For Better Health THE NEWTOWN BEE, FRIDAY, MAY 9, 2025
A class at the Newtown Yoga Center taught by Kay Maynard. Aline Marie, owner of the Newtown Yoga Center, takes —photos courtesy Aline Marie the Peaceful or Dancing Warrior pose.
Yoga: Flexing The Mind And Body
By Sam Cross Yoga is a practice many in the Western World are familiar with. Hailing from Ancient India, yoga is a combination of mindfulness and exercise that can have huge benefits for the mind and body. In Newtown, a community of people who practice yoga have gathered at the Newtown Yoga Center, recently moved to 6 Glen Road from 78 South Main Street after the f looding on August 18. Both locations are open and operating. Aline Marie, the owner of Newtown Yoga Center, sat down with The Bee to dive deep into the mental and physical benefits of yoga. Marie has been teaching yoga for 21 years. At the Newtown Yoga Center, Marie uses “trauma informed” yoga, meaning she announces when she will be leaving her own mat for any reason. Marie noted that at the beginning of her class, she always asks how the people in the room are feeling, “Every class, I start out, we custom tailor them. So, I say, ‘What’s going on?’” She added that every pose in her studio is “anatomically based.” “Here, we modify everything,” Marie said. “You have to work with the bodies in the room. And then to educate them on, ‘Hey, that’s your quadratus lumborum,’” or the deepest back muscle in the body. Marie added that teaching people about their own bodies and how they move helps them advocate for themselves medically. Her students are able to better communicate their pain to their team of doctors because they are aware of where they hold pain. Karen Pierce, another yoga instructor in town at InnerSpaces by Karen LLC, teaches yoga the same way. Pierce has been practicing yoga for about 45 years and has been teaching for about 30. Pierce said, “You have to offer [modification] in classes because…you have all these different people, different body shapes, different bone structures. I mean, there’s poses that you’re limited [in] just because of your range of motion because of the way your bones sit in the joints.” Pierce focused on the breath in
f lexibility which declines as people age. Marie recalled a few students who are in their 70s and 80s who have adopted daily practices. She said those students have strengthened their big toes and have been able to catch themselves more when they feel like they are falling, preventing injury and maintaining independence. Pierce said that yoga increases the VO2 max, or the volume of oxygen in the lungs, “Most yogis have a very high…VO2 max…[yogis’] is equivalent to long-distance runners, if not better, because we use our whole lung capacity.”
A group of students take the Half Moon pose, a balancing pose. From left: Heidi Verdi, Connie Widmann, Chelsea Porter, Joe DiGuiseppi, Alexa Skalandunas. yoga, saying, “[A lot of students] have a goal. They want to retain something instead of just being in the moment and the practice. And that’s part of the mental part…be present with your breath. You can cheat your body, but you can’t cheat your breath. So, if you stay breath connected, and that’s truly what vinyasa means is ‘breath connected movement.’ So, by staying connected to your breath, you can’t cheat your breath. If you’re struggling in your breath, you’re struggling in your body.” Marie added to this conversation, saying, “When you’re in the yoga asana, when you’re in the seat of the pose, you are your strongest, most present, most clearest self. Strong doesn’t always have to mean physically, it could be mentally, or emotionally, or spiritually strong.” Marie said that the “physical benefits are vast.” Yoga does build muscle, helps retain balance, and builds f lexibility, but the benefits go deep into the brain. “Yoga asana yoga poses…increase the brain’s ability to map the body and to control the nervous system. So, with a yoga asana practice, a movement practice, we are rewiring the brain through the body,” Marie explained. “We’re crossing over the
midline. We’re trying to get the hemispheres of the brain, the corpus callosum, to talk a little faster to each other.” Marie then described the brain’s ability to do hard things, such as stressful yoga poses or answering passive aggressive emails. That area of the brain is called the anterior mid-cingulate cortex. “The more you do difficult things, by choice or not by choice, the stronger that part of your brain gets. When you don’t do difficult things, it shrinks. Our whole life, it grows and shrinks depending on what’s going on,” Marie explained. She added that yoga helps to strengthen the mid-cingulate cortex by challenging the body to do the pose, and by challenging the mind to focus on the pose and breath. “You’re training your brain, you’re training your nervous system to focus and pour energy into where you want to pour it into,” Marie said. Marie noted that being able to look at things upside down helps strengthen the vestibular system, which she calls the “inner GPS of where you are in space and time.” Pierce said that yoga also helps build bone density, increase muscle strength, and maintain balance and
Shared Connection Pierce took a moment to share with The Bee this idea of the “shared breath,” the “divine, healing breath.” She explained, “People aren’t born on an exhale, babies cry on the inhale. You die on an exhale. That’s a total surrender.” “Every breath is a divine, healing wind,” she said. “That’s a shared breath. Because when I exhale, you’re inhaling my breath, and when I inhale, I’m breathing in everybody else’s breath. It’s the one thing that connects us all.” Marie said, “[Yoga] is not a religion. It’s a system of practices that are adaptable and inclusive, and designed to make you better at living your own life. You can believe whatever you want, and yoga will make you better at that because you will have better stress management skills, more access to empathy and consideration of others, which is the highest form of love.” “The heart of yoga, true yoga, is love, and the return to love. We’re just practicing being human, which is really hard,” Marie added. Beyond the mats, beyond the poses, and beyond the mindfulness, yoga represents a vast, lively, and kind community that anyone can be a part of if they choose. A few of Marie’s students reached out to The Bee to offer their experiences with the Newtown Yoga Center. Morgan Wychowanski said, “The ( continued on page BHG - 4 )