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yoga. “I felt the effects after about one week of training and knew then that I wanted to learn everything I could about it,” she said. “I feel like yoga and massage intertwine in a lot of ways.” After returning to the states, Sarah began teaching a yoga class at a church in her hometown of Smackover.
Yearning to extend her knowledge of yoga, Sarah said she began to check into yoga training schools around the world. She decided on traveling to Indonesia where she spent two months studying Hatha Vinyasa Flow yoga. The 500-hour training took it’s toll on Sarah. “It was a life changing experience,” she said. “The training was very intense both physically and emotionally. But what I learned there, I just knew I wanted to get back home and teach it immedi- ately.”
Sarah opened The Holistic Studio in August 2015 in El Dorado, where she began teaching traditional yoga while also offering massage ser- vices. Traditional yoga incorporates a heat-building aspect with various poses followed by a calming down period with meditation.
“Meditation is about breathing and concentrating on your breath,” she said. “A lot of people think it’s about just sitting still and trying not to think. It’s not, that’s impossible.” The yoga breathing technique Sarah teaches is called pranayama or “the practice of breathing.”
For women especially, the breath- ing aspect of yoga is very beneficial, according to Sarah. “Women have a lot of boxes that they keep in their head,” she said. Sarah said she en- courages this technique because it causes them to slow down and figure out where they are at any emotional standpoint throughout the day. “If you feel really anxious, take a mo- ment to just release your breath. When anxious, you tend to hold your
breath in your chest. When you’re angry, you hold it in your belly,” she said. “When you take a second to pay attention to these things and where your breath is at that moment; you’re already calming yourself down.”
She is currently
enrolled in the
Holistic Arts In-
stitute for master herbalism training, an on-line course, which is the prac- tice of using plants for medicinal pur- poses. “These are foods that heal,” said Sarah. “Our diet is basically our medicine.” She tries to incorporate diet tips and recipes into her yoga classes that promote digestion and general wellness.
“Health maintenance, weight loss, whatever brings you to yoga will keep you there because of not just the physical benefits but also the mental and digestive benefits it gives,” said Sarah.
Sarah is a Yoga Alliance certified instructor and offers a variety of programs and workshops through her local business, The Holistic Stu- dio. Unlimited yoga classes and a monthly massage are included in the basic mem-
bership price. She offers various types of massages, including Thai pregnancy, lomi lomi and Swedish mix.
She offers a traditional yoga class daily as
BELLA – February 2016 – 7