"...Door County's first Yoga Studio located north of Jacksonport."

Tag: Kathy Navis

Junction Center Celebrates Valentine’s Day Each Year with a Partner Yoga Workshop

Join us on Valentine’s Day for a Partner Yoga Workshop with Kathy Navis.

Partner Yoga is designed to bring community and play into our yoga practice. It’s a way to develop trust , connection and playfulness through assisted yoga postures.  It’s a very enjoyable way to work together in a number of different ways to extend your practice. You will also share the bond of communicating and cooperating with a fellow yoga practitioner, regardless of your  relationship or skill level.

Partner Yoga, whether with a friend, a partner or someone you’ve never met, has some incredible benefits:

  • Deepen your connection to others,
  • Build trust and compassion,
  • Deepen your practice in discovering how to safely stretch further than usual,
  • Acquire a sense of balance that cannot be experienced working solo,
  • Learn to move with greater awareness and recognition of how our movements affect others,
  • Enhance your communication skills using verbal as well as non-verbal communication,
  • And it’s so much fun!

The workshop will conclude with class participants sharing some delicious snacks and beverages from Greens N Grains Natural Food Store.

No experience necessary, partnering with a friend is optional but not mandatory. We will find a partner if you come solo! The cost is $20 per person or $35 if you come with a friend.

Please, reserve your place by calling 920.823.2763 or e-mailing kathy@JunctionCenterYoga.com.

 

Is yoga a sport or a spiritual practice?

While Debate.org says the vote is split 50/50 (now 43/57 after my post) on this discussion, most serious practitioners will agree that yoga is instead, a way of life.

It can best be described as a fitness lifestyle, one that builds the connection between your body, mind and spirit. If yoga is a sport, it is one of the few that you actually get better at, the longer you practice it and the older you get.

“There is only one way to find out how plastic your body really is, and that’s by using it,” says Kathy Navis. “Regain flexibility and range of motion rather than watch it slip away over the years.”

guat yoga vira 1

She teaches and encourages anyone, at any age to begin exploring yoga as a means to better health and wellness with a variety of yoga classes available the year ’round at Door County’s oldest yoga center: Junction Center Yoga Studio in Jacksonport.

Yoga is an ancient practice, one that originated in India over 5,000 years ago. Whether it’s the immediate reduction in levels of stress or the measurable improvements in circulation and blood pressure, practicing yoga is one of the most enjoyable forms of “preventive medicine” that you can take. After a few sessions you will begin to notice improvements in your flexibility and balance. Over time, Yoga is also a strength builder.

Kathy invites regular students to bring along a friend anytime for a free class… help expand their knowledge and practice of yoga philosophy, the postures (asanas) and breath work (pranayama).

The benefits of Yoga do not occur overnight, but the results are indeed long lasting. As you become fit and flexible most practitioners will begin to notice an increase in overall vitality and a greater sense of wellness. The different Asanas each focus on gently improving the functional capacity of your skeletal joints, muscles and connective tissue. By linking the actions to the breath, one also begins to “quiet the mind” – to hush that endless stream of thoughts that some mistake for consciousness.

Yoga students will also begin to take greater notice of their posture as they gain awareness of the alignment and range of motion inherent in their own musculoskeletal system. According to a notable physiologist, we become less flexible as we get older mainly because of certain changes that take place in the connective tissues as our bodies gradually begin to dehydrate. It is believed that stretching stimulates the production or retention of lubricants between the connective tissue fibers, thus preventing the formation of adhesions. Perhaps the greatest realization you will experience in taking up the practice of yoga is that you are actually capable of changing and improving your range of motion.

Classroom attire in Yoga sessions is freeform, but dressing in layers is advisable so you can peel them off depending on the level of exercise and temperature of the room. Students will often wear leotards, shorts, t-shirts and tank tops under a layer of sweats that can be removed.

There is only one way to find out if yoga is right for you. Sign up for a free beginner’s class at Junction Center. All of the equipment is provided in a warm and comfortable environment. Beginner’s classes are for all ages, male and female and for any level of fitness or ability. Call 920.823.2763 to join or visit the Website at JunctionCenterYoga.com‎ to learn more.

Free Introduction to Yoga Classes at Junction Center on January 14

You’re never too young or too old to reap the health benefits of yoga. From the Sanskrit word for “union”, yoga is a practice that uses posture and breathing techniques to induce relaxation and improve strength, and its health benefits may surpass those of any other activity.

There are two opportunities to attend a free class in Beginner’s Yoga on Monday, January 14. The free morning session takes place from 9:30 – 11 am or an evening session meets from 5:30 – 7 pm. This first, no-obligation, sample class will be followed by an optional 6-class Beginner’s weekly series (continuing in the same time schedule) that you may enroll in if you are interested. The free Intro Class is taught by Junction Center’s founder Kathy Navis and is intended to provide you with some basic knowledge and practice of yoga including an explanation of the philosophy, the postures (asanas) and breath work (pranayama). If you choose to pursue it, the total 7 weeks of classes will instruct you in all of the poses for a beginner’s home yoga practice.

The six-class full beginner’s training course begins on Monday, January 21, meeting at the same times and costs $65 for 6 classes or $55 for those under 30 years old. Junction Center is located at 3435 Junction Rd., Egg Harbor, Wisconsin. You can find out more by calling the studio at 920.823.2763.

Junction Center Yoga Celebrates 10-year Anniversary with a Festive Gathering and Sanskrit Musical Meditation

On Sunday, October 23, beginning at 4 pm, Junction Center founder Kathy Navis invites you to walk the labyrinth, sit around the bonfire and enjoy some delicious food from Greens N Grains Deli, followed by sharing a very special musical experience inside the Studio.

Dennis Hawk

From 7 – 9 pm, Dennis Hawk will lead a shared musical experience known as Kirtan, featuring Sanskrit mantras set to fresh melodies and sounds. Kirtan is intended as a holistic healing experience designed to bring participants into a more organic form of meditation, either in stillness or in motion. One of the oldest of sacred sound traditions, Kirtan’s call-and-response chanting involves Satsang, an ancient Sanskrit term that describes the community that exists between an assembly of people who listen to, talk about, and assimilate their impressions of truthfulness.

It was more than ten years ago that Kathy Navis was practicing yoga with a group that met in the basement of Melissa Nelson’s former chiropractic office in Sturgeon Bay. She didn’t intend to become a yoga teacher, but when the instructor who had been commuting from Green Bay decided to stop coming, the group was left without a leader. They asked if Kathy would take on the role, so she proceeded to get her yoga teacher certification, but still had no intention of opening her own studio or to teach more than a couple of classes.

At the same time she was selling her business, the former Imported clothing store in Egg Harbor. She wanted to move out of the upstairs apartment and had been searching for a farm-ette.

“I had pretty much given up the search when my realtor called and said, ‘Kathy you have got to see this farm.’ It soon became Junction Center,” says Kathy. “The previous owners, Dick and Barb Kolpack were blacksmiths and did metal sculpture so they had remodeled some of the barn and had built the lean to, which is now the yoga studio, as a blacksmith shop.”

When Kathy walked into that former blacksmith shop she immediately realized it was the perfect yoga studio. She went home with her head spinning and then decided to act. She made an appointment to meet with the owners and walked in with all sorts of statistics on comparable sales and other bargaining tactics and came to meet Dick, all 300 lbs. of him standing behind an anvil with a huge hammer in his hands.

Kathy says, “He was not interested in any of my info, but when I proposed a price that was in their ballpark he said, ‘Do you drink coffee? I roast my own beans’ and the next thing we were sitting around the kitchen table crafting an agreement that everyone was happy with.”

In July of 2001 she began working with a local carpenter to turn the blacksmith shop into a yoga studio. They added skylights, patio doors and a large picture window looking out over the meadow in the back. The floor was a concrete slab which Kathy was determined to turn into a heated floor. She did the research online and spoke with contractor friends to come up with a plan… one that unfortunately included hauling all of the concrete in 5-gallon buckets to create mass for the heating system. She called some friends including Wence Martinez and his son, to help create a day long bucket brigade.

Much has transpired over the past ten years and now Junction Center Yoga Studio is a mainstay, with regular classes for all levels of practitioners. Yoga has also transformed here in Door County with the general public coming to realize that practicing yoga is one of the most enjoyable forms of preventive medicine you can undertake.  On Sunday, October 23 Kathy Navis invites you to celebrate a ten-year anniversary.

Dennis Hawk, a Cherokee of Mesquaki descent, a pipe carrier and teacher of Native American spirituality, is also a well-known singer, songwriter and story-teller who plays guitar and Native American flute. He does a superb job of sharing his Kirtan insights and knowledge of Sanskrit chanting, its purpose and how it may affect you in order to deepen your own understanding and spiritual experience with Kirtan. There are no prerequisites or religious beliefs needed to participate in Kirtan, just bring an open heart and mind and join in by lifting your voice or just sit back and listen to how the music, vibration and meaning impacts you physically, mentally and spiritually.

If you want to experience yoga at Junction Center, Kathy is teaching a new beginner’s 4-class session starting Monday, October 31, from 9:30 – 11 am. Junction Center Yoga Studio is located at 7821 Junction Road, (just off County Hwy. A, north of Jacksonport).