in our thick white walls.
