Giving Back To Our Beloved Community | Community Classes Update

Beginning October 1st, our Sunday night Community Classes have gone from $5 to $10. This change ensures that we can continue to offer quality, community-oriented yoga AND give more back to our community partners. Thank YOU for all you’ve given so far!

Did you know that in 2019 alone, you helped us raise over $10,000 for various community partners!? Although 2019 was a different time, we’ve consistently had a robust giving program since 2010 at our opening. Giving back to our community is so important to us as we strongly believe in both our first core value of Create Accessibility and the Seva principle in karma yoga. This role of Seva, or service, is one tenet of yoga: to serve and give. 

We’ve worked with this principle by offering scholarships for our 200hr teacher training, collecting and giving funds from Community Classes and events, volunteering our time and creating lasting community relationships.

As the world changes, and we continue to grow with those changes, we’re making the best adjustments possible to continue offering the yoga you love- with the principle of service and creating accessibility always a part of our decision-making.

Although, through our 13 years of Community Classes, we haven’t adjusted the $5 pricing- we’re making this change now to allow us to continue to give back to our non-profit Community Partners but also to maintain the high-quality yoga you know and love.

We’re always excited to announce the Community Partner of the quarter, and at the end of each quarter, you can look to the newsletter to see how much funding you helped us raise! The funds you put into the community classes support our staff, studios, and most importantly, our Community Partners. We are so appreciative of each dollar you’ve offered, every time you showed up, and all of the care you put into your practice and this wonderful community. Thank you ❤️

With so much appreciation,

Larissa

(Reminder for members, all regular classes, including Community Classes, are included in your unlimited membership.)

October Immersion: 2 sessions 

Each Session is 2.5 hours (counts for 3 classes for the Challenge month). 

Session 1: Forest Hills | Friday Oct 6th | 5:30p-8p

Shoulders with Larissa + Myofascial Release for Shoulders with Jen M 

Session 2:  Forest Hills | Saturday Oct 7th | 12:30-3p 

Core with Jen M + Tonglen Meditation with Larissa 

Session 1: Happy Shoulders! 

Did you know that your shoulders are the most flexible and mobile of all the joints, with 4 total joints working together to give a wide range of motion? All of this mobility is good and needed! One of the main roles of our shoulders and arms is to bring things to us, and we need to be able to reach up, down, across, behind, and with every rotation available. Learning how to take care of this very complex part of your body will allow you to continue to do all the movements that make your life wonderful, like making (or eating) great food, holding a loved one, and fun things like taking an arm bind in yoga- or holding something behind your back to surprise a friend!

We’re excited to invite you to work on understanding your shoulders, then building stability and flexibility so you can better enjoy your favorite activities, including yoga! You’ll spend the first part of the workshop learning some skills to strengthen and build optimal movement in your shoulder girdle, then wind down with myofascial releasing (think self-massage techniques). 

Join Jen M and Larissa for this informative and body-feel-good workshop. Your shoulders will thank you, and you’ll learn a few new tips and poses along the way! (Twisted Bird of Paradies, here we come!) 

Session 2: Your Core is the Key! + Tonglen Meditation 

One of the definitions for the word core is “the central most important part of something.” In yoga, your core is connected to everything!  

Every posture requires some understanding of the core container, whether in Chair Pose to offer stability through effort and control, or in Child’s Pose to fully release and soften, in order to breathe deeply and release the low back. Your Core Container is a magical place, with 4 layers of muscles, 7 layers of tissues, and a vast network of white and red tissues working together to support your movement, digestion, breathing support, and generally your life. 

This isn’t a workshop just to work your core as hard as possible (though you will verrrrry likely be sore the next day!). This session is meant to bring more awareness to your core, to understand what it means to take care of your core, and then we’ll integrate these understandings for overall healthy movement patterns. We’ll do that through purposeful movements that come from both yoga and functional fitness, and we’re excited to share these tips and skills so you can keep living into your best self. (We know, that’s a big promise. But your core really is that important!) 

Join Jen M and Larissa to learn all about your core, then we’ll end with a restful and soothing 30-min meditation session based on Tonglen (which means giving and receiving). 

Pricing:

Full Weekend | Members: $69, Nonmembers: $89

Only Friday Session | Members: $39 , Nonmembers: $49

Only Saturday Session | Members: $39 , Nonmembers: $49

The connection between Kids’ Food Basket & Funky Buddha Values

Because great care goes into choosing our quarterly community partner

As we continue our partnership with Kids’ Food Basket, we want to dive a little deeper into why we chose them as our partner for this quarter.
One of KFB’s Core Values is “Working Toward Equity,” they do this with the belief that access to healthy food is a right, rather than a privilege. By providing barrier-free access to healthy food and nutrition education for children and families directly impacted by food insecurity, with prioritization on marginalized populations; KFB seeks to understand, educate, and advocate for long-term sustainable change in the intersectionality of food insecurity, poverty, and race.

Speaking of accessibility as a right, you may be familiar with our Core Value of “Creating Accessibility” within the yoga community. We do this through the action of being welcoming, offering an environment of belonging, and by cultivating growth through practice. With incredible teaching practices, various spaces to practice in, and an abundance of class/ membership/education options- we strive to have offerings that reach every nook of the community!

These offerings mean very little though without cultivating an environment in which all humans feel a sense of belonging, safety, and acceptance. Did you know all of our teachers are educated in trauma-sensitivity awareness?We also provide hands-on assistance through a consent-only practice (you know the green rubies!). Beyond that, our barrier-free facilities are the home for a range of classes that welcome all ability levels with various pricing options that allows flexibility across the community.

KFB has a near-identical Value in “Cultivating a Positive and Healthy Environment” by ensuring they lead with trust and create a culture of safety and belonging. Kids’ Food Basket strives to ensure that everyone is seen, heard, and valued while honoring authenticity and maintaining dignity and respect to all.

It is incredibly important to Funky Buddha that we support and uplift the voices of our community, especially voices striving for change. We hope KFB’s mission speaks to you as much as it speaks to us and we’re overjoyed to have the Funky Buddha community uplifting their voice. As always, we invite you to join us on Sunday nights for our outdoor Give-Back Class and learn more about Kids’ Food Basket on their website!

Why do we close for a few days every August?

Our teaching team gets to go back to school, too!  

Every month our teaching team gets together for a few hours (we call this our Teacher Lab) to work on poses, practice together, both teaching and movement, and to have time to learn from and support each other. Although we make this concerted effort to gather and intentionally put our minds together, it’s just not enough time to get into all of the things we’d like to learn!

Closing the studios for two days gives us an opportunity to bring our teaching team together so we can continue offering you the consistent, fresh, and fun yoga you love – but with new energy! Not only does this learning fill our cups, we can then share our novel and fresh learnings with you and our community <3 

This year, we’ll be playing with fun new skills that our teachers can use in classes and workshops that we’ll be offering to you over the coming year. We’ll also be diving deeper into our own meditation practices so we can continue to hold our highest level of grounded support. Every time we learn something new, you do, too! 

Thank YOU for being a part of our community, and for joining us day by day, and week by week, as you grow and explore your practice. We appreciate each of you and can’t wait for you to enjoy the fruits of our efforts together. 

Please enjoy free classes on our Vimeo on August 18th and 19th, while we are away learning, and we’ll see you very soon in the studios! 

P.S. Also look for a few more closures here and there in the month of August as we are repainting and refreshing the studio spaces!

Class Purpose: Rest & Restore

In our Restorative Flow class, we weave together breath work, gentle movement, longer held poses, and stillness, so you can access slow warmth, deep stretching, body releasing, and blissful relaxation. 

Our Restorative Flow is meant to guide you slowly into a state of deep rest, and in this rest, we each may find our own restoration, our own renewal. 

Some of the Major Benefits of a Restorative Yoga Class:

• Relieves muscular tension, and at a level that tends to be below simply stretching 
• Can boost your immune system 
• Can enhance and stabilize positive mood 
• Can help regulate or alleviate stress 
• Can improve your capacity for healing (the slow time in class allows you space to get to know yourself more, and in turn discover your needs, moment by moment) 
• Helps balance and strengthen your nervous system

When we are under stress, our Autonomic Nervous System is in an elevated sympathetic state, or what’s commonly called Fight, Flight, or Freeze. When we are calm, especially when we are consciously choosing rest, we are strengthening and elevating our parasympathetic state (our calming system), or our “rest and digest, tend and befriend” states of being. We need BOTH systems to work really well! The challenge with our stress state is that it is very commonly overactive, and many of us could use a little practice and support to turn on our calming systems.  

When we choose rest and restoration, we are teaching our stress systems to work more effectively with our calming systems. We can also strengthen our ability to move from a stressed state to a relaxed state more smoothly, more consistently. 

With all the benefits that a restorative practice can provide, why do we have a mix of class types? Variety is the spice of life!  Plus, this gives you a chance to decide what YOU might need on a given day.  

More powerful yoga classes, like our Power Flows or Power Flows with Music, have very similar benefits to a restorative class, just in a different way. Power Flows can be so invigorating and help us maintain our attention on the present moment, as we need our attentional focus when physically challenged. Power Flows can also move a lot of energy!   

Some days we need rest. Some days we need big, powerful movements. You get to choose what classes best support you on any given day, and we’ll be here to guide you through.

What to Expect in Restorative Flow:

• Very gentle movement with lots of support
  • Ex: No High Planks or Crescent Lunges with knees up, all poses are supported
• Mostly longer-held poses, with very gentle, passive stretching
• No active stretching
• Dedicated time for breath practices
• Still a heated space, generally less sweat due to long-held and supported poses

After the initial 10-15 minutes of very gentle and warming movements, you can expect to be supported by your mat, blocks, and any other props you’d like to bring. Each pose after the warming section will be held for up to 7 minutes, so you can rest into each posture and let your body settle into deep relaxation and ease. 

Finally, I’d like to share my own experience in restorative yoga. I’ve found that slowing down my practice gives me the time I need to really get to know my own needs, beyond my mind’s desire to work hard and move energy (although these things are SO important to my overall well-being!). In slowing down, I’ve been able to work with an injury and heal it in a new way, I’ve noticed many nuances and small delights in my breathing practice, and generally notice a renewed sense of ease.  

I do continue to love Power Flows! And, have found as much as I really enjoy a physically challenging practice, my body has also been delighted in the slow, easeful space of a Restorative Flow. New healing, new awareness, and renewed dedication to my practice. 

We’d love to invite you to enjoy your own benefits of a Restorative Flow. Rest your way into a more grounded you. 

Wishing you rest and ease, 

Larissa (Executive Director, and lover of rest and resourcing) 

See you soon!

Coming to Class? Here’s What You Need to Know:

New Studio Policies

• Face masks are no longer required in the state of Michigan, though we encourage folks to do what makes them feel the most comfortable.
• Please place your mat at the back of a ruby to keep equal spaces between mats.
• In the 8 limbs of yoga, there is a practice called Ahimsa & Satya (non-harming and compassion). We ask that we all abide by this yogic principle within our studio spaces, and also our Core Values of RICH Action (respectful, integral, intentional, caring, honest, and humble action).
• Mat rentals ARE available!
• Towel rentals are not available at this time.
• Yoga blocks, straps and mini-mats are not available to borrow at this time. Feel free to bring your own.
• Please read and follow any posted signs within the studios.
• Using signage and floor markers to mat spacing and direct traffic flow. Please look for and respect these signs.
• Because we are still limiting capacity in order to create space, some classes do fill up to max capacity; you must cancel your class 1 hour or more prior to class start time. If you late-cancel less than 1 hour prior to class start time, you will be charged $10 to your credit card on file.

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Arrival:

• Please take care of personal needs before you arrive. While bathrooms remain available, we are unable to sanitize them between uses during classes (although we will clean and sanitize them often throughout the day).
• When checking in, please form a line and offer distance to your fellow yogis.
• Our staff will check you in for a touch-free process.
• Sanitize your hands as you enter the studio, and wash/sanitize your hands frequently during your visit. There will be hand sanitizing stations throughout the studios.

Departure:

• Please leave promptly after class to clear the space so that our team to clean and disinfect.
• As you are leaving the studio, please help us to avoid congestion by following staff directions as necessary.

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Last Updated: 7/12/2021

Contactless Practices

You may walk through the doors, practice, and head home without needing to touch anything that you didn’t bring with you.

• Motion detecting lights in all bathrooms
• Touchless hand sanitizer stations available
• Pre-registration required for touch-free check in
• Foot-activated door pulls
• Foot-activated trash cans
• Touchless purchase payments available (check with desk staff)

Deep Cleaning

• Disinfection of high-touch surfaces and floors throughout the studio with hospital-grade disinfectants approved by CDC for use against SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that causes COVID-19)
• Thorough cleaning and disinfecting of the studios and lobbies between classes
• State of the art ERV system, continually bringing in fresh air instead of recirculating inside air
• Increased and best quality filtration systems for optimal air cleansing

Staff Training & Protocols

• Staff will be conducting temperature checks of all employees pre-shift/class and recording them per CDC guidelines.
• All staff trained in studio expectations, state and public health requirements, and best practices for disinfecting surfaces and offering contactless services.