Several members of the Dhira Yoga Center strike a pose during a workout session. (DHIRA YOGA CENTER PHOTO)
SOUTHWICK – How do you combat despair and loneliness? With peace, love and tranquility.
Dhira Yoga Center, the home to dozens of weekly yoga classes, has taken to streaming classes online during these solitary times. Anyone with a laptop or personal computer is welcome to join.
“Everybody is looking for an alternate outlet at home,” Dhira Yoga Center director Michael von Stange said. “Everybody needs to have a little bit of peace and relief in their lives.”
For von Stange, it all began as a one-time experience in the early 1990s, attending a yoga class for the first time. Then he went again.
“I started feeling fantastic,” von Stange said.
Soon after, von Stange started practicing yoga every day. “It changed who I was and what I felt.”
Von Stange began training to become a yoga instructor. He was soon offered jobs and started teaching at studios all over Manhattan, New York. Tired of taking the subway every day, Von Stange opened up his own place of instruction, Inwood Peace Yoga Center.
Then, seven years ago, Von Stange opened up his own studio, Dhira Yoga Center, on College Highway. Over the years he has put together an impressive team of instructors.
Now, hundreds of willing participants, or rather dedicated followers and practitioners, attend classes weekly, some daily. There are classes for beginners and others for the more advanced.
“People come here and tend to stay,” von Stange said. “We have become a loose-knit family of yogis who practice to make a more peaceful, healthy community.”
Von Stange said in addition to helping individuals make their bodies stronger and more flexible, routine yoga practice can help people gain “more control over their body and minds.”
“Yoga helps to get rid of negative thoughts and extricate positive thoughts,” he said.
Now that local businesses have been temporarily closed due to the outbreak of the coronavirus, Dhira Yoga Center has been forced to find alternative ways to stay on their unwavering path. Newcomers are welcome too.
“There’s yoga for everybody,” Von Stange said, noting the various types of yoga his studio offers like classical, Bhakti, and Kharma, among several others. Dhira Yoga Center is currently live-streaming online yoga classes – “Intro to Yoga” classes designed for beginners and “Flow” classes for more experienced practitioners.
Classes are streamed on Zoom several times a week for $5 per class.
Von Stange said the benefits of practicing yoga are limitless and include calming effects, ultimately lowering an individual’s blood pressure, relieving anxiety, helping your heart, lifting spirits, and opening one’s eyes to a better feeling of being in the world.
When normalcy finally returns in the coming days, weeks and months, von Stange reminds everyone that there is free outdoor yoga every summer.
To register for online classes, visit the Dhira Yoga Center website, email [email protected], or call 413-998-3463. Registered participants will be emailed a link for the class. Click the link, point your laptop toward your yoga mat, and begin.
Participants are urged to register at least one hour before the class starts in order to get the link in time, set up their yoga mat and adjust their laptop camera angle.
