Hibernating until Spring '25: WPYC: Friday Happy Hour Yoga!

Join the WPYC every Friday evening at 5:30pm to release the week, open the heart, and make room for a peaceful, joyful weekend! We practice at Willard Park in Berkeley at the corner of Hillegass and Derby. Bring your own mat, towel, or blanket.

This will be an integrated Hatha Flow class with a slightly faster pace than our afternoon practices. Chrissy will bring us through each pose embracing the present moment, and matching movement with breath. This helps increase body and sensation awareness, breath awareness and control, and regulates the nervous system. All levels are welcome and will be accommodated, judgment free.

*****These classes are donation-based, making yoga more accessible to all. Come as you are, pay what you can. Suggested amount $10-$20.

"We are here to awaken from the illusion of our separateness"

Thich Nhat Hanh

Your teachers:

Mondays 12:30pm Jess

Tuesdays 12:30pm Carmen

Wednesdays 12:30pm Chrissy

Thursdays 12:30pm Carmen

Fridays 5:30pm Chrissy-online only until Spring '24

Sundays 10am Chrissy

Meet Chrissy:
Chrissy is a 500HR-RYT, Wholistic Yoga Therapist, and Thai Yoga Massage Therapist. She came to teaching with a 25+ year personal practice in vinyasa and kundalini, and training in modern dance, music, and theater. She also holds certification in ECE(12unit) and Social/Emotional Learning Facilitation. Her classes are integrated Hatha flow, influenced deeply by yoga philosophy and functional strength. She values the line between play and prayer, silly and sacred using it to access the present moment and our bodies innate wisdom.
Chrissy strives to honor the origins of yoga while making it accessible to every body. She acknowledges her position as white, able-bodied, and cisgendered, aiming to be inclusive and trauma informed. Her classes are donation based with no one turned away for lack of funds. Private clients are sliding scale. In lieu of a studio, Chrissy teaches on line and outside in parks on the sovereign land of the Lisjan Ohlone.
Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu
May all beings be happy, healthy, and free. May we contribute to that.
https://chrissyyoga.com/

Meet Carmen:
Carmen has long believed in the body's innate wisdom and capacity for resilience. In her work as a Yoga Teacher, Yoga Therapist, and Somatic Experiencing Practitioner she helps this wisdom to emerge and transform. She completed her 500 hour (RYT) Yoga Therapy training at Purusha Yoga in San Francisco, a three-year professional Somatic Experiencing® training at Somatic Experiencing International®, is a certified Veterans Yoga Project teacher, as well as a trained wellness coach with the Kresser Institute. Carmen is currently teaching group yoga classes and offering private integrative somatic therapy and somatic wellness coaching sessions. Her mission as a yoga teacher is to create a safe and supportive environment for her students to explore the eight limbs of Raja Yoga, while cultivating resiliency and a deeper connection to self. Carmen also co-facilitates wellness retreats, and works individually with clients offering integrated somatic therapy sessions.
https://carmencasado.com/

Meet Jess:
Jess is an artist and an athlete. At the beginning of her ceramics trajectory, working as a studio tech at a college clay studio, she realized she needed to be strong to load kilns and make large batches of clay. The physicality of her art became a driving reason to care for her body and its functional strength and mobility. Strength, agility, balance, flexibility and injury prevention (and recovery) were all things she found her personal yoga practice improved. In 2015 she became a certified 200 HR-RYT through Core Power and in 2021 she received a second 200 HR-RYT from Purusha Yoga. Jess guides a vinyasa flow based practice, with an emphasis on linking breath to movement and being in the present during practice. Jess teaches yoga in Willard Park and on the SF Bay on stand up paddle boards. She owns her own stand up paddleboard company, 510-Waterline, in Richmond, CA. https://www.510waterline.com/. And she currently makes pots at her home studio in Berkeley, CA. teaches adult ceramic classes, workshops and has exhibited her work internationally. What she says in her artist statement about her pots also applies to her yoga practice “Strength lies in the fluidity of opposites – of line and mass, contraction and relaxation, tension and softness, push and pull. Ultimately, I want my pots to be graceful, elegant, and straightforward. It’s all about strength and beauty.” https://www.jesspots.com/