The Yoga Studio finds permanent space in Midway

The Yoga Studio is offering a variety of restorative classes in Midway Shopping Center to promote mobility and stability. 

Owner Andrea Kennedy opened The Yoga Studio in February after 15 years of hosting classes in Peddler’s Village and three decades of yoga experience. Kennedy’s daughter, Henley, convinced her mother and her girlfriend, Bladen Potter, to create a studio that combines their three unique sets of business experience and yoga knowledge.  

“It’s a really interesting balance of the two of them because they meet through anatomy and understanding the body,” Henley said. “They come together through running this business, but then they have these two different sides of yoga and it’s really beautiful.”

Each yoga session is between 60 and 90 minutes. Andrea leads Renew & Restore, which uses blankets, blocks and other props to cultivate an environment that is as peaceful as possible. The all-level class aims to improve joint health and release tension through a series of gentle movements that combine physical therapy with yoga. 

Andrea also teaches similarly relaxing classes like Chair Yoga and the MELT method. Chair Yoga targets an older audience, concentrating on mobilizing joints and strengthening muscles, starting with therapy balls on the hands and feet. The MELT method promotes lymphatic drainage by supporting the connective tissue that wraps around every structure of the body known as the fascia.

Potter, the director of operations, teaches Yoga Nidra for deep meditation. Nidra allows for yogic sleep, meaning the body deeply rests and restores by reaching lower levels of brain waves. Participants will experience REM cycles without actually falling asleep. In another class, Sound & Soul, Potter guides her students through a vinyasa, a practice that strings together various postures through breath.

Potter also leads more challenging classes like Slow Flow and Yoga HOT that can reach up to 95 degrees. As time passes, students’ discomfort increases until their brain waves transcend into the zone between REM sleep and full consciousness called the “flow state.”

Potter underwent 10 surgeries before using yoga as a last resort. As a former competitive swimmer and seasoned weightlifter, she doubted the benefits of yoga until she was prompted to try it.

“I realized that surgeries were not best for my body — strengthening it through yoga is,” Potter said. “I just have not found anything since finding the strengthening aspect of yoga that makes my body feel this good.”

In Yoga Nidra, Sound & Soul and Monday’s Restore & Renew classes, Henley leads a sound bath for participants. She plays instruments like crystal bowls, chimes and a Chinese gong to put students in the yogic state. Each bowl represents a different note, so playing certain combinations of bowls creates harmonies that mesh well together. 

Henley first experienced a sound bath at 17 years old and bought her own set of bowls a year later in 2018. She later traveled to Canada to meet a sound bath specialist who orders bowls internationally. She sanded and tuned a set that matched the pace and inflection of Henley’s voice.

“Something clicked for me and I was just really passionate about creating that experience that I was craving that I knew people would really love,” Henley said. “I used my little bit of music knowledge and I’ve just been doing it for six years just learning and intuitively figuring it out on my own.”

Henley has been surrounded by yoga since a young age thanks to her mother. Andrea found yoga after spending almost two decades dancing. After developing sciatica and losing the ability to turn her head left due to ballet, she trained through Svaroopa Yoga, Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy and Level 3 MELT Method. 

“When you’re dancing there’s always this comparison or you’re trying to be in sync with each other,” Andrea said. “If you’re not in sync, you’re not part of the core. So I loved how yoga was not about that at all and it was more of an inward experience.”

When Andrea could no longer teach classes due to Covid-19, she founded LivingYoga, an online yoga community with weekly livestreams and a library of hundreds of videos. Andrea was teaching in parks and renting studios with limited space after Covid. Now, along with LivingYoga, she has a public studio with a stage, eight instructors, infrared heat panels and other custom installments.

“It was really cool to create that with my parents and watch that every little bit of the studio is a piece of them, it’s a piece of me, it’s a piece of Bladen,” Henley said.

To sign up for in-person or online classes, visit the studio at 18675 Coastal Hwy, Unit 5 in Midway Center or go to https://www.theyogastudiorehoboth.com/.