Meet Susan, a yoga instructor and social worker who blends over 30 years of community-based service with a passion for compassionate healing. With a focus on trauma-informed practices, wisdom circles, and connection, Susan creates supportive spaces for reflection, growth, and wellbeing.

The Autumn Equinox is a reminder of balance—between light and dark, effort and ease, rest and action. Discover how yoga’s timeless practices help us return to center, cultivate harmony, and find stability in the midst of life’s inevitable shifts.

Discover the power of Sadhana, or daily spiritual practice, as a grounding way to return to yourself with intention. Explore how consistency in meditation, movement, breathwork, or simple mindful rituals can shift your state of being, reduce stress, and support lasting change.

Inspired by travels in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska, this piece explores abundance as both a natural cycle and a mindset, and how Yoga Garden is creating more room to grow with infrared panels.

A reflection on historic preservation in downtown Pittsboro: why old buildings matter, community stories, and the cherished home of our yoga studio

A reflection on how yoga shows up everywhere — from hiking mountain trails to trying out a new studio, to finding patience on a long flight. Awareness, presence, and gratitude turn everyday moments into yoga practice

Exploring Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and the practice of ahimsa, this reflective piece weaves yoga philosophy, activism, and the peace of nature into a personal journey toward calm and compassion in a turbulent world

One of the things I appreciate most about our studio family is that we make room for all of it. I see people show up with their whole selves, not just the polished parts. We don’t pretend hard things aren’t happening. There’s an unspoken agreement among us: Let’s be honest here. Let’s be whole. Let’s be real.

My journey to becoming an Elemental Rhythm Breathwork Facilitator has been part of a deeply transformative four-year path of inner healing, self-discovery, and expansion. Through this profound Breathwork and yoga, I’ve come into alignment with my soul’s true purpose and now feel deeply called

to share the power of breath with others.

Saturday night, we gathered for Songs of Devotion. The theme, uncannily, was water. We sang beautiful, uplifting songs from Brazil, Japan, the U.S.—in praise of water’s life-giving gifts. Water heal my body. Water heal my soul. In 75 minutes, we created a whole world together—hearts swelling and breaking at once. In the background, there was Texas. Sheila acknowledged the disaster as we began, noting that this theme had long been planned. It lived there quietly alongside the music. Even in celebration, there was grief.

Everything has its shadow. She creates. She destroys. We create. We destroy.

Experience the power of breathwork to calm the mind, shift energy, and expand awareness. From ancient pranayama to modern breath practices like holotropic breathwork and the Wim Hof method, conscious breathing offers a direct path to clarity, insight, and presence. Explore weekly classes and monthly workshops that help you breathe with purpose—and awaken deeper awareness.

We’re very proud to be a sponsor of the Hops and Roots Festival happening this weekend at The Plant - a celebration of local food & beverage, music, and community. And yes—you can sweat it out with your homegrown, handcrafted, extra-organic hot yoga, brought to you by many of the Yoga Garden teachers you know and love (full schedule below). Note that the 9am classes are accompanied by live music!

If you’ve spent time at Yoga Garden, you already know—our studio is full of heart. It’s warm and welcoming, and rooted in real community. In teacher training, that spirit only deepens. You’ll share long days, deep conversations, lots of laughter, and meaningful moments with people who may become lifelong friends. There’s something beautiful about learning and growing alongside others—it creates a bond that’s hard to describe but easy to feel. We have a lovely group forming.

If you’re curious to learn more, I’d love to invite you to our upcoming Yoga Teacher Training Info Session. It’s a chance to ask questions, meet a few of us, and see if this path might be calling to you too.

There’s something ancient about the snake. Its symbolism winds through so many traditions. And isn’t it fascinating that snakes shed their skin but remain fundamentally the same? They don’t transform like the butterflies on our sweet studio mural—no complete reinvention. Just a sloughing off. A return to self, newly revealed. A new version.

Like so much that matters, progressing in the direction of ahimsa starts with awareness. Awareness of the stories I tell myself about myself and others; awareness of how these stories fuel judgement and feelings of insecurity, resentment, guilt and the rest; and awareness that these stories, beliefs and feelings do not define me and that I have the capacity to outgrow them, to shed them like a snake sheds its old skin. 

Our relationship to self and Source is the foundational relationship, the one that shapes all the others. Self-compassion is necessary if we want to move through the world with any real kindness or love.

Having an abundance mindset is one of the great pathways to contentment. That sense of bountiful plenty leaves us open and energized. More importantly, it leads us toward generosity. If there’s enough, why not share?

Yoga is a whole system, a multidimensional path that mirrors the layered complexity of being human. The word yoga itself means union, and it invites us to explore and welcome all aspects of ourselves, to realize a state of wholeness and harmony within.

People come to yoga from all kinds of different “rooms.” These rooms open into one great house that is Yoga. Once you’ve stepped into one room, consider wandering into a few others. Each one offers a different kind of medicine. Together, they deepen our practice and our understanding.

I’ve been in recovery for over 11 years, and more recently, yoga brought a new kind of practice into my life—one I’m still learning. I’m not someone who finds meditation easy. I’m still figuring out how to use my breath, both on and off the mat. What struck me most during my teacher training was how many of the principles of yoga mirror the values of the 12 steps. It felt familiar but also challenging—I knew it was another path that could help me keep growing. That’s part of why I feel so connected to Yoga of 12-Step Recovery (Y12SR)—it shows me how to use the tools I’ve gained over the years in new ways so that I can show up, even when it feels impossible. 

I take refuge in love.

This was a mantra I repeated to myself in the past few weeks, a period of spiking anxiety.

A mantra adopted aspirationally. As mantras sometimes are.

Because sometimes I do not. Take refuge in love, that is. Rather, when I feel the weight of the world or the voices of my fears amplify, I turn away from what I know to be true. I curl up into a little ball inside myself and forget that I am loved. That I am love. That there is nothing in this life that matters except that love.