Use this search box to find articles that have run in our newspapers over the last several years.
Date: 1/26/2021
EASTHAMPTON – Cottage Street is welcoming a new yoga studio, Breathing Space Yoga, which is set to open in the spring.
Breathing Space Yoga originally opened in Holyoke in 2017 and is now moving to 102 Cottage St. When asked why they are moving locations, Dori Digenti, who founded the nonprofit yoga studio, shared that it comes down to a supportive community for the type of work her studio is trying to do and having the right space. She shared that she believes Easthampton is a good fit.
“I think people would feel that this is a place that they would want to come to also practice yoga,” she said.
Digenti says its mission is to offer free yoga classes and support to recovery centers and prisons in Western Massachusetts.
Digenti said they offer trauma-informed yoga and offering it is really offering an embodied practice that helps people.
“It has all the fitness things, some people come to yoga to get strong and flexible, it has all that but the other piece that is kind of the special magic of yoga is that it helps us to regulate our own nervous system. So what happens when someone experiences trauma is that they can become disconnected from their nervous system,” she said.
She continued to say that yoga helps with relearning to reregulate the nervous system so a person can move out of the fight-flight mode and to be able to live a fuller life experience without feeling stuck.
They also offer open studio yoga classes to people who are not involved in any centers or in prison. Breathing Space Yoga runs on a donation basis but does offer free classes at certain times during the week.
“I think people come to the studio continuously knowing that they are supporting the mission and they also make donations outside of class fees and we are building a community that not only supports all of our own yoga practices but also has this beneficial effect on the broader community and in particular those who have challenges, those who have got caught up in situations that they would like to get out of,” Digenti said.
Before the pandemic, yoga teachers would go into these facilities and conduct a yoga class but now that there are restrictions, classes are on Zoom.
Lorrie Heard, a yoga teacher at the studio shared that adjusting from in-person to Zoom classes made her a better yoga teacher. “It led me to think more about word choice and my intentions for teaching each class. Now I enjoy teaching online but I also look forward to teaching in person again and building more of a personal connection with my yoga community”.
Heard told Reminder Publishing that her favorite part about teaching yoga is moving and breathing with other people and being able to share her practice and teach gifts with other Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC).
She teaches a class on Saturdays at 10:30 a.m. and a BIPOC-only class on Monday nights at 7 p.m.
Angelica Lopez, a trauma-informed yoga teacher at Breathing Space Yoga Studio believes that the issues are in the tissues and oftentimes people do not have the words for the things they have experienced.
“Yoga can help people find these feelings and safely move them through the body so that they can either be released or reintegrated. Yoga gives us an opportunity to be with ourselves exactly as we are. This helps us learn compassion for ourselves and for others, resilience, and it helps us focus our minds on what is rather than thinking about what is not, what was or what could be,” Lopez shared.
Visit their website, www.breathingspaceholyoke.com, to sign-up for a class, learn about what each class has to offer, or donate.