Are you curious about yoga in general or about 4yoga specifically?
Already taking or teaching yoga and interested in meeting other yoga folks?
Intrigued by the idea of a “trail mix bar”?
…or maybe even all of the above?
Then join Heather and Angie at the studio for our Holiday Open House on Sun., Dec. 10, at 5:30 p.m.
The 4yoga studio is located upstairs in The Pots Place, at 428 East Main Ave. on Fountain Square. Please use the front door (facing Fountain Square), walk through the shop, and come up the stairs to the studio.
We look forward to seeing folks and chatting about yoga as we make our own trail mix!
As the calendar turns to December, you may be looking forward to gatherings with friends and family members in the weeks ahead. Maintaining social connections is so essential to our health that the Surgeon General has declared loneliness and isolation to be an epidemic in the U.S. The Surgeon General’s advisory report not only warns about the substantial harm caused by loneliness and isolation but also advocates for the benefits of social connection, both to personal well being and to communities.
You may also have read about the importance of social connection in Daniel Levitin’sSuccessful Aging (our fall book club book) or heard about the power of strong social networks on today’s episode of Science Friday. This month, we invite you to connect or reconnect with our yoga community: join us for a special event or a special or regular class before the year concludes and give yourself the gift of additional social connection.
December special events:
Holiday Open House: Sun., Dec. 10, 5:30 p.m. After Angie’s Basics class on Sunday afternoon, we will host a free and casual open house at the studio. Stick around after class or stop by just to see folks and to assemble your own personalized trail mix from our trail mix bar!
Sound Bath with Beshka: Sat., Dec. 30, 11 a.m. Looking for an opportunity to treat yourself at the end of the year? Join Beshka for her December sound bath! To ensure everyone has space to be comfortable, we require pre-registration, and we offer this special event for $25. If you’re ready to register, complete this brief form; to see registration updates and ask questions, RSVP to its Facebook event.
Yoga Social: Muffins and Mimosas: Sun., Dec. 31, 10:30 a.m. After Heather’s New Year’s Eve class, we will host a free yoga social to bid farewell to the year. Bring a few of your favorite muffins and join us to toast the conclusion of 2023.
December special classes:
Guest teacher Maria French: Sat., Dec. 9, 9 a.m. Join us in welcoming Maria as a guest teacher for the Saturday-morning Basics class! Maria has been practicing yoga since 2012 and completed her 200-hour yoga teacher training at Be Happy Yoga in July 2021. Currently enrolled in the 300-hour yoga teacher training program at Sanctuary in Nashville, Maria especially enjoys sharing with her students the benefits of yoga, both physical and mental, to help relieve stress and feel more at ease.
Restorative Yoga with Angie: Wed., Dec. 13, 5:30 p.m. Whether you are already a fan of restorative yoga or wondering if this style of practice can help you relax both body and mind, join Angie for this chance to slow down and rest.
Yoga Nidra with Shigeko: Sun., Dec. 17, 5:30 p.m. If you enjoy guided relaxation during savasana, you may particularly appreciate yoga nidra. In this session, Shigeko will use her iRest training to guide folks through an accessible process of releasing stress.
Bonus Gentle Yoga with Carmen: Fri., Dec. 22, 1:30 p.m. We know the holiday season can be busy, so Carmen is offering a bonus Gentle class, providing five opportunities for those who prefer Gentle classes to practice during the week prior to Christmas.
New Year’s Eve class with Heather: Sun., Dec. 31, 9 a.m. To conclude 2023 with yoga, join Heather on NYE for a special morning class.
New Year’s Day class with Carmen: Mon., Jan. 1, 10 a.m. Join Carmen to ring in 2024 together at the studio on NYD.
For a complete copy of the December schedule, please see the attached file or our online calendar. We hope to connect with you this month!
P.S. For those of you who like to plan ahead, please save the date for our next book club meeting: Sun., Jan. 21, 2024. We will be discussing Barbara Kingsolver’s Demon Copperhead, which is available in several formats (including audio, print, large print, and electronic) from our friends at the Warren County Public Library.
View of Fountain Square from the studio…taken way back in Dec. 2013!
As we pause to express gratitude this Thanksgiving season, we are remember how grateful we are for opportunities to continue to learn about yoga and related topics—and to share what we learn with our community.
While all yoga teachers practice svadhyaya (self-study), we also often find it useful to learn in communities, both in-person and virtual, both synchronous and asynchronous. During 2023, Frances Strickler and Angie Jones have worked through an online training, the Brain Longevity Therapy Training (BLTT) offered by the Alzheimer’s Research and Prevention Foundation (ARPF).
Although the BLTT training is not only online but also asynchronous, Frances, Angie, and Leslie Weigel decided to take it together in order to have friends with whom they could discuss what they were learning. The 24.5-hour course advances their understanding of how to care for our brains as we age and also counts toward their ongoing professional development for Yoga Alliance. (Yoga Alliance requires teachers to complete a minimum of 30 training hours every three years to maintain their membership.)
The BLTT course includes 22 modules and eight “additional videos” on topics that support ARPF’s Four Pillars of Alzheimer’s Prevention. The program provides many hours of video content in addition to study guides and research articles, and each section concludes with a quiz on its content. After completing the formal curriculum, each participant creates a practicum, a brief video where they discuss or apply content from the course and submit it for review.
When asked about her most valuable lesson from the BLTT program, Frances noted, “The training…pointed out what a large component yoga and meditation have in working with the four pillars: Stress management, spiritual fitness, and exercise-both physical and mental. It allows us to let peace in and keep tension out.”
Angie agreed with Frances’ emphasis on the role of yoga and meditation and specifically addressed the value of community yoga: “In my practicum, I focused on the ways that community yoga supports one of the four pillars, spiritual fitness. I appreciate ARPF’s broad definition of ‘spiritual fitness’ and the ways that definition encompasses features that are also important to us at 4yoga, including community-building and kindness.”
Leslie is also working through the course, and she, Frances, and Angie will hold another Zoom meeting in December to brainstorm ways to share what they have learned with our broader community. We hope to find ways that we can all benefit from ARPF’s longstanding research focus in the critical area of brain health.
For this Training Thursday post, we bring you something a little (okay, a lot) different: a report on one training that was completed some time ago and a preview of one that has yet to happen!
In June 2019, Angie Jones traveled to Durham, North Carolina, to the Duke Integrative Medicine Center to complete an intensive yoga training. During the 8-day Mindful Yoga for Cancer Professional Training, she learned yoga and meditation strategies from the program’s creators, Kimberly Carson and Jim Carson. In addition, she enjoyed lectures from and discussions with several Duke specialists, including Dr. Frank Keefe (on pain), Dr. Kelly Westbrook (on breast cancer), Dr. Laura Porter (on the psychosocial aspects of cancer), and Dr. Arif Kamal (on palliative care)
Duke Integrative Medicine CenterAngie’s attempt at a selfieLibrary at Duke Int Med Center
Fast forward to 2023. In late November, Angie will return to Duke to complete a second intensive training, the Integrative Yoga for Seniors Professional Training. She is looking forward to learning from and practicing with Kimberly Carson again—and to meeting Carol Krucoff in person after streaming several of her senior yoga classes during the early days of the pandemic.
This specific training is one that Angie has had her eye on for a decade or more, and her schedule has finally allowed it to happen! To make the most of her time with Kimberly, Carol, and the medical experts, Angie is compiling a list of questions she hopes to have answered and topics she looks forward to diving more deeply into. If you have ideas to add to her list, please submit them here.
Many thanks to Trudy and Frances for covering Angie’s Gentle classes at the end of November and to all of the teachers for taking a more active role in the day-to-day studio tasks in her absence. Angie looks forward to returning to the 4yoga schedule in December and sharing what she has learned with our community in the months ahead.
On Wed., Nov. 8, we were honored to host a book launch for the publication of A Long Way Home: A Soldier’s Story, the first novel written by our teacher Frances Strickler! (We say “first novel” because we have learned that she is already hard at work on her next one…which makes us both admire and envy her discipline.)
Thank you to everyone who joined us for this special event! Whether you dropped in for a bit or were able to stay the whole time, we appreciate your participation in the celebration.
Want your own copy of A Long Way Home? Some folks have asked about purchasing a copy of the novel. You can do so in one of two ways: order from Amazon (Kindle version also available) or contact Frances to pick up a copy from her.
Studio ready for the guest of honor and her guests.Frances gives her book talk.The assembled audience learns about the book’s path to publication.Fans wait for their books to be signed.
Have to get a photo with the author!
Attendees enjoy socializing in the lounge.Attendees in the lounge share conversation and refreshments.
As we leave Halloween behind and move toward the next holidays, we may also find ourselves outwardly focused on other people, events, and activities. If so, we have an ideal opportunity to remind ourselves of the value of reducing external distractions and looking inward. Yoga helps us develop interoception, the ability to sense what is happening in our bodies. Whether we are noticing physical sensations at the beginning of a class, exploring our breath through pranayama exercises and in poses, or resting in silence in savasana, our yoga practice reminds us to pay attention to ourselves. *
To provide an additional weekday chance to practice, we have added a fourth weekly Gentle class. Frances is the primary teacher for this class, which meets on Wednesday afternoons at 1:30 p.m. Thinking of trying yoga but looking for a chair-supported class? All of our Gentle classes are also customizable to incorporate chairs into the practice. While there are several reasons folks may prefer having a chair available, two common ones are to avoid navigating down to the mat for seated poses and to provide additional stability in standing poses.
In addition to our usual, drop-in yoga classes, this month our schedule features two special events, both of which are book-focused, free, and open to the public!
Book Launch on Wed., Nov. 8, 4 p.m. Did you know that Frances has written an historical novel? Would you like to learn more about the book and celebrate its release with other members of our community? Then come join us for the book launch on Wed., Nov. 8, at 4 p.m. at the studio! We’ll begin with a short talk from Frances, enjoy a Q&A session, and then move to the lounge for beverages and snacks! For more details, see this post.
Book Club on Sun., Nov. 12, 1 p.m. Are you wondering how to age as successfully as possible? Grab a copy of Daniel J. Levitin’s book Successful Aging, and join us in the lounge for a discussion about its ideas and advice! Our October discussion was a lively one (how many ways can you think of to use a wine bottle?!), and we expect the November conversation to be just as engaging! Check out this website post for more details.
For a complete copy of November’s schedule, please see the class calendar page. We look forward to practicing, celebrating, and discussing with you this month!
Fall view of the studio from Fountain Square Nov. 2, 2023
* To learn more about interoception and how to cultivate it, see this Body Electricstory, where a neuroscientist and psychiatrist notes that we are “bombarded by sensory signals in our environment” and calls silence “an increasingly endangered species.”
If you’ve ever visited the studio, you know that the anchor of the props closet has always been our substantial collection of mats, both the original, purple set and the additional ones that have been donated over the years.
Providing plentiful props to loan at no charge supports our mission as a community yoga studio to make yoga affordable and accessible. Even folks who typically bring their own mats have found occasion to borrow studio mats, whether to double up for additional cushioning or to substitute for personal mats that have been left at home or in another vehicle.
A generous donation of new mats from longtime community member Susan James has given us the privilege of donating our existing mats to a new organization! Whitney Jenkins, a social worker and trainee in the yoga teacher program at Steadfast & True yoga studio in Nashville, is working to launch a nonprofit organization that focuses on yoga and mental health. Whitney will be taking mats and props to various locations to reach the people she is serving, and we are grateful to have been able to donate our mats to her program.
On Thurs., Oct. 26, Uta Ziegler and Angie Jones cleaned all 17 of our studio mats and loaded them in Uta’s car for their trip to Nashville. We appreciate Uta for connecting us with Whitney and for delivering the mats to her!
[Full disclosure: since Aparigraha (non-hoarding or non-attachment) is still a work in progress for Angie, she may have stashed one of the original purple mats in her campus office for workplace use.]
Angie then wiped down the first set of the new mats and made them available—they have already been used by several students in the last few days. We much appreciate Susan’s generosity in purchasing and donating a collection of new mats, and we look forward to practicing with them for many years to come!
Thank you to everyone who made our October book club meeting a success! Because Daniel J. Levitin’s Successful Aging is so rich and so conversation-provoking, we decided to add a second fall meeting to continue discussing it. Please join us on Sun., Nov. 12, at 1 p.m. in the lounge for that meeting.
As a reminder, everyone is always welcome to join for our conversations—whether you’re a yoga student or not, whether you’ve ever attended a book club meeting or not. We enjoy seeing both familiar and new faces at these gatherings!
If you prefer to buy the book, it is available for $10-18 online and typically in stock at Bowling Green’s Barnes & Noble. If you prefer to borrow it, Warren County Public Library has two copies in its collection.
We provide a couple of snacks and always welcome other contributions if you’d like to bring something to share. Mostly, though, we are eager to gather together and hear everyone’s perspectives on the book.
Finally, if Facebook events help you keep up with your calendar, please RSVP to the event page, where you can also ask questions and see updates.
We have long known that Frances Strickler is a woman of many talents—with “teaching yoga” as the one from which we most directly and regularly benefit! But did you know that she has also written and published an historical novel?
Whether you’ve already picked up a paperback or Kindle copy of A Long Way Home on Amazon or want to purchase directly from Frances, we hope you will join us at the studio on Wed., Nov. 8, 2023, at 4 p.m. Frances will share a brief talk about the book, we will have time for Q&A, and then we will enjoy snacks and beverages in the lounge. If you have a physical copy of the book and would like it signed, please bring it, too!
To keep up with the book launch or ask any questions about it, please mark “going” or “interested” on its Facebook event.
Thank you to all of you who celebrated our 12th birthday with us in September, whether by attending class, joining us for a post-class event, reaching out via email, or connecting on Facebook! We deeply appreciate your support of our ongoing community yoga adventures.
For October, we are excited to announce 40 regular, drop-in classes! In addition, for the final Monday-night class of the month, we are experimenting with a slightly later time: if your schedule has made it challenging to make it to a 5:30 p.m. class, please mark your calendar for Mon., Oct. 30, at 6:30 p.m. We are also offering two yoga nidra sessions on Sundays at 5:30 p.m.—one with Angie on Sun., Oct. 8, and another with Shigeko on Sun., Oct. 29.
In October, we are also looking forward to three special events. Although book club is a free and drop-in gathering, the sound bath and meditation workshop both require pre-registration and pre-payment to reserve your space, so please sign up for them soon.
Fall book club meeting: Since we are all aging, why not figure out how to do it as well as possible? Join Heather and Angie on Sun., Oct. 15, at 1 p.m. for the fall book club meeting, where we will discuss Successful Aging by Daniel J. Levitin. Book club sessions are always free and open to everyone, whether or not you are currently practicing at the studio. We will provide a couple of snacks and beverages along with plates and napkins, but if you are able to bring something to share, please do. For more details about the meeting, check out its Facebook event.
Sound Bath with Beshka: Fall is a perfect time to slow down and relax—come allow Beshka to help you in that process with a sound bath on Sat., Oct. 21, at 11 a.m. Wondering what a sound bath is? It is a total body experience allowing the listener to relax into a meditative state while they are “bathed” in sound waves. Participants may feel a range of physical, emotional, and mental sensations in response to the sounds of a variety of healing instruments such as gongs, singing bowls, percussion, chimes, and tuning forks. For more details, see the Facebook event. To take part in this 60-minute experience, for which space is limited, use this link to register: tinyurl.com/4yoga-sound-bath
Meditation Made Easy workshop with Danny Brewington: To learn more about the chakra system, about meditation, or both, join Danny Brewington for a Zoom workshop on Sat., Oct. 21, at 11 a.m. This 90-minute session will review all seven of the chakras and explore how they relate to each other. If you have attended previous Meditation Made Easy workshops, this one will help you synthesize what you’ve learned; if you have not attended previous workshops, it will provide a helpful overview of the chakra system. Danny’s instruction is informed by more than 35 years of meditation experience and study; for more information about Danny and the workshop, see its Facebook event. Sign up here to participate: tinyurl.com/med-made-easy-Oct
For a complete copy of the October schedule, please see the calendar page.
Enjoying these new seasonal banners around downtown! Oct. 3, 2023
4yoga 