Common Ground Healing Arts Welcomes New Instructor, Launches Fall Schedule
Common Ground Healing Arts has several new classes on its fall schedule at the Jefferson School City Center, including offerings with instructor Tanya Valentine, who is teaching Yin Yang Yoga on Wednesday and Friday mornings at 7:00am and Yoga for Beginners at 10:30am on Saturdays. Yin Yang yoga features an approach that balances “Yin” yoga, which is slow-paced, introspective practice where participants hold positions for longer lengths of time with “Yang,” which features more flow and movement.
“Yin is very challenging in ways that are not expected,” Valentine explained, saying that many of the qualities of our daily lives are Yang-oriented–loud and fast–so it’s important to make space for contemplation. “It helps us be in our selves and in the world in a way that’s a little more kind and less reactive.”
Valentine has been teaching a variety of styles of yoga for ten years, after earning her 200-hour certification at Sivananda Ashram in Val Morin, Canada, and she’s currently studying for further certification through the Insight Yoga Institute. While she decided to pursue certification as an extension of her personal practice, she’s found the transition to being a teacher very rewarding.
“What I enjoy about teaching is providing a space for people to explore possibility,” she said. “Whether it be in their mind or thought patterns or body.” One of her favorite poses to teach is the yogic headstand because of how it offers both physical and mental challenges. “I like building people’s capacity to trust themselves,” she added.
Originally, Valentine’s practice as a dancer opened her up to pursuing yoga. She often found herself slipping into yoga poses during dance. “Yoga does the same kind of things as dance and…that was my door into yoga,” she said. In addition to teaching at Common Ground, Valentine offers classes at ACAC as well as private classes. She’s particularly excited about teaching at Common Ground because she’s an enthusiastic supporter of its mission to provide yoga and other healing arts at affordable and sliding scale rates so no one is turned away from the benefits of yoga, meditation, acupuncture, and massage.
Other changes to Common Ground’s fall schedule include two additional 5:30pm yoga classes (5:30pm classes now offered Mon-Thurs), and a 7:00pm restorative yoga class with Sue Bovenizer on Tuesdays.Yoga instructor Kevin Warren is also adding two new classes to his Common Ground schedule on Wednesdays. In addition to his 9am Inner Body Vinyasa class, Warren is offering a Teen yoga class at 4:15pm, a Fun Flow at 5:30pm, and has opportunities for private classes on Wednesdays as well.
Additionally, opportunities for massages have expanded, and acupuncture availability has increased on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings.
“War of the Churches” Lecture at African American Heritage Center Oct. 15
The African American Heritage Center will host a lecture with Associate Professor of History at the University of Central Florida Scott French on Wednesday, October 15 at 6:00pm. French will focus on the tensions between churches, political figures, and the press in Charlottesville’s African American community from 1890-1892. This event is free and open to the public.
French will shed new light on a tumultuous three-year period in the late 19th century history of Charlottesville’s African American churches. A bitter public dispute over ministerial credentials and claims to race leadership split the local Baptist congregations (Delevan First Colored & Mt. Zion First African), hastened the departures of their feuding pastors (Rev. R. Alonzo Scott and Rev. J. Francis Robinson), and inspired the establishment of a new, breakaway church (Ebenezer Baptist, led by Rev. Alexander Truatt). At the heart of these so-called “church wars” lay different thoughts on racial advancement and activism.
This lecture and book signing is made possible through the generous support of the Blue Moon Fund.
Free Breast Health Screenings Offered at Martha Jefferson’s Outpatient Care Center
On October 25, from 9am-2pm, free breast breast health screenings will be provided at Martha Jefferson’s Outpatient Care Center, located at 595 Martha Jefferson Drive. Participants may qualify if they don’t have insurance that covers mammograms, cost is a concern, are 40 years of age or older, and/or it’s been over a year since their last mammogram. To make an appointment or for more information, call 434-654-7009.
Jefferson School City Center is a voice of the nine nonprofits located at Charlottesville’s intergenerational community center, the restored Jefferson School. We are a legacy preserved . . . a soul reborn . . . in the heart of Cville!
