A center for personal healing and collective well-being.
You are in the right place!
Do you know us as Yoga Sanctuary? We invite you to read about our recent journey to becoming Sanctuary in this blog series:
We were also recently featured on the WHMP Western Mass Business Show with Tara Brewster. You can listen to the podcast here.
Our (short) Story
Sanctuary holds space for all of us as individuals working together to reduce harm and heal towards a more just and liberatory future. We channel 100% of profits to our Scholarship Fund as an act of reparations and financial accessibility for all.
Our studio space on the third level of the historic Thornes Marketplace in downtown Northampton, MA, provides a peaceful sanctuary for healing therapies and bodywork, yoga and restorative classes, educational workshops, and celebratory community events.
Classes and private healing arts sessions at Sanctuary are the offerings of a collective of widely-experienced practitioners of different modalities who are dedicated to meeting the community’s vast and evolving need for connection and healing.
Overview of Services
Yoga, Movement, & Restorative Classes
We offer a range of yoga, movement, and restorative classes for all ages, abilities, and life stages. The yoga teachers at Sanctuary are grounded in their lineages of yoga practice, and honor the roots of the many yogic traditions that come from India, as passed to them through their teachers.
Healing Arts
Access a range of healing treatments and holistic services, including Alexander Technique, Rolfing, massage, yoga therapy, cranial sacral, and more, provided by Sanctuary’s collective of providers.
Community Engagement
The need for justice and equity within our community demands constant attention, and we are grateful for the countless organizations, committees, and activist groups working toward their causes. Sanctuary is a community partner to these organizations and groups, with the intent to raise awareness and encourage action. We are ready to lend our platform and resources to foster change.
Our Collective of Care
Sanctuary’s collective of instructors and practitioners works together to offer transformative and healing support for our community, and to support one another collaboratively.
Space Rentals
Sanctuary provides spaces and amenities for community events and other heart-centered gatherings. Our central and accessible location and thoughtfully-equipped rooms provide a supportive place for a range of activities and intentions.
Events & Series
This 6-week series is designed especially for LGBTQIA+ identified students who are looking to connect with their bodies and their breath in a supportive, community oriented environment. This space aims to create a container where queer and trans community members can cultivate joy, a deeper relationship with their bodies, and a sense of connectedness to their yoga practice.
Join us for an afternoon of deep relaxation and massage! Yoga instructor Chandra Cantor will guide the class through a sequence of restorative yoga postures—long holds in passive, gentle poses supported by yoga props—while licensed bodyworker Robin Shaw offers therapeutic massage. This luxurious 2-hour class is a wonderful opportunity to slow down, practice self-care, and receive healing touch.
This event is the culmination of our March 2024 Community Spotlight on CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture), and will bring farmers together in a supportive environment to build upon and deepen relationships among peers.
For seasoned and aspiring writers and creative people of all sorts. Deepen your creative practice, meet award-winning writers, and learn about the publishing process with a variety of workshops, Q&A's, and more.
What makes a compelling opening in fiction, memoir, and/or poetry? What draws you in and makes you turn pages? Join us for an author reading and craft discussion exploring this topic, featuring Anders Carlson-Wee, Mira Bartók, Carolyn Zaikowski, Peter Medeiros, and PVWW Founder / Director Joy Baglio
This is an inclusive and comprehensive childbirth education course that will prepare birthers, partners and companions feel confident going into your birth experience, no matter where you plan to give birth. We will cover many things ranging from basic concepts that you may of heard of before to concepts that may be new to you!
On a global scale, we are experiencing grief of all kinds, and many of us are being called to slow down and look within to access our resiliency and inner wisdom. This series offers an intimate container for emotions and thoughts to be felt, expressed, shared, and moved through. It is an invitation to awaken to all the layers of yourself and life more deeply. Honor your journey with grief by holding it within the sacred container of yoga.
This series is designed for those who have recently given birth and are looking to reconnect with their bodies and their breath in shared space with other new parents and babies. We'll practice gentle and rejuvenating poses, work on regaining core and pelvic integration, and learn techniques for breathing and moving with our little ones. This is a welcoming space for queer and trans postpartum students; everyone is welcome.
Join us in this candid “behind the book” conversation of Sidoti’s A Smoke and a Song, moderated by local author and writing teacher Celia Jeffries. We’ll explore the writing process, risks and rewards of sharing our stories, and the healing potential of embodied writing. Bring your memoir writing and publishing questions!
Is healing found in “letting go” as the spiritual teachings insist, or is it found by digging our heals deeper into the earth and holding on to our humanness?
Join Sherry Sidoti, yoga teacher and author of the memoir A Smoke and a Song, to explore movement, meditation, and memoir writing as muse for meaning making and healing.
Kirtan is one of the many precious spiritual traditions that India has developed and offered to the world. It's a space for coming together to celebrate the magnificent creative power that gives birth to the material universe.
Receive a discount on a future purchase of a General Workshop Pass when you attend two (2) of the following offerings:
10am Mindful Flow with Ellen Morbyrne
12pm EFT for Climate Change Stress with Kate Hennessey
3pm Restorative Yoga & Massage Workshop with Chandra Cantor & Lani Nahele
The effects of climate change can be seen everywhere in the natural world. Many people agree that climate change is impacting the environment, but what’s often overlooked is the emotional impact it has on us. Emotional Freedom Technique, or EFT, is a powerful and accessible modality that grants us permission to say our feelings aloud while affirming how we’d like to feel in response to this stress.
Join us for an afternoon of deep relaxation and massage! This luxurious two-hour class is a wonderful opportunity to slow down, practice self-care, and receive healing touch.
This writing and yoga workshop will include an asana practice designed to spark our creativity, followed by generative writing. We'll cultivate a sense of wonder, intuition, and magic with various tools including meditation, bibliomancy, and tarot.
Join vocalist/composer, voice and movement teacher, and author Pyeng Threadgill as she reads excerpts from her recent memoir, Lost & Found: Finding The Power In Your Voice, and shares a special evening of music.
This workshop is for anyone wanting to find their voice, deepen their connection to, or reawaken their voice. Through guided meditation, journaling prompts, intuitive movement, and mindful movement/Alexander Technique, Pyeng will lead you on a journey to your creative voice. Bring a notebook or journal, wear clothing comfortable to move in, and expect to explore sounds of your voice.
This 6-week series is designed especially for LGBTQIA+ identified students who are looking to connect with their bodies and their breath in a supportive, community oriented environment. This space aims to create a container where queer and trans community members can cultivate joy, a deeper relationship with their bodies, and a sense of connectedness to their yoga practice.
Join us for an afternoon of deep relaxation and massage! This luxurious two-hour class is a wonderful opportunity to slow down, practice self-care, and receive healing touch.
Step out of the every day and into a zone of deep relaxation.
We will begin with gentle movement to transition participants into a specific type of guided meditation called yoga nidra. Often translated as "yogic sleep", yoga nidra is a state of relaxation where the body "sleeps", the mind remains conscious, and deep restoration and rejuvenation can take place.
This workshop is designed specifically for the LGBTQ+ community to provide a supportive space to slow down, receive healing touch, and practice self-care in service of our own well-being and the well-being of our relationships and communities. This workshop is appropriate for many levels of experience and ability, including beginners and those who struggle to access stillness and relaxation. All bodies, sizes, and abilities are welcome and celebrated.
I love working with people to help them create shifts to help them be more centered, balanced and whole in the world. Being an energy healer is fulfilling an urge that I can’t really ignore. I feel like I have gifts and knowledge that can really help people so it almost feels like an obligation to share them. And adding in the power of essential oils and their magic just intensifies the possibilities for healing.
Meet our March 2024 Community Spotlight Organization. CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture) strengthens farms and engages the community to build the local food economy. CISA has been working for over 30 years to build a stronger, more resilient, and more just local food system. They envision a local food system where farms are viable, working conditions are fair and just for owners and workers, the environment is respected, and locally grown food is available for all.
“Gentle Yoga is about being gentle with our bodies, and gentle with ourselves- essentially, having self compassion. Yin Yoga is a wonderful way to be gentle with our bodies, and to invite deep listening to the body.”
“I love that [this class is] slow and quiet, with lots and lots of stillness. And I love that I get to hold the space for folks to slow down, let go, relax, and come back to the quiet, still space within themselves.”
Our Community Yoga classes are intended to meet the needs of those in our community who may not otherwise be able to afford yoga, or for whom yoga has not felt accessible for racial and/or cultural reasons. However, everyone is welcome!
“I believe that empathy is one of the most important skills contributing to the healthy evolution of humanity. I think that, if we taught empathy in schools to the degree we teach history, science or math, we would be creating a world that had the skills to handle all the challenges that humanity is facing on a local and global scale.”
Students are invited to a gentle practice of listening to their body with curiosity, playfulness and to go at their own pace. Do what is right for them. It’s about choice. Most importantly at all times take care of yourself mentally and physically with what supports you best.
An alignment-based Hatha practice with heart-centered themes. Just as we are asked to engage more deeply with our body’s wisdom on the mat, Form & Flow also calls us to engage more deeply with our lives and our collective community.
This 6-week series is designed especially for LGBTQIA+ identified students who are looking to connect with their bodies and their breath in a supportive, community oriented environment. This space aims to create a container where queer and trans community members can cultivate joy, a deeper relationship with their bodies, and a sense of connectedness to their yoga practice.
The need for justice and equity within our community demands constant attention, and we are grateful for the countless organizations, committees, and activist groups working toward their causes. Sanctuary is a community partner to these organizations and groups, with the intent to raise awareness and encourage action. We hope to use our platform and resources to foster change!
“My hope is to provide a space and time to do the practice of opening up to and really feeling and accepting what is here now. This is not easy, but what's the alternative? As one of my favorite teachers, Byron Katie, says, ‘When you fight reality, you lose, but only 100% of the time.’”
Birth work is activism. Encouraging and empowering families to discern what their beliefs are about birth—to shut out all the societal noise—to dig deep and let themselves know what agency they will have in something that is patterned yet sometimes unpredictable.
“My favorite thing about teaching this class is connecting with people! At the beginning of class, I will always ask if there are special requests for an area of the body to work on, or limitations to keep in mind. As a trained yoga therapist, I love connecting with people around taking care of their bodies!”
One of the most meaningful ways life coaching changed my life was in allowing me to transform my relationships with my daughters from fraught difficult relationships, into connected, joyful, loving relationships. Once I saw the power of life coaching, I wanted to share it with everyone!
“I hope that students will leave class with feelings of spaciousness and stability in their minds and bodies, a renewed sense of embodiment.”
“I experienced an immediate benefit in my first tapping session. I felt calmer and more grounded in my body. The anxious thoughts that were on repeat in my mind no longer consumed me. During the certification process, my mind, body, and heart opened up to deeper levels of healing that I never experienced before (especially in talk therapy.)”
When Russell and Elaine purchased Park Hill Orchard, they had a tiny farm stand. About 17 years ago, one of the first visitors was Charity, a beloved friend to many of us, and the owner of Indigo Massage and Healing Center in Easthampton (later in Florence).
We’re thrilled to announce that Sanctuary has been selected for a state-funded grant that will match crowdfunding efforts 2-to-1. Having experienced our fair share of hardships during the pandemic, this grant is an opportunity for us to breathe new life into our beloved studio and transform Sanctuary’s common areas to support the next generation of students and teachers.
Owners Lindsay and Jonathan sat down with Tara Brewster of the Western Mass Business Show to share their personal histories, the story of how they came to own Sanctuary, and their renewed vision for the Sanctuary community.
“My yoga practice is my spiritual practice, embodiment ritual, and a touch tree that allows me to come back to myself, and notice how I’m treating my body, mind, and spirit, and from there, how I’m treating those around me.”
“In the moment after a session, I hope my clients feel more in balance and at ease in themselves, with access to more possibilities for movement. Over time, my hope is that clients will be able to deepen their trust in themselves and how and why they move through the world.”
“Through Sanctuary, we’re here to do as much good as we possibly can, with the time and resources we have. Creating community–and advocating for the wellbeing of our community–is among the most important things we can do right now, and always.”
“As a place of personal healing and collective well-being, where people can come and process critical parts of their life, Sanctuary inherently holds space for a lot of big feelings and difficult realities. No matter the case, life is full of things we need to hold and feel, and Sanctuary is intended to support individuals through each new journey.”
“Sanctuary is an open, affirming, and inclusive space for our students, so why not be the same for professionals? Whether someone is just getting started, or they’ve been at it for several decades, we aim to offer a safe and supportive place in our studio for each of them.”
“Lindsay and I had dreams of nurturing a community space that went beyond the philosophies and practice of yoga. Caring for oneself and being a good human takes a lot of work, and yoga is just one of many tools we know have helped ourselves… We are ready to take the next steps towards crafting our original dreams.”
“I like to begin class sharing a mantra. That’s the way sacred texts were remembered before they were written down, so it is a connection to the roots of yoga. I approach the asana practice like music. Each class is a song that has peaks and valleys, moments of silence and vinyasa sequences building into crescendos.”
2022 has passed by in a blur of frantic motion. I reach out my hand and try to stop the wheel, but instead I find myself running to catch up with it.
Recent Blog Posts
Meet The Collective
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Andrea Kwapien
Yoga Instructor
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Beth Donnelly
Yoga Instructor, Artistic Director
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Beth Tascione
Yoga Instructor
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Chandra Cantor
Yoga Instructor
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Christina Kane
Reiki Energy Healing, Private Yoga
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Corinne Andrews
Yoga Instructor, Yoga Teacher Trainer, Life Coach
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Ellen Morbyrne
Yoga Instructor
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Em Ike
Pelvic Floor Therapist
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Erin Haenlin
Yoga Instructor
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Ishmael Dengate
Bodyworker, Movement Therapist
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Janry Goodman
Massage Therapist
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Jen Walts
HypnoBirthing Educator, Doula
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Jen Wenz
Certified Rolfing©, Ritual, Somatic Coaching
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Jessica Montagna
Yoga Instructor
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Julie Rozenfeld
Massage Therapist
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Kate Martel
Alexander Technique
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Katherine Harris
Energy Healer, Clinical Aromatherapy Practitioner
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Katie Fortier Acerbi
Yoga Instructor
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Lexi Major
Yoga Instructor, Yoga Therapy
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Lisa Leizman
Yoga Instructor
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Lorrie Murenzi
Yoga Instructor, Kids Yoga
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Mary Gabis
Massage Therapist
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Matthew Andres
Kirtan, Yoga Philosophy
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Michael Sheely
Empathy Trainer, Life/Business Coach
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Rachel Martins
Life Coach, Educator
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Safara Fisher
Yoga Instructor, Chair Yoga
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Sara Rose Page
Yoga Instructor
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Sebastian Merrill
Yoga Instructor, Artistic Director
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Tracy Einstein
Alexander Technique
A sanctuary for the body.
A sanctuary for the mind.
A sanctuary for spirit.
A sanctuary for a beloved community.
A sanctuary for joy.
A sacred sanctuary for our multitudes.
A sanctuary for the body. A sanctuary for the mind. A sanctuary for spirit. A sanctuary for a beloved community. A sanctuary for joy. A sacred sanctuary for our multitudes.
The most important part of my self-care practice is often the most difficult.