Two hours with Renée. The first 75 minutes will be a challenging signature Renee vinyasa class with a strong focus on anatomy. This builds the foundation so that some of the postures and transitions that we can't do *yet* can seem more accessible and reasonable.
The last 45 minutes morph into a workshop style where we'll continue work on inversions, backbends, and anything we tried during vinyasa that we want to revisit and a chance to ask any questions. Leave feeling pleasantly spent, fulfilled, and floating.
Cost: $45
Please bring a yoga mat - mats are available to rent in studio for $3
***For Livestream Participants - a Zoom invitation email will go out to pre-registered students 1 hour before the class. Please make sure we have the correct email address on file for you so you receive your invitation! Contact the studio at 617.566.9642 with any questions.***
About Renée:
After years in the corporate world in a “real job”, spending a lot of energy arranging meetings and travel around getting to yoga classes any chance I could get, I decided to take the leap out of the office and into the studio. In 2004, I began teaching full time and I haven't once looked back. I've been physically active my whole life, first as a serious ballet dancer until dance became too much of a physical and often emotional battle. I turned to running and weightlifting and then a guy in my office said, “my wife teaches yoga and I think you’d love it.” He was higher up than me so I said, “I’ll try it out this weekend for sure, thank you!” Needing to be able to communicate with him at work, and rather than avoiding him for the rest of my professional life, I went to the class. The first thing I noticed was that everyone had long muscles, seemed incredibly calm and, had excellent posture. That class was the birth of my practice which has continued without sabbatical until this day and I hope never stops. It seemed that everyone in that class was stronger than me. Part of what made me go back the next day was a sense of competitiveness (but you learn quickly in yoga that the practice is hard enough and the last thing you’d ever spend energy on is competing with another person :) But at the time all I wanted was to be as strong as these students, learn what they seemed to know and, be able to do what they could do.
But there was an even stronger pull: I had been a ballet dancer and, when I quit classical ballet in my teens, I resigned myself to the fact I’d never be in that “zone” again — that place where time and space are irrelevant and your mind and body are in perfect sync and you just move without seeming to think / total, 100% focus. About 10 minutes into the class, I was back in that zone and it lasted until savasana. But it was better than ballet — the goal was my overall well being and not the position or how I looked in a particular shape (and my feet weren’t bleeding). My goal when I teach is to get people in that zone. A place where you think about your work, your phone, your family or anything except for what you’re doing, you’ll fall down.
I decided to open a yoga studio. I owned a yoga studio for eight years and sold it in 2013. It was an incredible learning experience and I grew both personally and professionally, learned a lot but, I burned out. I decided to focus completely on teaching. The “job” of teaching yoga is a hustle like any other job but, the actual teaching is something I absolutely love.
The most important thing to me as a teacher is that I remain a student. I love practicing by myself at home and traveling to train with my mentors a couple times a year. I also try to keep up with foreign languages (which I'm terrible at) and a run 3 times a week (which I'm also not good at and in reality it is usually 2x per week). Teachers have to be students.
I credit my teaching style to a dedicated self practice as well as the incredible teachers with whom I have had the great privilege to study with including Brock Cahill and Krista Cahill, Maty Ezraty, Dharma Mittra and more.
At the end of 2022, I moved to Portugal where my great grandfather was from. Living in another country has so far been one of the most rewarding and challenging experiences of my life so far. Luca has adjusted beautifully and already has her EU passport and understand Portuguese. A couple of months ago, I held a retreat in Lisboa which was amazing, the next two will be in Greece but I’m looking forward to doing another retreat in Porto, Portugal July of 2024 if you’d like to come for a visit!