The Menla Center for Yoga and the Healing Arts a new center that promotes health and healing opens in Eldorado
Necessity can be the mother of invention, and it can also lead to successful collaboration. The Menla Center, the first comprehensive yoga and healing arts studio in the Santa Fe community of Eldorado, was born out of a need among local healing arts practitioners and their students for a dedicated space they could call their own. Prior to the opening of Menla, Jacci Gruninger, one of the center’s instructors, taught yoga classes in a ballet studio in Eldorado’s La Tienda complex. Four additional yoga instructors taught their own classes in the same location. “While each of us enjoyed teaching, none of us wanted to manage a studio on our own,” Gruninger says. After talking with their students, the instructors realized that there was a demand for a dedicated yoga center in Eldorado. Students David McDonald and Sandy Szabat joined forces with the instructors and created the community’s first holistic healing arts center. After a year of planning, the Menla Center opened in September. Gruninger joined instructors Jodie Pagett, Lorelei Chappell, Viktoria Shushan, Wendy 16
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Singer, Ruth Allen, and Neela Richardson to form the nucleus of the center. McDonald and Szabat manage the business side of the operation, drawing on McDonald’s background as a school administrator in Sedona, Arizona, and Szabat’s degree in public communications and professional experience with media relations and conference planning. According to the center’s mission statement, menla “is a Tibetan word meaning health or contemplative healing.” In accordance with its mission of “promoting physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health and well-being through a variety of healing modalities designed to lead to life-affirming changes,” the center offers classes and workshops in yoga, Pilates, Tai Chi, qigong, meditation, nutritional counseling, body work, and psychotherapy. “Our seven teachers don’t just run in to teach a class,” says McDonald. “They’re part of a larger family. Not all studios speak to the idea of community. My vision is to grow our family to offer the healing arts to veterans, seniors, and other underserved populations.” While the teachers’ multidimensional backgrounds inform the depth of students’ experiences at the center, it’s the collaborative, welcoming atmosphere running through every thread of the center that brings students back. The Menla Center for Yoga and the Healing Arts, 7 Avenida Vista Grande, Ste B-10, 505-629-7405, menlacenter.org.
Daniel Quat
by Anna I . So c ho c k y