Join us after Labor Day for community practices that honor
the deep and diverse lineages of South Asian Yoga
Sundew is a tiny rural yoga studio where the practices honor yoga's South Asian roots as introduced through Carla Stangenberg of Jaya Yoga and the lineage of Sage Patanjali through Tirumalai Krishnamcharya and BKS Iyengar. Holly Zadra is a registered yoga teacher who operates the studio bumbling at times through her privilege as a cis, straight-passing descendent of Slavic-Bohemian-Irish immigrant settlers. Mom of four boys, writer, community activist, and partner in love, Holly facilitates classes while also always learning how yoga can help dismantle white supremacy and colonialism inside both ourselves and institutions. She is currently studying with South Asian, non-binary, trans, queer, and wheel-chair using yoga practitioners organized through the phenomenal Susanna Barkataki's Embody Yoga's Roots 300-hr YTT. Holly's yoga practice, her study of emergent strategy, and much of her formal education inform her current writing project that intersects labor, copper, and the inherited trauma of exploitation.
Sundew's community classes are held on Wabanaki land in the rural town of Pittsfield, ME.
Here's what guides us:
This ancient South Asian practice is deep, rich, complex, expansive, and lifelong.
We acknowledge, study, and practice yoga that arose from South Asian indigenous people seeking collective liberation. Our practice today derives from those black and brown folx living now, generous enough to teach and share their deeply rooted lineages.
Yoga asana can be poses, but it can also be the "seat of attention" and presence. We intentionally create space for breathwork, song, prayer, movement, silence, and meditation.
The practice is not always comfortable, especially when it includes confronting the oppressions in which we all swim. The practice can also create ease and space within oneself that facilitates navigation of the complicated now.
Yoga practiced in community seeks to unite - self with self, self with others, self with purpose, self with higher power. We examine hierarchies, socio-cultural binaries, othering, and colonialism's continual harm in order to nurture connection and liberation for all.
It is perfectly good to practice at home alone; we also invite you to practice in community.
This heart-centered practice occurs in an honest space that welcomes all bodies, genders, races, religions as well as those who eschew such definitions.
We are all worthy. We are all whole. We are all enough. We are all practitioners.
As the brilliant Naomi King shared recently, "I promise to disappoint you. I promise to be disappointed by you." When that inevitably happens, let us call one another in so that we can return to right relationship. Let us understand in body, mind, and spirit what right relationship is.
None of us is free until we are all free.
As we fill classes & grow this first year, we will add more options for both classes & teachers. Tell your friends!
Register for Classes
Good Value
One-time payment
This Introductory 3-Class Pass is for new practitioners who want to get a feel for the studio before plunging in with a membership or a session pass.
Purchase
Great Value
Per month for 12 Months
If you are a first-time Sundew Member, you can enjoy the benefits of full membership (see below) for one year + get a free Manduka yoga mat ($82 value).
Best Value
Half-year
The Community Supported Yoga Package includes a FREE yoga mat, unlimited classes for six months, discounts on extra services, & a monthly guest pass!
Yoga can be for every body — male, female, non-binary — all ethnicities, religions, races, backgrounds, and circumstances. The indigenous South Asian roots of yoga were liberatory practices initiated and eventually recorded by people who experienced personal liberation despite systems of oppression. If that appeals to you, try it out, but do so with discernment: some "yoga" can be appropriative and harmful recreating hierarchies of power and privilege. At Sundew, we teach through a lens of social justice. We lift up underrepresented voices. If you want to explore at home before trying a studio, there are many amazing South Asian teachers who do online yoga: try Rina Deshpande, Anjali Rao, Jesal Parikh, Melissa Shaw, Mx. Puja, or Susanna Barkataki.
Yes. While yoga classes at Sundew do teach flexibility, strength, balance, and body awareness, there are a host of other benefits to yogic practice.
If you can breathe, you can do yoga.
The grass is always greener where it’s watered. Pay attention and you will find benefit.
OCT
25
NOV
23-24
What happens when the world we knew previously stops?
Sundew Studio Owner and Yoga Teacher Holly Zadra briefly explores the benefits, practice, and experience of Yin Yoga.
As you explore yoga and your interest deepens, lineage often becomes a topic of conversation, especially when choosing a specific studio, class, or teacher.
