Duluth Studios Offer Yoga

by Melissa Maki for Fitness and Healing

Adecade ago, yoga was still considered a fringe activity in the U.S. But today our mainstream culture largely accepts the practice. A National Health Interview Survey found that nearly 10 percent of adults in the U.S. have practiced yoga.

The Twin Ports hosts a handful of yoga studios, each one unique. Here we feature the newest and oldest.

New Yoga Hot Spot

Kristin Hill and Sheila Wixo are the dynamic duo behind Duluth Yoga, a new yoga studio that opened in December in Woodland’s Mount Royal Shopping Center. The pair recognized a need in the Twin Ports for a different sort of yoga experience. Creating a studio to meet that need has been their shared mission.

Sheila is no stranger to yoga. Her mother, Patricia Nolin, opened the Yoga North studio in Lakeside 20 years ago. Sheila is a restaurant industry veteran who had plans to open her own restaurant. But she was so impressed with a CorePower Yoga class she took in Minneapolis a couple of years ago that she changed her mind. “I realized I didn’t want to open a restaurant, I wanted to open a yoga studio,” she says.

She found an enthusiastic partner in Kristin Hill, a physical therapist and yoga teacher with CorePower training. CorePower is a fitness-based yoga where participants perform a set sequence of movements coordinated with breath.

Kristin explains, “It’s an athletic workout but there’s also the other component of stress management and body awareness you get when focusing on breath. When you combine the two, it’s kind of something you can’t describe. You have to experience it — and once you do, you love it.”

With Duluth Yoga, Kristin and Sheila also offer “hot yoga” in the Vinyasa style. Hot yoga isn’t just trendy, practicing yoga in a heated room has health benefits: it increases circulation and muscle pliability, which can reduce risk of injury. Classes have varying levels of heat (from 75-95 degrees) and humidity, and different levels of workout intensity depending on student experience.

“As a practicing physical therapist, it’s very important to me to keep classes as accessible as possible to people of all ages and abilities because yoga is tremendously beneficial to everyone,” says Kristin.

Duluth Yoga offers a range of classes and workshops, from beginner to more intensive sculpt classes with hand weights. They have a freestanding studio designed especially for yoga, with special - ized heat and humidity control and foam flooring to offer additional comfort and support.

The Curative Power of Yoga

Yoga North is the longest running yoga studio in the area; they celebrated their 20-year anniversary in the summer of 2015.

The studio, housed in St. Michael’s Lakeside School building, offers a distinct approach to yoga. “What really makes us unique is that we are a therapeutic-based studio,” explains co-owner Molly McManus. “We are really looking to make yoga accessible to everybody. It should be for everybody, not just people who can bend into a pretzel shape.”

Yoga North specializes in a blend of SomaYoga and therapeutic yoga. An underlying premise of SomaYoga is that the repetitive stress of everyday life has a physical manifestation in our bodies that can lead to injury and chronic pain.

Think about how anxiety can make you constrict and your shoulders, for instance. Or how depression makes you slouch. The instructors help participants focus inward to recognize negative habits so they can learn to retrain their bodies and minds towards healthier responses.

“A lot of times we see yoga portrayed in the media as a work-out. We really consider yoga more of a work-in,” says Molly. “Each one of us has an individual unique constitution of who we are and what we need. Being able to hear ourselves and what we need better is really the goal. That’s what yoga should do is help you to listen to yourself more.”

Yoga North offers a range of classes each week, from Hatha yoga (popular form of yoga that combines postures, breathing and meditation) to SomaYoga for chronic pain. Private, therapeutic sessions are available to work on issues like pain resolution or to address specific problems such as arthritis or carpal tunnel syndrome. Specialized workshops are also available. Molly teaches a workshop geared towards releasing anxiety and dealing with depression.

The studio has a retreat center in Ely, managed by co-owner Ann Maxwell, which offers additional programming and a hermitage on the edge of the scenic Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

They’re also known for their teacher training program. Students travel from throughout the Midwest to attend Yoga North International SomaYoga Institute trainings. D

For more information on Duluth Yoga, visit http://www.duluthyogastudio.com

For more information on Yoga North, visit http://www.yoganorthduluth.com