To provide an uplifting, healing space where people from all over the world can unfold themselves through the study and practice of yoga in a nurturing community. We seek to provide an intimate, safe place for students to explore self-transformation through yoga, meditation and pranayama. We are not interested in yoga or the yoga studio as a commodity, brand, or competition. That’s why our studio will ALWAYS be grass-roots, community-based, non-commercial, liberal and organic. We love to share the beauty and magic of yoga. Come join us!
As Donna Farhi noted, the world doesn’t really need more people who can bend their bodies into amazing positions. What it needs are kinder, more compassionate, generous people with open minds and hearts. Yoga helps us to become those kinds of people, encouraging forth the essence of who we really are. Our motto is what Gandhi said, “BE the change you wish to see in the world.†We hope to offer a place where people can discover and share their gifts through the ancient practice of yoga.
Sun and Moon classes are Hatha Yoga, inspired by Ashtanga, Iyengar, Kripalu, Kundalini, Sivananda, Tibetan Buddhism, Taoist Yoga and many other yoga styles, and grounded in a deep awareness of yoga history, philosophy, breath, alignment, chakras, bandhas, and the subtle energy body. Yoga is a tool for wellness, and we incorporate many healing and meditation traditions into the practice to this end. Our classes seek to help you explore your full potential on this planet–physical, mental, spiritual and emotional. That’s why we embrace more than asana. In any given class we will explore meditation, breathing, kirtan, poetry, and yoga texts both classical and contemporary…When you open your body, you free your heart. That is why we invite you to “Come Move and Be Moved.†Discover your potential to change yourself, and change the world.
Yoga comes from the Sanskrit word yuj, which means “yoke†or “union.†Yoga unifies the body and mind through the breath, opening channels of energy that send the life force– prana or ki–through the body. Yoga offers us a way of Being rather than Doing. It’s a powerful gateway into the soul, which is why it’s called “the science of conscious awareness.†Yoga allows us to slow down, quiet the mind, listen to and trust our own natural abilities. It affords us a tremendous opportunity to explore our potential for physical and spiritual growth.
The physical benefits of yoga are manifold–reduce stress, release toxins, revitalize the systems of the body, tone, strengthen, and increase flexibility. The non-physical invitation is to let go of the constructs we create on the ego level and open to deeper self-discovery, healing and transformation–finding our innate vitality, balance, calm, joy and unity through the moving meditation of yoga. The practice continues when we take these gifts off the mat into daily life in community (kula) with others.
Leza Lowitz was born in San Francisco and grew up in Berkeley, California and later, New York City. After graduating from U.C. Berkeley and getting an M.A. in Creative Writing/Japanese Literature, Lowitz lived in Tokyo in the early 1990s, drawn by an early interest in Buddhism, which she first studied as a teenager at Berkeley High School. In Tokyo, she worked as a freelance journalist and university lecturer. She taught writing at Tokyo University and wrote for The Japan Times, The Asahi Evening News, NHK and others. When she returned to her native California, she was still reeling from the pace of Tokyo and found she was an expat in her very own skin. In 1989, she took her first yoga class. In 1994, she began to study seriously with Veera Wibaux, an Iyengar-trained French mime, and in 1996, she began to study intensively with Jill Minye, a powerful Kripalu teacher in Sebastopol, California.