Morningside Yoga

May 2011

Morningside Yoga is a small little in-home studio in the Westcott area. If you're used to classes of 50+ people in the room, as I was, this Yoga studio provides a refreshingly different way to practice. The Yoga studio is an open and sunny room that overlooks a lush backyard. The classes are small - I've not been in one with more than ~8 people - which provides an atmosphere conducive to lots of one-on-one attention, and building friendships with the other regular students. The sessions themselves pull from numerous influences and doesn't fit neatly into any category. It's unique, and a little bit different every time, which keeps it always interesting. All that aside, though, the one reason why I kept going back was for the instructor. Michael, an "accomplished American master possessing great amounts of technical & philosophical knowledge combined with a genuine mystical connection to the path of yoga,"* is the owner of the studio, and his passion for Yoga is both immediately apparent and contagious. He lives Yoga. His Yoga passion is so much deeper than it-makes-my-tummy-tight-and-arms-toned, and students learn, through his classes, to practice Yoga in a similarly mindful way. He is a lifelong student (in more than just Yoga; he is also a black-belt and Buddhist meditator), which I found to be very inspiring to do the same. I just graduated Syracuse and, as a result, moved my life back over to the Bay Area. This is one of the things in Syracuse that I will miss the most. *quote is from company website