“Whether you are confined to a chair while you’re doing yoga, or if you are a top athlete, yoga is for you,” she said from her new studio on Main Street, Earthbound Yogi.
“It’s all-inclusive. Everybody and anybody can do yoga,” she said. “It balances you internally as well as externally.”
Scanlon is registered with Yoga Alliance as an instructor and also is certified in meditation, reiki and other disciplines. Before opening her Winsted studio, she conducted classes from her Colebrook home for five years.
“I had hurt my back when I was in my 30s,” Scanlon said, explaining how she got interested in yoga. “I ran out of insurance visits to the physical therapist and had to find an alternative. Yoga was something that I had never done before, but I thought, you know, (maybe) it’s going to help me feel a little better. … Sure enough, I felt great after the first class.”
She continued taking classes for several years, then decided to become certified as an instructor.
“There are dozens, if not hundreds of different kinds of yoga,” she said. “Hatha yoga is the base of all yoga. And it’s homeostasis. It’s balance. It’s cold and it’s hot. It’s up and it’s down. It’s bright, and it’s dark. So it’s those opposites balanced with each other.”
In addition to hatha yoga, she teaches strength and balance, hot yoga, chair yoga, yin yoga, slow flow vinyasa yoga, yoga nidra and others.
“Yoga is not just about the poses,” she said. “There are eight different limbs of yoga that take you through various health and wellness points for your body, your mind, your spirit and your soul. And yoga touches on all of those in the theory that you’re massaging out the bad and flowing in the new.”
If hatha yoga encompasses the major aspects of other branches of yoga, why are there other branches?
“It’s like having a pair of shoes, a pair of sneakers,” Scanlon said. “Which brand do you like? Which helps you move better? Which helps you flow better? Maybe hot yoga is best for you because you need that intensity. Or maybe the hatha basics class; (it’s) a lot more slow moving, a lot more focused on your breath, getting those poses so they fit your body.”
When a new student walks in, Scanlon asks them about any exercise regimens they already practice, what aches and pains they may have and what they want out of the class. Their answers help her determine which kind of yoga would benefit them the most.
“I don’t think there’s a better; there’s just a preference,” she said.
Scanlon referred to a woman who had just left the studio.
“When she came in, she had just walked five miles with her dogs,” she said. “So she was exhausted. We kind of recharged her batteries. I think that yoga helps you clear out all those cobwebs inside, whether it’s energetic or emotional or physical. It helps you clear that space so you can have new energy come in.”
What would she say to someone considering yoga?
“I would say yoga is for you,” she said. “And you may need to take a couple of classes, find the instructor that works with you that you click with. And once you find that person, it becomes almost addictive because, you know, you just feel great after you leave and you’re sitting in your car going, ‘I could go do anything now.’
“It’s just very fulfilling for me,” she said. “Having people that are of a like mind in the same room with you practicing that same practice, it’s just a light that fills you, and it’s empowering to me to be able to help people.”
Earthbound Yogi, 396 Main St., can be reached at www.earthboundyogi.com or 860-201-3967.