Yoga may help prevent frailty in older adults, according to local researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School. For 76-year-old Patricia Walden, yoga is a way life.

Stories of Resilience is a series focused on profiling local businesses in the city and sharing their success and challenges in dealing with the COVID Pandemic of the last 2 years. This entry we talked to Down Under Yoga.

Two Cambridge companies you already love, the Life Alive Organic Cafe, and Down Under Yoga, team up to prove that when it comes to wellness, two businesses can be better than one.

The collaborators at Life Alive Organic Café and Down Under School of Yoga are determined to keep your energy ignited. Their first-ever collaboration, Wellness Oasis, which opened at 22 John F. Kennedy Street on March 1st, strives to turn our intellectual mecca into a spiritual hub. According to Life Alive’s CEO Bryan Timko, their mission is rooted in an essential tenet: “how we eat, move, and think influences how we feel.”

The unique partnership takes a holistic approach to boosting health, with a second location coming in the South End soon.

Life Alive and Down Under School of Yoga are collaborating on a brand new Harvard Square location and another opening soon in Boston’s South End.

'We've tried to create a space that lifts you up, calms you down, and energizes you,' founders say.

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.

Leaders of both companies said their businesses complement one another. Both locations will include Life Alive’s cafes with organic menu offerings and space for Down Under’s yoga programming.

“Not only do we hear it directly from our guests, but research also shows the food we eat has an immediate positive effect on our energy levels and mood,” Life Alive CEO Bryan Timko said.

“Movement, reflection and nourishment are key components of how we feel,” said Kate Heffernan, Down Under’s teacher leadership council co-chair.

We asked Rosie Richardson, a Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher (CIYT), Certified Yoga Therapist (C-IAYT) and a graduate of the Iyengar Yoga Institute of San Francisco’s 2-year Advanced Studies/Teacher Training program, how women 60+ can incorporate yoga into their lives…

Justine Wiltshire Cohen and Michael Ponte, owner and manager at Down Under Yoga School of Yoga in Boston, talk with J about what how things have been going since Justine was last on the show three years ago and what they are doing to meat the challenge of the pandemic crisis. They discuss Down Under’s transition to making their teachers employees, responding to the needs of teachers and staff, important keys to their success, efforts they are making to survive the shut down, and the core principles that are guiding their choices.

More people are turning to the practice of yoga via the internet as state and local officials stress social distancing, close parking lots to beaches, shut down sports in parks and shutter indoor places to exercise.

Justine Wiltshire Cohen, director of Down Under School of Yoga with locations in Brookline, Cambridge, and Newton, teaches seven different styles of yoga at her school, where students learn to connect movement to breath, leaving them physically strong, but mentally quiet.

Down Under School of Yoga is offering over 20 live-streamed classes a day at a variety of times throughout the day and evening, with one location near campus in Brookline.

Down Under School of Yoga has a library of free audio classes as well as live-streaming of its full schedule of classes via Zoom.

For members of Down Under Yoga and newbies alike, visit the Boston-area yoga studio’s “Down Under @ Home” page. If you have passes already, you can use them for the online offerings. There are also packages you can purchase ranging from $18 for one class and $80 for its monthly “Yogi Pass.”

In this episode of Yoga | Birth | Babies, host Deb Flashenberg speaks with longtime colleague and Director of Down Under’s Prenatal & Children’s School Bec Conant. In their lively and a bit geeky conversation, Deb and Bec both draw from personal and professional experience about finding the balance between offering the student autonomy of their body and when to support the student with appropriate pose alternatives. They also both talk about the difficulty of not being ego driven in one’s practice.

A new month is a clean slate to kickstart healthy habits, scope out new hobbies, and dive into the next 30-something days on a high note. What better way to spend your first April weekend than partaking in a two-day, all-access yoga festival?

Down Under School of Yoga, the no-frills and community-oriented multi-location yoga studio, is bringing back their annual Down Under Unites Yoga Festival for its third year. Hosted at their Cambridge studio, the weekend-long event will take place April 6-7, and include a variety of workshops and classes. For $30, you’ll receive a wristband granting you unlimited access to the weekend’s festivities.

Down Under School of Yoga forgoes the frills of designer apparel and Instagrammable poses for a practice rooted in the traditions of the discipline. Dedicated to fostering community and educating both newcomers and patron yogis, this old-school studio promises to deliver quality yoga training in a down-to-earth environment.

Bakasana, more accurately translated as Crane Pose, is the most important of all arm balances, since understanding how to do Bakasana lays the foundation for most arm balances. Arm balances are complex, and they reveal how the flexibility and strength that carry newcomers through many poses cannot replace skills mature yoga practitioners develop over years of practice.