If you take a Hot 26 class with Tarah Plavac, whether she’s teaching or practicing near you, her dedication to that style of yoga is absolutely clear. Not only does Tarah pour her heart and soul into teaching, but she also practices pretty much daily. In 2024, she took 296 classes (more than any other HYA teacher) and that was despite being out of town for two months after Hurricane Helene!
“There aren’t many things in my life that I maintain that much. I love dogs. And I love to go for a hike although that’s cut back quite a bit too. And my husband, of course,” Tarah said. “My practice is one thing that I can’t imagine my life without. It’s true. Nothing wrings me out like a Hot 26 class. Nothing gives me the feeling, the energy, all of it. It feels so good.”
For her practice, Tarah mixes in Flow and Blast to complement her Hot 26 practice, but as a teacher, she sticks to the traditional Hot 26 format. She did take a short Vinyasa training several years ago, but never was motivated to pursue teaching it.
“I just have remained so passionate about the Hot 26 sequence,” she said. “Somebody told me after class one day, ‘You are the poster child for this sequence. When I take your class I can tell how much you love it.’ And it’s true.”
Her yoga journey started when she lived in Marietta, Ga., in the early 2000s and her former college roommate encouraged her to try this practice she had found in Florida. “She said, you’ve got to try this Bikram yoga. I had never heard of it. And one day, we were living in Marietta and there was this big farmers market called Harry’s and I drove by and saw this big sign, Bikram Yoga and I said, ‘Oh my gosh, there it is. I have to go now.'”
“And I kid you not, the first class I was like, this is it. I was totally hooked. I called her and said thank you. I was huge into walking, all the time for my exercise. This took over for all of that.”
Tarah’s passion is so obvious to her students that they helped vote her one of the top yoga teachers in Asheville in 2023’s Best of WNC. Read more about Tarah’s yoga journey:
HYA: How did you decide to become a teacher?
Tarah: The studio owner in Marietta just told me one day, ‘You’re going to training. You need to be a teacher. For some reason, she just saw it in me. Back then you had to practice for three years before you could go to training, so I was like OK, after three years I’ll revisit it. I had gone to Ohio State and I got a degree in animal science and a minor in art history. And I just never did anything with it. I was going to go to vet school. Of course I was working but I just couldn’t find anything I was that passionate about. This, I was passionate about. It fit. Then when I got out of training in 2008, I went full force. I was teaching like 10-12 classes a week. Ended up teaching at all three studios in Atlanda. Marietta is where I started, and then Decatur and the one I loved the most was in Poncey-Highlands.
HYA: How did you come to Asheville?
Tarah: Dave and I lived here a couple years before we moved to Atlanta and we couldn’t make it work here. Dave worked for BellSouth then and we moved to Atlanta and ended up being there for 12 years. We loved our little house in Marietta, but it was so hard to get everywhere. You’d be in the car for an hour and a half just to get to the studio. It was grinding. We’d get home and be like, what are we doing? We need to make a move. Dave was working from home 3 days a week anyway and his boss was like, yeah you can work from home. So we moved to Asheville in 2015.
HYA: How did your practice evolve at HYA?
Tarah: I started taking Flow when we started offering it. There was a one-weekend training and I did it, but how much can you learn in a weekend? I could have gone and trained more but I just didn’t feel the urge to teach it. I like taking it. I think it’s good to switch it up and do different things with your body. During the pandemic, Flow is pretty much all I did. Bikram is so hard without the heat. I really got into my Flow practice. Now I do it all. I love to take all the classes.
HYA: What are your hopes for the future?
Tarah: I hope I’m able to maintain what I have. I don’t think much about the future. I pretty much live in the moment. I’m pretty good at being content. I’m very content in my day-to-day life. I don’t feel like I need to search for more, which I’m very grateful for. I do think my practice has a lot to do with that, keeping me in that state of mind. There’s a quote, I used it in class today, and it does tie into how I feel: “You have to do it yourself but you don’t have to do it alone.” You have to get yourself to the class but then you don’t have to do it alone. We have such a wonderful group of people, such wonderful teachers. I just feel so alive when I’m there. You’re not alone. You can suffer together, have fun together. We’re all in it together.
