Drishti – Santa Barbara Yoga Store: Yoga Clothing, Workout Clothes, & Yoga Supplies

Hello, Hello!  It’s time for another edition of our ever-popular Santa Barbara Yoga Buzz column – yay!  We are overflowing with buzz from the SB yoga world for you today.  Enjoy!

1) As we’re sure that most of you must know by now, the highly influential yoga teacher and Ashtanga founder Sri K. Pattabhi Jois died in Mysore, India on Monday morning, May 18.  This is incredibly significant news for both our local Santa Barbara Ashtanga scene (headed up by Steve Dwelley and Michele Nichols) and for our local yoga community in general.  Every yoga class which incorporates any form of flow-type sequencing (and there are many of them in SB) has been directly influenced by Pattabhi Jois and his yoga teaching legacy.

We’re told that in honor of Pattabhi Jois’ death, Denise Zaverdas taught Ashtanga instead of her usual flow-style class at Santa Barbara Yoga Center on Monday morning.  And at her 5:00pm class on Monday evening, Deb Dobbin dedicated her flow-style class to “our beloved Guruji”. She also began class by leading her students through the official Ashtanga opening chant which is traditionally recited at the beginning of every Ashtanga class.  And as we’ve mentioned in other posts on our blog, Steve Dwelley and Michele Nichols have set up an altar in honor of Guruji in room 2 of Santa Barbara Yoga Center.

2) Lately, a couple of our local yoga teachers have received some noteworthy attention from the press.  As we mentioned in a previous blog post, the Santa Barbara Independent ran a lengthy article on Therapeutic Yoga Teacher Cheri Clampett.  Cheri has been teaching in Santa Barbara for like EVER and she has countless loving fans, so it only makes sense that an Indy staffer out there finally decided to write about her.  The other deserving recipient of recent media attention is Barbara Rose Sherman, a teacher at Santa Barbara Yoga Center who just published a book entitled Yoga: For the Joy of It!  Barbara and her book were featured in an Independent article on April 30.

3) New yoga teacher alert!  Santa Barbara Yoga Center has just welcomed a new instructor to their roster named Kelly Heath.  Kelly is from Vail, Colorado, where she directed (and taught classes at) Mountain Lotus Yoga.  Her main yoga influences are Baron Baptiste, Shiva Rea, Dharma Mittra, and John Friend.  Rumor has it that her class is quite strong and vigorous.  We’re excited to try it out!  The SBYC schedule currently lists Kelly as teaching on Fridays from 12:15-1:20pm, but we also heard that she was going to be picking up this same time slot on Mondays.  We’re not sure if this has happened yet, but our powers of prediction say that it will!

4) New classes with Karen Gabai at Santa Barbara Yoga Center:  Karen, who managed Yoga Soup for quite some time before leaving several months ago, is now teaching three classes at SBYC.  Titled “Yoga Schmoga”, her classes take place on Tuesday evenings, Saturday mornings, and Sunday evenings.  Check the SBYC schedule for details.

5) Cybil Gilbertson, who has been teaching at Santa Barbara Yoga Center for several months, just added two new classes at Yoga Soup: Yogalates on Tuesday and Thursday mornings from 10:00-11:15am.  We’ve heard that Cybil is a great teacher, and we hope that these classes do well for her!

6) Jason Handler, Yoga Soup teacher and acupuncturist, is holding a weekly acupuncture clinic at the Soup on Tuesdays from 1:30-3:30pm.  Call Yoga Soup at 805/965-8811 for more details!

7) You know how Yoga Soup is hosting its first-ever teacher training program this summer with Yoga Works’ Jeanne Heileman?  Well, Jeanne of this teacher training fame is holding a “Twist & Cleanse” workshop at the Soup on Saturday, May 30th from 1:00-4:00pm.  We’re intrigued to see what Jeanne’s teaching style is like and we might just try her workshop out ourselves!  Jeanne is also holding a free teacher training info session at the Soup on Sunday, May 31 from 1:00-3:00pm.  If you’re even slightly interested in pursuing a yoga teacher certification, you need to be at this informative session.  Got it?

Our last item to report is one of the most exciting!  As we’ve mentioned several times before on our blog, Real Bodywork, the massage DVD company which recently launched a high-quality series of yoga DVDs, just released a brand new Yoga Therapy for Back Pain DVD starring SB-based yoga instructor Emily Kligerman.  In order to celebrate the release of Emily’s DVD, as well as two of their other recent releases (Restorative Yoga with Deborah Donohue and Yoga: Flow with Zyrka Landwijt), Real Bodywork held a DVD release party on May 1.  Here are a few photos we took at this fun and engaging gathering:

-Sean Riehl, co-owner of Real Bodywork, presents a copy of Emily’s DVD to the crowd-

-Clips from Emily’s DVD are screened to the crowd-

-Real Bodywork website designers Doug Anderson & Gina Fiedel of the web design company Fat Eyes, with Emily Kligerman in the background-

-An aesthetically pleasing photo of Drishti taken the other day which has nothing to do with Real Bodywork’s DVD party, but we just liked it and wanted to show it to you. -