“Flow + Restore” yoga classes combine the benefits of movement and deep restoration. Lauren Flynn, who has been a yoga teacher for 20 years, says that one of the major reasons she decided to focus her professional life on teaching yoga is that “Yoga has saved my life on more than one occasion.”
She began practicing in 1996 and teaching in 2005 with impromptu beach classes for surfers in Malibu. She furthered her education with a six week residential yoga teacher training at Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health in Lenox, Massachusetts the following year. Weeks after returning from training, her home burned down and she moved up the coast to study in a Vedic monastery. Her second home burned down just a year later in the 2008 Tea Fire. She then moved to Colorado, where the 2013 flood took everything again.
“It was a time where I had no choice but to rely on my inner resources to survive. Yoga and meditation were a lifeline.”
She found her way to Whidbey in the summer of 2018 after a friend invited her to come up and finish an album and catch her breath. She started teaching popular Vinyasa Flow classes that morphed in various ways to meet the needs of a diverse Whidbey population.
“My personal practice slowed down to focus on healing the trauma from the natural disasters, but I was still teaching the same fast-paced style. As I started experimenting with integrating more of my personal practice in teaching, students really embraced it.”
Together with feedback from students, she created a Flow + Restore format and began teaching at Soundview Center two years ago. She is now adding a weekly Flow + Restore class in Freeland at Insula Yoga, a new studio started by Vanessa Cameron and Sarah Birger.
“I'm excited to expand my offerings into the space they've created. I always enjoy collaborating with both of them. We share similar values as teachers and they are very compassionate and educated stewards of the community space.”
The one hour class is equal parts movement and restoration. “There are studies that show a 20-minute flow style practice has the same stress reduction, focus and memory benefits as a 60 or 90 minute class. After movement, the restorative half of the practice is pure rest.”
Meditation, breathwork, readings and even live music are woven throughout classes. Class themes are informed by the seasons - much like seasonal eating, there are postures and pacing that resonate with our bodies and phases of the year, and classes shift to reflect those elements. But slowing down isn’t the only influence behind this class format.
“Particularly right now I'm concerned with staying in touch with our humanity and our souls as we go barreling toward digital society and technocracy. I've always taught yoga as a form of activism in terms of the meditation aspect helping to keep a sovereign mind, and right now it feels more important than ever. Just the act of sitting in silence with our breath can help keep us connected to our humanity.”
Insula Yoga is located at 5570 S. Harbor Avenue in Freeland. Flow + Restore classes will begin there in January on Wednesday mornings at 10am. Lauren and Vanessa will be hosting their popular winter workshop, “Beyond the Pose: Introduction to the Science of Yoga” on 2/22 at 2pm. For more information, visit www.flowandrestorewhidbey.com.
