Wow, I still can’t believe that a year has really come and gone for Mind Body Flow Yoga. I can still feel the cold air on that March day a year ago, as I cut the ribbon on our brand new space. My heart was racing and I briefly prayed that I didn’t look ridiculous with those big scissors in my hands. The rush I felt drowned those silly thoughts out of my head, as I sliced through the red ribbons. My dream had finally come true. Mind Body Flow Yoga was born.
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It still is like waking up to a dream when I get to a class to teach or practice. The studio walls contain so much of who I am and I feel so blessed, vulnerable and warm sharing this with whoever walks through our doors. A little over a year ago, holding those scissors, it was so intimidating to think that I was about to share something as dear to me as my love of Vinyasa yoga with the East Amherst and Clarence community. Now, people tell me they come in as far out as Kenmore or downtown Buffalo to attend a yoga class with us. I am so touched. There are few things outside of my family that have such a direct line to my heart and I can’t help but care for all those who make our little yoga space a part of their life. Thank you all so much for that!
Okay, no more mushy stuff. I just had to get that out of my system before we got onto all the fun stuff. As you may know, we had a great…Let me rephrase that. We had a GREAT time celebrating our one year anniversary the weekend of March 23rd and March 24th. As our Facebook page said, it was just too big to be contained in just one day.
The first part of the celebration took place on Saturday, March 23rd, with a Live Music! Flow yoga class. It was such a pleasure having Jeannine Giffear and her violin beautifully set the tone, color and pace for the class. She always manages to smoothly create a sensational experience that just begs you to be mindful with breath, body and not get tangled in your own thoughts. You can’t help but be inspired to feel light and joyful. We always look forward to having Jeannine in our monthly Live Music! Flow yoga series.
Make sure to sign up for our email updates (to the right) and get updates on our Live Music! Yoga classes and the featured musician.
With such a great setting we added another layer of surprise with three teachers leading the class. Yeah, you heard right! I, Marina, started it off and then tagged Megan who then gave the floor to Tarah. With their enthusiastic buy into the idea, I wanted to make sure they were each celebrated as a Vinyasa yoga instructor and for their unique personalities and energy that they each bring to their classes.
Read more about our great team and each yoga instructor’s personal bio. See when they are teaching on our new yoga class schedule and drop in.
I have to admit that there were some emotional parts of the experience for me as I looked across the room. My heart kept feeling like it was too big for my chest and just wanted to leap out and dance. These four walls have been so good to me this year and it was so great seeing all those students moving from yoga pose to yoga pose in accord with their own breath. They each sharing a moment with the person to their left and to their right, the person in front of them and the person behind them. It was truly beautiful!
The class was such a pleasure, but we still had to cap it off with something a little different. I recalled how much fun we had at our 6 month celebration and decided to relive a favorite group activity I was sure all present wouldn’t forget. You will have to see it below for yourself. 🙂
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Saturday was such a blast. It was clear that our students enjoyed it as well. You cannot ask for more than that!
Well we planned to do just that and hope we succeeded. On Sunday, March 24th, we had the second part of the festivities.
So many of our dear students came through for the second part of the celebrations. It was great seeing everyone there mingling and getting to know each other. The fourth member of the Mind Body Flow Team, Iris, was able to meet many of you. She is our kids yoga instructor, and new family yoga instructor. With the nature of her classes, there is a limited number of opportunities where she meets so many of our yoga student community.
Before getting further into the details of the day, I have to pour some love out to a few people who have helped shape our space, our students’ experiences during our events and have become such good friends to Mind Body Flow Yoga. They were so critical to the success of our one year anniversary celebration.
First of all is Melissa with Fit-n-Fresh catering. The ensemble of treats and goodies was as delicious as they were attractive. I just love her food and am a big fan of her artistry. Check out her information. We enjoy her meals as a family as well and have only had great experiences with her personally and professionally.
Second of all is Tiffany and Ringo. We have always enjoyed Tiffany’s rhythms on the drum in our Live Music! Yoga series. For our event we got the chance to have her perform together with Ringo. The duo of Tiffany and Ringo (link) was dynamic, blood pumping and had people break out in small dances. It was great to see the sometimes unconscious response to their music.
You can find all of their information on our preferred vendor page
Third is Patti Green with the better body cleanse. We have been working with Patti since November and have greatly appreciated the value that she has brought to the studio with her fresh, cool and zesty cold pressed juices. She has a magic touch or some kind of sorcery because her juice blends are always savory, attractive to look at and leave you feeling rejuvenated. It is a pleasure working with the better body cleanse juices.
Make sure you sign up to receive our updates conveniently via email. There are some great and exciting things to come between Mind Body Flow Yoga and the better body cleanse.
We had a lot of great news to share with everyone there as a lot of new stuff has been introduced to the studio.
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You can grab and share a list of all these new Mind Body Flow Yoga goodies right over here. All of these are currently being reflected on our website, online store and FAQ’s.
If you have a question about anything please leave a comment below.
Here I have to give a heartfelt thank you to lululemon Buffalo for the fantastic prizes they made available. We had three lululemon mats and three different accessories to give away. We decided to start it off with a plank challenge.
If you weren’t able to join us, or didn’t win a prize, here they are for you to grab one for yourself:
Prize 1: The Mat + Daily OM Duffel
Prize 2: The Mat + Namaste Yoga Tote III
Prize 3: No Brainer Mat Strap
Prize 4: The Mat
This is an old favorite that some of you may remember from our Opening Day one year ago. Last year our winner took the prize holding the position for an impressive 6 minutes flat. This set the bar for us this time around and we were looking forward to seeing whether this could be broken. Boy were we in for a huge surprise.
The bar was very quickly set at 7 minutes by our first round of challengers. For the second round we had 7 participants looking to beat it. With Tiffany and Ringo (link) providing an impactful rhythm they were well positioned to do so.
Well, all we have to say is that it was one intense round. Our yoga students and our yoga instructor Tarah held on for impressive lengths of time. Everyone on the sidelines was cheering them one, shouting encouragement and congratulating each one of them for doing their best. After 8 min and 30 sec mark, yes that is not a typo, we had two challenger, Mary and Lindsey, remaining.
This just ramped up the encouragement and excitement around these two impressive ladies. After what seemed like eternity, Lindsey held on the longest at an impressive 12 min and 15 sec. Mary clocked in at an awesome 12 min and 12 sec. Wow! They both got a cheer and hugs for such a feat. Lindsey received prize 1 and Mary prize 2.
From here we swiftly went into our in-studio raffle drawing for prize 3 and prize 4. We quickly drew and awarded the No Brainer Mat Strap and The Mat to Carrie and Robert respectively.
During this whole time we had a Grand Prize raffle going on. This was for the chance to win 30 Days on unlimited yoga and 10 consecutive days of unlimited yoga.
The participants were required to create their own Raffle ID’s using a combination of their initials and last 3 digits of their phone number. From here they placed the number on a Quote card for them to keep and go home with
From here they would fill out our Grand Prize Raffle Form with their unique Raffle ID and answer a question. The question on the form was “What do you hope that yoga can do for you? Or, what has it done? We received 33 entries that just touched my heart. Here are just a few of them:
- Helps me bend
- Not place limits on my body
- Improve my flexibility
- Too get the negativity out of my life
- To open up to the world like I do on the mat
- It has given me the confidence to embrace myself & express myself more freely
- Yoga has built my self confidence in all areas of my life
- Yoga has helped my flexibility and self confidence
- Relax & increase flexibility
We will have each one a day on the front of our website page and Facebook page for the month of April.
If you didn’t get a chance to participate in the Grand Prize Raffle, we would still love to here your answer to the question. Please comment below on what you hope yoga can do for you or what it has done for you.
Well, as you can see from the images above, our Grand Prize Raffle winner was announced between March 27 and March 31st. They were LC512 and SL313. If you’ve won, simply stop by the studio with your Quote card to claim your month or 10 consecutive days of unlimited yoga classes.
As we said, it was an awesome day for us at Mind Body Flow Yoga and hope that all in attendance physically had a great time. I have tried to capture much of the energy of the day for those of you who were with us in spirit or are new to our studio.
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I look forward to continuing to live out this dream of Mind Body Flow Yoga. We all here truly hope that through your time with us we can help each and everyone of you in pursuing your own dreams, encourage you to take what you love a little bit further and support you as you deepening and reconcile relationships. Our belief is that this is how you can intentionally achieve flow in your lives. Hence our mission statement:
Bring Peace to the Mind, Through a Connection with the Body, So You Can Flow Through Life with Greater Ease
Remember, sign up for our studio updates. This is going to be an exciting year and we don’t want you to miss a thing
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