Real People. Real Passion. Real Practice

Pia is the Owner and Director of Wabi-Sabi Yoga and Wellness Center. She is an RYT 500 hr teacher, Personal Trainer, Pilates and Barre instructor. She is also a Soma Veda Thai Yoga Therapist with specializations in Sports and Holistic Nutrition. With a background in nursing she has a unique perspective on how chronic diseases can affect the body and on specific strategies to live a healthy life. 

My yoga journey began in 2010 when I stepped into my first class as a way to manage scoliosis in my back. At that time, I couldn’t even lay flat on the floor, but I kept returning because yoga not only supported my back—it helped me feel better throughout my entire body. I learned to listen to my body, do what I could, and lean on the guidance of wonderful teachers who showed me modifications and the supportive use of props.

By 2014, I began exploring more advanced classes and workshops. Several teachers encouraged me to take the next step and enroll in a yoga teacher training. After some reflection, I realized the answer was yes! I completed my 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training at Journey of Yoga in 2015. Because I had received so much support and inspiration on my path, I knew I wanted to offer the same to others—helping students find healing, confidence, and growth through their practice.

Since then, I have expanded my training to include Thai Body Work (also known as Thai Massage), becoming a certified Thai Body Work practitioner, as well as a Reiki practitioner.

In my classes, I focus on safe alignment, mindful breath work, and the intelligent use of props. I offer modifications to make poses more accessible and variations to help students deepen their practice. Occasionally, I also incorporate Thai-inspired stretches to support release and relaxation. My goal is to create a welcoming space where students of all levels can explore yoga in a way that meets their bodies, minds, and hearts with compassion.

Cheryl Pacyna is a retired school psychologist. She first became enamored of yoga when a colleague arranged for a yoga teacher to hold classes after school. She was immediately hooked on the release of stress the practice provided. As her practice progressed and her strength and mobility improved she decided it was time to deepen her practice by training to teach yoga. She completed her 200 hour initial teacher training at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, training with Yoganand Michael Carroll and Coby Kozlowski. She completed an additional 300 hours of advanced asana training as well as training leading meditation, pranayama, restorative yoga, and chair yoga classes. She enjoys teaching classes that are mindful and accessible to everybody.

I found yoga over 10 years ago and I immediately fell in love with the overall body conditioning it provided. Then I found Barre and fell in love with everything about  it as well. I received my Barre training from Barre Intensity and Lifer Fitness in West Hartford, CT. The combination of doing yoga and Barre classes brought strength, flexibility and fun back into my life. I received my 200 YTT and 300 YTT from The Yoga Shop in West Hartford, CT. I am also certified in Chair and Restorative yoga.

Miranda Chapman (she/her) is a deeply loving, queer, radical, passionate human animal who facilitates awareness practices across many mediums: meditation, movement, nature ritual, art, music, food, and beyond. 

Her facilitation centers love, vulnerability, bravery, and generosity and is always dancing between the individual and the collective. 

Since 2004 she has studied different forms and frameworks of yoga, Ayurveda, mindfulness, and meditation in Canada, the United States, Argentina, South Korea, Japan, Australia, India, Nepal, and who knows where next… 

Miranda began facilitating in 2008 and she loves to play and laugh and do deep, communal inquiry work into what it means to be alive and together and conscious and thriving. 

Her passions include her twin kiddos, friendship with herself and others, singing, dismantling systems of oppression, dancing, and this magnificent, green, breathing, heaving planet Earth that we are all woven into. —

she .  her . hers

Sound healing was Maria del Carmen’s norm in many capacities during her childhood while spending time at the peak of what she describes as her sacred family mountain in Puerto Rico. Maria del Carmen always turned to the natural sounds of nature when coping with unsettled emotions, fears and joyful moments. After being introduced to sound healing as an adult she quickly made the connection of how her lived experience with the sounds of nature could be recreated with crystal signing bowls, metal Tibetan bowls, ocean drums and many more instruments that brings the family mountain to the mainland.

 Maria del Carmen Rodriguez is now a certified sound healer and co-founder of SoulCare Love, LLC. Maria del Carmen continues to research the ancient healing practice of sound healing after it helped her through sensitive and transformative years the last decade from learning to mourn a parent while they are still living, processing childhood traumas, divorcing after a twenty-nine-year marriage, and departing from a beloved career of 40 years. 

Maria del Carmen has facilitated sound healing in a variety of venues from universities, nonprofit organizations, gyms, senior center, health fairs, residential home care, community center, from large public group settings to small private groups, and individual sessions. An essential part of Maria del Carmen’s mission is to educate, bring awareness, and facilitate sound healing to the BIPOC community. She’s begun this work by offering sessions at black owned businesses from a Gallery, museum, Black sorority, and will be co-curating sound healing sessions as a standard for the BIPOC community. 

Marcie Swift has been a practicing psychologist for over thirty years and is Director of the Swift Center for Learning, LLC in Simsbury.  She specializes  in stress management and optimizing human potential through the  integrative arts. In 2001, Marcie completed her certification in therapeutic music through the accredited Music for Healing and Transition Program. She has recorded two CD’s  including one with her husband, Gordon Swift, a violinist. She plays her therapeutic harp at retreat centers, assisted living centers, yoga studios, chemo infusion rooms, places of worship,  libraries and hospices. She recently became certified in labyrinth facilitation through Veriditis. Marcie is  praised by Dr. Brandon Nappi, former Founder and Director of Copper Beach Institute, as “ a super power…with a special gift to help people process and transform  pain.”