As the new year dawns and Bostonians think about living and eating better, they’ll find something new from two familiar names, on both sides of the river. February and March will see the opening of Life Alive Organic Cafe and Down Under School of Yoga, wellness collaboratives in Harvard Square and the South End, at 22 John F. Kennedy Street and 505 Tremont Street, respectively. Created to connect the way we eat and move with how we feel, the new locations are designed to put nourishment, motion and reflection under one roof.

The collaborators brought Edible Boston behind the scenes, and shared how Life Alive imbues every dish it serves with love, energy and vitality.

Mindfully Pairing Movement with Food

The love between Life Alive and Down Under School of Yoga traces its roots to long before the upcoming collaboratives. The idea for Down Under School of Yoga was hatched by its founders after yoga classes, over a meal at the Life Alive location in Central Square. The cafes remain a go-to destination for yoga students to refuel after the school’s 20 classes a day, from hot power to restorative.

Down Under School of Yoga Director Justine Wiltshire Cohen believes the movement and meditation taught by the yoga school will encourage guests to eat more mindfully. “Much of the focus of Down Under’s work is slowing down and bringing attention to areas of our life we take for granted,” she said. “We believe tremendous power comes from examining our habit patterns, whether that’s rushing through our day, our meals and our interactions, or examining our movement and mental habits.”

Life Alive Culinary Director Leah Dubois describes eating mindfully as different for everyone. “It’s not about doing it the right way or the wrong way. It’s about honoring the culinary art that’s in front of you, in a way that honors yourself. It can be just focusing on the food while you eat. It could be reading a book or writing in your journal while you eat. It’s an opportunity to be in the moment and be present. Each meal is unique. It can be the same dish, but each time is unique to that moment. That art that’s in front of you is fleeting. Once the dish is finished, it’s gone. Moments are fleeing, so capture them when you can.”

Recently, Life Alive created a collaborative dish called the Buddha Bowl, with Down Under teachers from the Boston Ayurveda School. (Ayurveda, for the uninitiated, is an ancient Indian tradition focused on improving digestion, sleep, health and vitality.) The resulting Buddha Bowl is crafted with “a combination of herbs and spices to get your digestive fire going, and a plethora of organic vegetables,” said Dubois.

As the café and yoga school explore the relationship between food, movement and mindset, they see the Harvard Square and South End collaboratives as places to take care of your whole self under one roof.

“This is going to be a safe place where you can’t make a bad choice. You’re able to move and honor your body with meditation and massage, and in the next moment, refuel with something equally as restorative,” said Dubois. “I’m hoping we’ll make it easier for people who want to experience the benefits of moving your body, eating well and being mindful.” For Dubois it solves the problem of carving out additional time for her yoga practice. “I have to do yoga now!” she said. “There’s no more ‘How am I going to fit this into my day?’”

Starting the New Year with a Happiness Sabbatical

To celebrate the openings, the brands are offering a Happiness Sabbatical to three Bostonians, who will be paid a $2,500 stipend to spend eight weeks focusing on their wellness, while enjoying complimentary Down Under classes, Life Alive cuisine and sharing their journeys.

“We’re trying to make it accessible to all types of people. We’re not necessarily looking for someone who’s a yoga teacher or already committed to organics. We’re opening it to anyone who’s looking within and saying, ‘I believe how I move my body and what I eat contributes to how I feel, so help me find the path.’ It’s cool, and I don’t think it’s going to be easy, which is kind of neat, too.”

Organic and Sustainable Sourcing

Visitors to the Life Alive and Down Under School of Yoga Collaboratives will find the dishes they know and love, with a consistent use of whole and minimally processed foods. Even the building materials and packaging will reflect the brand’s commitment to sustainability.

Sourcing certain organic products isn’t always the most practical choice, but Life Alive believes it’s better for the planet. The café chooses suppliers that share its values of transparency and superior quality, so guests know what they’re eating is free of chemicals, free of artificial ingredients and free of preservatives. “We endeavor to source back to the seed, whenever we can,” said Dubois, who is on a first-name basis with the café’s partners and speaks with them nearly every day.

For instance, the café works with Agric Organics, a Black-owned farm in Western Massachusetts, to bring the farm’s seasonal produce into the cafés. For products that aren’t grown nearby, like its acai berries used to craft its signature acai smoothie bowls, Life Alive works with a local supplier named Zing Bowl, with deep relationships in Brazil, to responsibly source its acai. Its coffee comes from Intelligentsia, which purchases it directly from farmers and focuses on seasonal flavors. To source its short-grain brown rice, Life Alive works with McKaskle Farms, a fifth-generation family farm in Missouri, with whom it just began a long-term partnership to build a dedicated Life Alive rice paddy, where all of Life Alive’s rice will be sourced beginning this year.

Scratch Cooking

At each Life Alive location, every day of the week, hundreds of pounds of produce are delivered fresh, and broken down by hand. “We’re passionate about whole, unprocessed ingredients and applying classic and modern culinary techniques to transform them into our unique recipes,” said Dubois.

Its sauces and dressings are a source of pride. “We use beet juice to create our magenta umeboshi sauce for our Peanut Sutra dish, and whole garlic cloves and cold-pressed ginger juice to make our signature ginger tamari sauce. A 30-pound case of organic ginger, with knobby roots, silted with organic soil walks in the back door. We scrub down the roots, slice them into manageable pieces, and pass them through our cold-press juicer to extract the liquid gold.”

The meals are prepared to deliver their highest nutritional benefit. All of the café’s soups and broths are made in-house. “Everything begins with sauteed onions and garlic, like it should.”

“For our smoothies, we bring in cases of bananas and allow them to ripen to perfection. Then we slice them into appropriately sized pieces and freeze them. We are not bringing in frozen bananas. We’re bringing them in fresh and freezing them at their peak ripeness.”

“Not only is scratch cooking more delicious and more of an authentic presentation of the food, but it also empowers and teaches our team members how to make exquisite cuisine from whole foods,” said Dubois. “Teaching and mentoring our team is really important to us.”

Even the way fresh produce is cut is an opportunity for personal expression. “We pride ourselves in our knife cuts. We make them special. There’s a certain slice, a certain cut and a certain chop to each of our vegetables which we feel elevates and celebrates them. Our art is vegetables.”

“We’re always complimenting each other on our ‘sexy scallions,’ which means cutting them on a very slight bias and submerging them into ice water so they curl up. We talk about making celery shine like emeralds when we cut them into diamond shapes. We talk about beets as rubies when they’re perfectly diced. It attaches real meaning to what we’re doing.”

Soul at Scale

Life Alive had just a few locations for many years, and the café sees its growth as an opportunity to extend its values to more communities. 

“We talk about ‘Acceptance’ at Life Alive as being your most authentic self, which means we hire different people who aren’t your traditional café workers, baristas and cooks. When we talk about ‘Pleasure,’ we mean giving and taking delight – being in the moment with delicious food, moving your body and being present with yourself. We see ‘Empathy’ as serving more than food, but meeting the universal need for connection in a safe and welcoming space. And we value the ‘Interdependence’ of working together for the good of many,” she said. 

This story appeared as an Online Exclusive in January 2022.