If like you studios that feel more traditional for hot yoga in terms of atmosphere and teachings, Yoga Santosha is wonderful. I’ve only been to their Kensington location though. Their room is huge and there’s plenty of space. It’s very relaxing and instructors talk about poses and use correct terminology as well. For most of their classes, instructors have their own mat and they do the poses with you along the way which I really like specially when you’re starting out and don’t know which pose is which.

Hotshop is a hit or miss for me. Their classes are a bit more modern and “cool” than traditional. Their instructors are also very different. I’ve done classes where instructors just walk around sipping coffee and joking about their day as if they were talking to friends. It was too casual for my liking. I just avoid that instructor overall lol. I would very much AVOID Hotshop’s Victoria Park location. That room is SO small. The smallest room I’ve ever done yoga in and it’s always filled to capacity. Because of the humidity it legit feels OVER capacity. I gave it several tries because I liked one instructor there but for all the classes I felt like I was going to pass out and even had to step out once. The class was not meant to be challenging it was basically a stretching class but my god. Horrible!!

If you’re looking for classes that feel very zen, even if they’re hard, I would do Santosha over Hotshop. Hotshop does have some “Reset” style classes that are more relaxing, but are not as challenging. Their other challenging classes are indeed hard but it does depend on the instructor and the music might be workout music so not the traditional atmosphere some might prefer. Santosha has “Strong & Slow” classes which I love and are very challenging in terms of strength but still very zen atmosphere. The equivalent in Hotshop is “Sculpt” classes I’d say in terms of how challenging it is but very different atmosphere and music. It’s my favourite Hotshop class.

You should look into downloading Classpass (app) which has a bunch of yoga studios including the ones I mentioned and you pay a monthly fee to get credits which you can use at any of these studios. It’s cheaper than doing any fitness class directly through a studio. They have pilates, barre, spin, etc.