Seattle cathedral offers free yoga to hundreds each Monday

Up to 200 people practice yoga at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral on Monday nights in Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood.

The Rev. Steve Thomason is dean and rector of the church. He said that the program started as a smaller classroom-sized group on Sunday nights, and is now a packed cathedral on Monday nights.

“For whatever reason after COVID, it just clicked. And what was in those early years, 20 or 30 people has mushroomed to usually over 100, sometimes 175, taking up most of the floor space in the cathedral to make it work every week,” Thomason said.

Thomason said part of that accessibility is to accommodate all levels and experiences, and another is to ensure yoga is free so that all can attend no matter their financial circumstances. A donation is suggested for those who are able to share to keep financial essentials covered for the program.

Every Monday looks a little different. The teachers follow a regular rotation schedule, and a few serve only as substitutes.

On the third Monday of each month, the class features singing bowls and concludes with an extended savasana and sound bath. On the fourth Monday of each month there is social time offered directly following the yoga class with tea and sometimes snacks.

Annie Limberg and Josh Warren chatted after class on the fourth yoga class of October. They both had attended for the first time despite each practicing yoga for over 20 years.

“I love the atmosphere. It’s super conducive to sort of a Zen yogic meditative space,” Limberg said.

While Limberg had never experienced a space like it, Warren had a similar experience in Spokane.

Body positive and trauma-informed yoga teacher

Annabell Dumez-Matheson teaches on the third Monday of every month, and the singing bowls complement her style of teaching — which is trauma informed, body positive and accessibility minded.

Dumez-Matheson remembers her first time going to a yoga class, and it wasn’t a positive experience.

“I’d never done yoga before, and I went to a Vinyāsa class that was pretty rigorous,” Dumez-Matheson said. “The teacher did a hands-on assist, and I actually got injured in it. The teacher came up behind me, pulled my hips, and I pulled my hamstring.”

That turned her off of yoga for a while. She wasn’t given permission to actually listen to her body, and because of that incident, she chalked it up to yoga not being good for her body. Then her friend convinced her otherwise.

“He’s like, 'I just wonder if yoga would speak to you in some way.' And I was like, 'I don’t like yoga,'” she said. “He’s like, 'Can you give it another try?' And so I went to a slow flow yoga class, and I had a different experience with the teacher, who was very encouraging about listening to your own body.”

Dumez-Matheson started training to be a yoga teacher so that she could work in prisons and jails.

“I have a friend who was in Montana State. Now he’s been moved to a different place, and I knew of an organization called Yoga Behind Bars, and that organization has always been one that I wanted to volunteer and work for,” Dumez-Matheson said.

What she didn’t realize at the time was you didn’t need to get the 200-hour professional yoga teacher certification to work with Yoga Behind Bars. But as she continued taking teacher training classes her interest in specific areas grew.

“I got a 500-hour yoga certificate, and I got to kind of tailor what I was most interested in, which was that prepartum to postpartum trauma, informed, body positive, accessible yoga,” Dumez-Matheson said. “I intentionally took trainings with different teachers who specialized in those things, and ended up with a practice that looks the way it does when you come to my class now.”

The cues she uses asks participants to focus on what their body needs. That means offering moments of heat and an option to switch positions if the first one doesn’t feel right for their bodies.

“I also want people to take a moment to internally reflect, because that’s the spiritual and the pranayama mindset,” Dumez-Matheson said. “When I graduated from my program, one of my teachers said, ‘You are meant to teach.’ And I said, ‘No, I don’t want to teach in a studio, because I’m not the type of person you would see typically in the studio.’ And she’s like, ‘I wholeheartedly disagree, and I think that people would enjoy you as a teacher.’”

She ended up teaching in four different studios, at a college and at many other venues, including behind bars at the King County Jail in downtown Seattle.

Now as a yoga teacher, Dumez-Matheson’s ears are alert to the cues other teachers provide.

“I will not go back to a class if the teacher is too rigid with how they speak, because I just don’t feel like it’s a safe place for myself and my body,” she said.

The mission behind cathedral yoga program at St. Mark’s

The cathedral yoga ministry, which started in the fall of 2013, is not the first of its kind. Thomason said that he was inspired by another program in California.

“I was aware of yoga being done at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco,” he said.

Thomason had a conversation with their dean and asked questions about the yoga program.

“I asked to meet with two members of the parish [at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral], whom I knew were yoga instructors,” Thomason explained. “One was a woman about 30, and the other was a woman about 70. And they did very different practices, but I asked them, would they consider doing this once a week in the church, in the cathedral nave, which is a sacred space, and we talked about how it would be accessible to all.”

The vision behind the program aligns with the outreach mission of St. Mark’s since it was founded in 1889, before it was a cathedral.

“It has always had a call to be outwardly-focused into the broader community. We recognize that the church was built not just for the worshiping community, which is our core mission, but it’s also a place for the broader community to gather, we say, in times of crisis, sorrow and celebration, and to be this justice hub for the broader community,” Thomason said.

There were two considerations that they made sure to be intentional about as the program moved forward. The first, was making sure that they didn’t appropriate the practice as a Christian one. Instead they wanted to provide a sacred space for the community no matter their religion or lack thereof. The other was that they wanted to make sure they weren’t appropriating a practice that comes out of another religion in a way that would dishonor that religious tradition.

“It’s not an explicitly religious practice. The instruction is oriented to the types of yoga practices, not to whatever the religious underpinnings are. And we’re really clear about that. That wherever you are on your spiritual journey, you’re welcome here. And that’s a really important piece of our mission to the broader community,” Thomason said.

The cathedral yoga program evolves

As the community gathering on Monday nights grew, the program switched hands, finally resulting in a community-led committee after the program couldn’t be sustained by St. Mark’s by itself.

Peg Balachowski is the committee’s chair. She said it was formed one Monday night after class with a St. Mark’s staff member.

“That was the first time that we all met each other because in the nave, where there are 100 plus people, you just can’t see everybody. We sat in the nave and the pews, and she said there should be a committee, and we agreed that we will run it,” Balachowski said.

“And then she said, ‘Well, I think we need a chair.’ There was silence, and I looked around and I thought, well, they’re all a lot younger than me. I’m probably the only one here who’s retired. So, ‘Yeah, OK, I’ll do it.’”

The committee includes parish members, but most are regular attendees from the larger community like Balachowski. She got involved in the program back when it still ran on Sunday’s after her neighbor asked if she would like to go.

“I said, yeah, sure. So we went and there were maybe 10 or 12 people there. The altar is where everybody put their mat. Everybody fit there. It was a different teacher every week,” she said.

The committee is behind the newsletter that goes out every month detailing the schedule for that month and sending alerts if there are any important changes. They have improved the program by orchestrating a better sound system and are also behind the ice breakers that help connect the large group together. Two committee members are needed each week to show up around 5:30 p.m. to get the space ready.

Balachowski outlined the setup process: Committee members move the black chairs from the side, set up signage and bring in paperwork that includes collection totals, attendance records and the teacher’s pay slip. They adjust lighting and open the doors at 6 p.m. She’d like a committee member to greet arrivals at the back of the nave, though not everyone does this. A committee member also handles the land acknowledgment and announcements.

While Balachowski admits her work on the committee takes more work than she thought it would, when she’s on her mat and looks up at the incredible lighting and chants with over a hundred people, that’s what makes it all worth it.

“There are certain times where I think, oh, I don’t want to be on the committee anymore. iIt’s just too much work. Just going every Monday night and seeing the teacher and the community and these other people who know my name, and they say ‘Hi’ and they say, ‘Thank you, this is wonderful.’ It’s just an experience that is really important to me,” Balachowski said.

One of the updates in this month’s newsletter is the TERRA exhibition, a 24-foot museum grade globe. Yoga goers got the first look as the exhibit overlaps with the first three classes of the month. It will be featured at St. Mark’s through Nov. 23 and open to the public on weekdays between 12 p.m. and 5 p.m.

This story was originally published by FaVs News.