Encouraging Connection

Magic Hour

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The Backstory

Waaaay back in, say, 2014, I finished The Signature of All Things and promptly googled the author. I’d had a lackluster encounter with Eat, Pray, Love but this novel wrapped me up in a new way. I wanted to know more of what Elizabeth Gilbert (henceforth: Liz, because we have a relationship now) was up to. It turned out that she was coming to Ohio, thanks to the Toledo Public Library, in the following weeks. So I messaged my friends, Lori and Patty, and did exactly what was called for in such situations: I drove 3 hours on a Tuesday to hear an author talk about books. Then I turned around and drove the 3 hours back home.

That evening, Liz introduced me to Inspiration, Magic, and Enchantment. I’ve never been the same.

As it turns out, her library tour was to promote her forthcoming book, Big Magic. I’ve read it countless times. There are moments in life when I feel the world is grey, as if everything is written in Times New Roman, and the days seem to repeat themselves. So I walk into our library, go to the front row on the far right (just past the Young Adult section), on the second set of shelves on the second-from-the-bottom shelf and find what I call my personal copy of Big Magic.

Some mornings, I’ll pick it up and turn to a section and feel the rush of refreshment wash over me. It’s not a magical book, it’s a magical concept: that ideas come to visit, and that inspiration needs a human partner. Her generous approach to the creative life leaves room for whatever it is that you want to add to the universe. I’m a believer – and, apparently, now her Downline in selling this particular version of magic.

(That’s a lie. It’s not for sale. It can never be bought. But I feel as passionately about my Liz version of creativity as any essential oils distributor.)

Since this time, I have recommended, quoted, cited, and figuratively threw a copy of Big Magic to all my favorite people. I’ve hosted retreats where we simply say the words back and forth to one another. People come at me with thoughts and I practically push them to to follow that Idea “to its natural end.”

The Heartbeat

Just this past year, in my very town, I was talking with a gal who had bravely tried something. She had an idea that wouldn’t leave her alone, and so she opened her doors to it. There were struggles (hello, COVID) and learning curves. In a brief discussion I learned that while I was a tad obnoxious over my excitement at her very existence, other people were…. not so much. She actually endured so much criticism and “are you really sure you should do this?” that her continued existence is a miracle.

I told her: All of these people full of doubts are terrified you’ll succeed because it means that the big dream they have living within them could actually work. Your success means the reason their dream never comes into existence is THEY aren’t brave enough to try. They desperately want reason and logic and “that won’t work” to be true because they are scared of their own power.

Welcome to the Magic Hour

I’m surrounded by brave people who are willing to partner with Inspiration and try something. (Note: they’re not “fearless.” They’re just willing to try. We’ll talk about fear, don’t worry.)

I’m going to open my doors to all these brave souls.

I’m going to create space for Inspiration to come knocking.

I’m going to create time for you to tune your ear to the call of the Idea.

I’m going to tell you one million times that your worthiness has nothing to do with it.

And then I’ll finally shut up long enough for you to do your thing.

The Invitation

Who: Anyone who has ever had an idea come to visit.

What: I’m going to read Liz’s words, invite reactions that evoke hospitality to creativity, and then give space.

When: Some Tuesday nights. (Note: It’s known in these parts that Wednesday morning is when we Get Shit Done. Right after Rise & Shine yoga. Creativity does require you to show up and do the work.)

Where: Woven Yoga

Why: Because an Idea visited, and I don’t like to say no to a good idea without good reason. (“You don’t want word getting around the universe that you’re difficult to work with,” Liz writes on page 37.)

Your responsibility: Sign up & show up. (The signing up part is only loosely suggested.) It costs zero dollars and requires zero membership. No yoga, no touching toes, no chakras unless you want them, none of it. This is for the sake of the created/creative order. You might want to bring the notebook where you and Enchantment work out the details. And a good pen.

Join us.

Fresh Start Specials

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Waiting for the new year to arrive and the holiday season to wrap up to return to your practice? Some of you have stepped away, even from before the pandemic – and it doesn’t matter. When you’re ready, we’re here.

If you’re looking for an incentive, here are a few specials running beginning December 27 and running into the first few weeks of January.

Barre Blitz

Our best sale on Barre classes for the year! Save $15 overall when you buy 5 Barre classes for $45 with a 45 day expiration. If you use all those classes within 15 days, get your first month of an Unlimited Membership at half price!

Purchase yours

Begin in Beast Mode

Our standard 2 week UNLIMITED Yoga + Barre package ($29) is the perfect way to try out our many classes, styles, teachers and times. If you hit 5+ classes in that 2 week time, you’ll get your first month of UNLIMITED membership at half price!

Let’s Go!

Start a Weekly Routine

So many yogis are looking for their one class a week to begin. That’s perfect. (You don’t have to do it all to do something well!). From December 27 – January 10, start on our Weekly Membership package (4 classes each month, unused classes roll over to the next month for the life of the membership, and extra drop-in classes only $10) for half price. YES. Your first month is half price.

Commit to it

Your Body + Food

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If your new year’s resolutions have anything to do with wellness, health, or weight, can I give you a special invitation?

How about instead of starting with shame, we begin with love?

Can you lead with gratitude and compassion?

It’s not always your default mode. That’s why I’m bringing in a little help from my friends.

This January Woven Yoga is hosting a series of workshops and events to help you work with your mind and your beliefs about living in a body. Diane Reile will use her tools of information, personal reflection and hypnotherapy to help you expose and even replace negative beliefs about your body. Then registered dietician & nutrition counselor Lauren Samuel will offer an introduction to Intuitive Eating, an anti-diet that uses positive beliefs about food to establish eating patterns that are compassionate and sustainable.

Get A Better Body [Belief System]

With Diane Reile, Hypnotherapist

2022 is the year to finally shed those unwanted negative beliefs about what it means to live in a body and how it’s “supposed” to look. If your relationship to food has made eating less enjoyable and more work, then this series will be a welcome launching point. Using information about the mind and how beliefs work, along with personal reflection and experiential tools of hypnotherapy, Diane will guide you through a process of exposing negative beliefs and reframing them toward self-compassion and curiosity.

Saturdays, 10 AM
January 8, 15, 22

Sign up for the series

Find Food Freedom

With Lauren Samuel, RDN/LD

Are you ready to improve your eating behaviors and create a healthy relationship with food? Allow Lauren Samuel, RDN to guide you through the Intuitive Eating framework to improve your relationship with food and your body. This work doesn’t focus on weight loss, but rather, on helping you feel amazing in your body by teaching you to connect to your internal body cues, which empowers you to make your own food choices to meet your needs.

Saturday, 1 PM
January 29

Sign up now

But, why?

Yoga is a practice that involves your body. In fact, it’s the practiced that helped me befriend my own body, which changed my relationship to the world. (It’s quite something to feel welcomed in the space where you live.)

Get a Better Body [Belief System]

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2022 is the year to finally shed those unwanted negative beliefs about your body and how it’s “supposed” to look. If your relationship to food has made eating less enjoyable and more work, then this series will be a welcome launching point.

Using information about the mind and how beliefs work, along with personal reflection and experiential tools of hypnotherapy, Diane will guide you through a process of exposing negative beliefs and reframing them toward self-compassion and curiosity.

Week 1: Examining Body Beliefs
Week 2: Building Self-Love
Week 3: Cravings Communicate

$90 for all three sessions for the biggest benefit and cost savings

$45 single-session price

Saturdays, January 8, 15, 22

10 AM at Woven Yoga

Register Now

Power Basics

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Thursdays, 7 PM beginning January 6

Looking to put some power into your practice through a quicker pace and repetitive flows? Our Power Basics is your intro to power yoga. Join as we flow through seated, standing, and balancing postures. This class is welcoming to those who have an established yoga or other movement practice and who can move from floor to standing with ease.

Sign up now!

Making New Year’s Plans?

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Making New Year’s Plans?

After the ball drops and the champagne flutes are empty, we’ll be looking at a bright and shiny 2022. After several years of “unprecedented times” we’re now familiar with the fact that change is inevitable. There is no “normal” except that which you create.

The question is: What do you want to make with it?

At Woven Yoga, we’re all about intention. We ask the question before, during and after class: Why did you come? What are you looking for? How do you want to leave?

There are many approaches to living a life with intention – maybe you have a groove, a way of aligning yourself and your days so that you’re seeing the growth you desire. AWESOME. Let us know how we can support that.

If you’re looking for a few tools or jumping off points, our January is filled with starting spots.

Intention Setting Workshop

Sunday, January 2, 10 AM

With the New Year – and the New Moon – it’s the perfect time to get in touch with what you want from your life. Join us as we walk through the process of reflecting on the past, releasing what holds us back, and re-imagining what life might be like as we create some boundaries against energy-suckers and create space for your hopes to take root and blossom.

This 2-hour workshop will include time for active, personal reflection, meditation & visualization exercises, and a 20-30 minute body practice. This session comes with a Simple Self planner, a guide toward building days, weeks and months that move you toward your intentions (retail price $40, included with registration).

$68 registration ($58 member pricing)

Sign up now!

Newbies Series

Wednesdays, 5:30 PM begins January 12

Ready to start your new year with something new for your body, mind and soul? Our Slow Flow for Newbies series is a 4-week introduction to yoga. If you’ve never done a down dog, it’s still the place for you. We’ll cover poses, transitions, and learn what it feels like to relax in savasana.

Book the series for $50 (individual classes $14)

Sign up now

How about instead of starting with shame, we begin with love?

Yoga is a practice that involves your body. In fact, it’s the practiced that helped me befriend my own body, which changed my relationship to the world. (It’s quite something to feel welcomed in the space where you live.)

If your new year’s resolutions have anything to do with wellness, health, or weight, can I give you a special invitation?

Can you lead with gratitude and compassion?

No, it’s not necessarily the default mode. That’s why I’m bringing in a little help from my friends.

This January the studio is hosting a series of workshops and events to help you work with your mind and your beliefs about living in a body. Diane Reile will use her tools of information, personal reflection and hypnotherapy to help you expose and even replace negative beliefs about your body. Then registered dietician & nutrition counselor Lauren Samuel will offer an introduction to Intuitive Eating, an anti-diet that uses positive beliefs about food to establish eating patterns that are compassionate and sustainable.

Get A Better Body [Belief System]

With Diane Reile, Hypnotherapist

Saturdays, 10 AM
January 8, 15, 22

Sign up for the series

Find Food Freedom

With Lauren Samuel, RDN/LD

Saturday, 1 PM
January 29

Sign up now

Bourbon Yoga

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bourbon yoga

Some new friends and I celebrated a birthday this past weekend in Lexington, with easy access to bourbon country. The company and the lack of concrete schedule was the primary highlight; however, I can’t resist sharing a bit about the distillary tours.

I know, I know. What in the world would a simple yoga instructor have to say about bourbon? (Or, what does bourbon have to say about my Downward Dog pose?) Ah, my friends: this is why you love me or leave me. Herego!

In once sense, if you’ve been on a distillery tour, you’ve been on them all. We learn about the mash bill with over 51% corn, that’s been around since the company started – just after the prohibition, of course (unless you’re Buffalo Trace). You see the barrels with the level 3 char. The rick houses, the handwritten labels, and you learn to sniff the bourbon with your mouth open.

Bourbon is aged (minimum of 3 years, of course) in charred oak barrels because it flavors and colors the clear liquid that goes into the barrel. Here’s where I go Yoga Nerd on it all: it’s the process of expansion and contraction that allows the alcohol to become a part of the barrel, and then it returns. Changed.

Bourbon takes its flavor from its container, it’s home.

And it does it through changing temperature, humidity, and wind conditions. In essence, through all these uncontrollable variables of living on earth.

The practice of yoga is about bringing connection – often we reference body, mind, spirit, soul, breath as these parts and pieces that can feel like they’re operating in isolation. But it’s not like a lego kit, where you stack a red brick with a yellow brick and a white brick and then, presto, you’ve built a wall.

We’re much more like an aging bourbon. Our properties are being absorbed and distributed based upon their interactions with one another and the environment in which we live. Much like bourbon, we take on the flavor of our surroundings as we navigate living in a world filled with change.

The way we think impacts our mental and physical health. And when we’re hurt, our emotions shift. When our spirit is inspired and revived, our energy lifts and we find new capacity for moving, eating well, and partaking in spiritual practices.

If you’re going to take on the flavor of your surroundings, let’s be intentional about it.

  • Choose friends who show you your best self.
  • Allow your living and working space with beauty
  • Eat foods with properties you want to become (so, maybe not as fake or cheap)
  • Fill your mouth with words that take you in the direction you want to go: gracious, thankful, hopeful, joyous
  • Let your mind rest on ideas that are expansive and inclusive, rather than small and divisive
  • Listen, read and watch that which inspires awe, laughter, and intrigue

Gratitude Challenge

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Make November a bit more grateful.

For the entire month, we’ll be focusing our attention towards gratitude. I’m a firm believer that gratitude is the gateway to joy. There’s a reason that every major culture of history had practices of dance, celebration, feasts and worship following times of major stress (harvest work, buffalo hunts, and war). Gratitude signals to your body that you’re safe, and you can fully absorb and take it all in and rest (ahem: rest and digest mode).

We’re making it the focal point of teaching and we’re going to reach into places to find gratitude and practice gratitude all month long. Here are the ways to participate:

  • Show up. Even when you don’t “feel” thankful for anything. Gratitude is a practice as much as a feeling. Often the action will lead to the feeling.
  • Name it. Each class we offer will begin or end with a chance for you to write a word, phrase, name, or thing for which you’re grateful for. (We’ll hang these in our window so we can encourage our entire community to be grateful, too.)
  • Re-center. If you’d like a daily text prompt for you to look for gratitude in a variety of places, respond back to this email. (If you’ve not yet attended class, I’ll need your phone number to add you.) You’ll receive a daily text update with gratitude inspiration.
  • Share. Invite others to be grateful for the month, not just on Thanksgiving day.

We hope you’ll join us in recognizing all we have to be grateful for this month!

Sign up for your next hour of grateful bliss

Dude Yoga

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A yoga series for men

Tuesdays, 7 PM beginning October 19

A 5-week series designed to introduce the practice of yoga to men. Learn to use your strength in ways that support balance and advance your flexibility. Use mindfulness techniques to alleviate the physical manifestations of stress.

Sign up for the series

Barre FOCUS

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Saturday, October 16, 2021 | 10 AM

Give your Barre practice some focus! Each month this one-hour class will target one of the four major areas of the body that your traditional barre class tones and strengthens. After a warm-up, Kelsey will lead you through multiple series of movements designed to burn out the arms, core, thighs or seat. Other muscles groups will get some attention and then enjoy the well-earned stretch and a delicious rest. 

This class is best suited for individuals who have taken 3-4 barre classes prior to attending. Class registration: $15. Normal passes and memberships do not apply for this special offering, but Unlimited Members enjoy a discounted $5 drop in rate.

Sign up for Barre FOCUS: Arms