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ARTS+LEISURE The Addison Independent
September 8, 2016
REBECCAH BRINTON, LEFT, and Jamie Smith, co-founders of Vergennes Movement, strike a pose in their yoga and fitness studio on Main Street in Vergennes. INDEPENDENT PHOTO/TRENT CAMPBELL
Yoga in Vergennes: Moving the community together
V
ergennes's newest yoga and exercise studio is a shared space in more ways than one. The studio, which sits on the second floor of an apartment building on Main Street that overlooks Vergennes City Park, has been owned under several managers throughout the years. It was handed over to co-founders Rebeccah Brinton and Jamie Smith in January.
BY EMMA COTTON
Since then, the two yogis have gathered five other teachers and a collection of loyal students, and classes have commenced almost every day since the year’s beginning. Together, the instructors named the studio “Vergennes Movement.” “The vision is to have a community space where people can practice movement,” Brinton said. Classes range from 55-minute 6 a.m. cardio workouts, to latemorning gentle yoga, to “Music, Movement and Mindfulness” for preschoolers. The instructors, many of whom are current or former grade school teachers, have drawn a multi-generational crowd.
“There’s no body type or personality type or age,” Brinton said. “There’s such a large range of people, and I hope that anybody feels really welcome to be in the space, even if they don’t know what they’re doing or feel insecure or inflexible.” Children as young as nine years old accompany their mothers to classes, and seniors are invited to stretch out aches and pains in classes that can be adjusted for skill level and areas of need. It didn’t take long for the community to gather at the newly opened space just after New Year’s. “It was a new business, so everyone was trying to be supportive of all of us,” Smith said. “At the first hot yoga class I taught, there was barely space for me to roll a mat out. And when I walked in the room, they just kept coming in and coming in and coming in.” Though the number of regular attendees has stabilized since then, the instructors have devised a system that allows them to focus less on the number of people walking through their doors and more on the classroom experience they give to their students. Each teacher contributes a set amount of money to the space, and instead of a membership system, the instructors handle the cost SEE MOVEMENT ON PAGE 6