When you first enter the Williamston Wellness ChiroSpa, you are greeted by a maze of dimly lit rooms, rustic decorations, silver chimes, and healing energy.
The Williamston Wellness ChirosSpa offers massage therapy, hot stone therapy, injury rehabilitation, chiropractic adjustment, and, a couple times a week, Amy Moore’s yoga classes.
Moore teaches a “Yoga for All” class every Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. and an adult/child class with a meeting time that is yet to be announced.
Moore leads her healing and community-friendly classes in front of a realistic river mural in the carpeted, yoga lounge while the sound of a stream continuously plays from her phone. She strays from the ever growing hot yoga practice, and her chosen teaching environment and style might be different than those instructors at other studios.
“I think that yoga is for everyone,” said Moore. “It’s a lovely place to find that you fit in.”
Through her attentive teaching and small class environments, Moore aims to both bring her Williamston community closer through yoga and to help connect people’s breath with their movements while teaching “a new way to be in the body.”
Moore is joined by regular class attendees who she has learned to intuitively teach. She caters to individual’s aches and pains, whether they be physical or emotional. She encourages her students to interact, practice together, and help one another grow as yogis and as people.
She starts her classes with a check-in – an open conversation in which her students express what yoga poses they may need or anything that they are feeling that day – all while sitting on their yoga mats arranged in a circle.
“Amy’s class is one of my favorite parts of the day,” said Julie Monette, a Williamston local and a regular attendee of Moore’s classes. “I truly can say I look forward to it and I look forward to the time here in the studio as well as the feeling that I have when I leave.”
Moore received her yoga teacher certification under the teachings of Belinda Thurston, the owner of Just B Yoga in Lansing. Thurston taught Moore the importance of trauma-sensitive teachings and how to truly treat the human body correctly.
According to reports released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics, the use of yoga and meditation has increased in the U.S., both among adults and children between the years of 2012 to 2017. With the practice of yoga growing in popularity, the deep understanding of how to effectively teach yoga to all rather than solely the young and nimble grows crucial among both current and aspiring yoga teachers.
Moore, in a teaching-rotation with her close-knit group of five certified yoga instructors from Just B Yoga, teaches a free, all-inclusive yoga class in hopes to make yoga accessible to everybody.
This class meets every Wednesday at the East Lansing Orchard Street Pumphouse from 5:45 to 6:45 p.m.
“If people can only sit in a chair, if they can only sit on their knees, it’s for all ages and all abilities,” Moore said.
Moore tries to make her yoga accessible to all. This, in turn, brings her practitioners closer and more comfortable with themselves, with the community, and with yoga itself.
“I think yoga brings the community together,” said Doug Monette, another regular attendee of Moore’s classes in Williamston. “It’s a community social activity that gives people the opportunity to go through emotional and physical strains that they may have and focus on a common goal.”