GRAND FACES

SHARING THE POWER OF YOGA STORY BY ANNE REED

The Chiodo family celebrates Joyful Yoga & Spa’s 15th anniversary as they take instruction virtual.

ifteen years in Southwest Florida time seems like forever. In a land filled with seasonal residents, recent transplants and what seems like a new gated community every month, anything that survives here for a decade is rare. It takes patience, care and, in this current COVID-19 climate, flexibility.

All three things one can find through the practice of yoga.

Joyful Yoga & Spa in Bonita Springs is celebrating its 15th anniversary this year. Led by family matriarch Tess Chiodo and her two daughters, Jacqueline Chiodo and Emily Cioffi, Joyful Yoga is one of the oldest yoga studios in Southwest Florida. In the pre-shelter-in-place world, the beautiful, light-filled studio had the quiet bustle of students and teachers arriving for classes or sessions. Now? Tess, Jacqueline, Emily and their staff have gone digital, offering classes first through Facebook Live and now through Zoom and sharing articles on the benefits of meditation and more through their social media pages.

That willingness to change, to change and meet the needs of the people around them, is something that started 50 years ago in Southern California.

“I was a Catholic schoolgirl and got into yoga as my thing,” Tess says. After marrying her high school sweetheart, “he went off the rails. I found out TM was being taught at a local community college in San Bernardino.”

TM is transcendental meditation, created by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi in the mid1950s. It became popular in the 1960s and 1970s as celebrities embraced the practice, which involves using a silent mantra to meditate for a period of time daily. It is taught by certified teachers and is used as a method for stress reduction, self-development and relaxation.

Jacqueline, Tess and

Emily

Tess began meditating and studying TM.

“I’ve been on a long journey with that, starting in early 1969,” she explains.

She has a background in entomology and was living and working on a beneficial bug farm in California.

“It was hippie-landia back then,” Tess says. “But that kind of fell apart and I became an insurance agent and met my current husband.”

When the two married, they moved to the East Coast. She was still practicing yoga, having used it as part of her daily health and healing while working through the trauma of her first marriage. When they relocated to New Jersey, she decided to devote herself to yoga and began teaching in 1980 in an old schoolhouse while raising her daughters Jacqueline, Chelsea and Emily.

Emily was 17 when the family made the move to the East Coast.

“Growing up, there was this idea of yoga just as a natural part of life and play,” Emily says. “I remember being in Shoulder Stand as a child, not realizing it was a yoga pose… We would see mom doing yoga and practice it with her. It wasn’t a discipline.”

In college, yoga became more of a discipline for Emily and she started teaching yoga.

“I don’t remember a time when there wasn’t yoga,” Emily says when describing her own yoga journey.

“My own path, I did deviate to some degree,” she says. After she had her daughter, Ella, in 2003, she noticed she had gained a significant amount of weight and was using food to self-soothe. “Immediately after having her, I knew I had yoga and it would be my tool and my remedy.”

Emily also struggled with panic attacks and anxiety and hinted at other things she used to selfsoothe or self-medicate.

“I knew that I had to lose all this weight and I couldn’t go back to using substances, so yoga and meditation became my tool to lose weight, get in shape and become more sound of mind and body. It was really powerful,” she says.

Yoga and meditation did more than heal Emily; they also provided the impetus to go back and pursue her master’s degree in clinical and mental health counseling, including yoga and meditation in her list of healing modalities.

Tess and her husband moved with Jacqueline to Fort Myers in 2004 with the intention of starting a yoga studio. They had already decided on a name — Yoga Joy. In 2005, they saw an advertisement in the back of a yoga journal for a tiny studio in Fort Myers that was for sale called Joyful Yoga. They contacted June Denison, the owner, and arranged to purchase the practice.

“It was like a seed,” Emily says. “The perfect

little seed to water and grow.”

Tess and Jacqueline taught several yoga classes a day in the small studio space in Fort Myers. By 2007, when Emily made the move to join her family, Joyful Yoga had outgrown its space and moved to Bernwood Plaza in Bonita Springs. The new studio featured a larger space for classes and four rooms for spa treatments.

“It changed our business in a lot of ways,” Emily says. “We grew exponentially.”

They moved to their current space near Pelican Landing in Bonita Springs in 2011; it features two yoga studio spaces where almost 50 classes are offered each week. The spa provides a variety of services, including massage therapy, reiki, ayurvedic treatments, hypnotherapy and EMDR therapy, which is led by Emily.

“It is really more like a holistic wellness center at this point,” she says.

Joyful Yoga & Spa has a large staff, including: » Jacqueline, co-owner, ayurvedic lifestyle coach, chakra yoga specialist and integrative yoga therapist » Tess, co-owner, yoga/meditation/ayurveda teacher and TM teacher certified in Primordial Sound Meditation Instruction » Emily, co-owner, licensed mental health counselor, ERYT-500, RYS-200, yoga and meditation Instructor and certified Buti Yoga instructor.

Chelsea, who lives in Austin, is also part of the studio and visits to instruct students in their teacher training program regarding prenatal yoga and how to modify yoga for pregnancy.

“We have a large staff,” Emily notes. “It feels very much like a family… We are all different in the ways we teach. We have our own style and our own qualities and that inspires people. People love the fact that we are a family.”

Emily teaches a few classes each week, a change from when she started and she would split the bulk of the teaching with her mother and sister. She describes her mom as “the queen bee. She is an encyclopedia of yoga.” Her sister, Jackie, is in her eyes “a local guru. She teaches many classes during season and does our teacher training program. When she isn’t in town during season, she does yoga retreats in Costa Rica.”

Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, Joyful Yoga & Spa was looking forward to its 15th anniversary and planning a ceremony with the chamber of commerce. Instead, they’ve made the shift to teaching digitally and working to find the platform and plans that best fit their students, teachers and studio. It was a quick shift, as many already saw digital classes as part of the future landscape of yoga.

“With this health crisis and moving to online platforms, yoga will continue to grow,” Emily says. “It will become more accessible for people. And that’s exciting. It’s been on the backburner for us, and this is our push.”

Offering classes digitally also helps the studio stay in touch with its seasonal students and allows them to continue their practice no matter where they go.

It’s all part of the growth of yoga, something Emily and Tess have been watching over the last 10 years.

“It seems like every month there is a new studio,” Emily jokes. “There is more than enough yoga to go around.”

One of the tenets of yoga is aparigraha, which Emily explains as meaning non-grasping.

“Yoga is not just a physical practice,” Emily explains. “There are also the yamas and niyamas, and those are the moral codes of conduct and personal observances of yoga. And so that’s also what you practice besides and beyond the breathing and meditation.”

That includes making room for all teachers, studios and students — sharing space with all the yoga studios in Southwest Florida.

“We want to spread yoga because we know it is a powerful practice,” Emily says.

“We have so much power,” Tess adds. “So much more power than we even know.”

Tapping into that power, especially in times of trouble, is just part of who they are, the journey they’ve been on from bug farm to Fort Myers, the energy and talents they have shared and continue to share as the studio celebrates its anniversary.

“We always look for the potential out of any sort of darker time,” she notes. “We can always look for a silver lining, and this may be it. The pandemic is scary, and there are also good things. Maybe people will discover yoga, reconnect with family — and so many beautiful things can be born from this.”

Brad and Audrey Vance enjoy the scenery at Lake

Louise in the Canadian Rockies.

THE NEW VAGABONDS STORY BY ANDREA STETSON | PHOTOS SPECIAL TO GRANDEUR

Audrey and Brad Vance sold their Bonita Springs home and hit the road for a year of travel.

or Audrey and Brad Vance, life is now a vacation. The couple retired, sold their home in Bonita Springs, and spent the past year traveling around the United States exploring everything from popular tourist attractions to little known gems.

Audrey was the first city attorney for Bonita Springs. She spent 18 years there and a total of 30 years in Lee County. Her husband is a civil engineer who worked for the Lee County Division of Natural Resources and the Florida Department of Transportation for 20 years and later worked as a private consultant.

When the couple retired, they decided that life should be an adventure. In May 2019 they left Florida in a minivan to begin their life on the road.

“It’s a lot of planning,” Audrey says. “It is a lot different than when I was working and booked a trip for two or three weeks. It is totally different when you are traveling full time.”

It is all about being organized, planning, looking for deals and having a long-term plan.

“We went as fast as we could out of the United States into Canada, so we could do the Alaska-Canada highway,” Audrey says.

The Vances loved traveling that famous highway.

“It’s very scenic,” Audrey says. “You see everything from buffalo and bears to mountain goats. It is everything we wanted to see.”

Audrey posted often on Facebook, and her friends and family got to enjoy hundreds of photos and stories. They stayed mostly at Airbnbs, but also took a tent.

Audrey took this photo of her husband at Zion National Park. She says it’s the smallest photo of her husband. The couple hiked for several hours in the park. “Zion National Park is probably the most crowded park in the USA,” Audrey says. “However, Kolob Canyons is somewhat desolate, so the trail has lots of space.”

“In some areas, especially along the highway or in Lake Watson, there was not one room to be had, so we got a provincial campsite,” Audrey says. “Twelve dollars for a campsite; that was our cheapest lodging.”

Their journey took them to waterfalls, areas with lots of wildlife and hot springs. They rented one Airbnb for a month in Anchorage and did numerous day trips. They bought bicycles and explored the town. The Vances took a cruise to see parts of Alaska not accessible by vehicle. They explored Exit Glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park when their son Ben came to visit them. Audrey and Brad traveled as far north as Utqiagvik and to Cape Wrangell, the westernmost point in the United States. One of their top picks was Portage Valley.

“The Portage Glacier was amazing,” Audrey says. The Vances loved Valdez, too.

“It was like the flowers were on steroids,” Audrey says. “The waterfalls were all going crazy. It was crazy beautiful.”

The couple left Alaska in September and headed to British Columbia to visit Vancouver, Vancouver Island, Banff and Lake Louise.

“We did a lot of Canadian national parks,” Audrey says.

Sometimes it was the journey, not the destination that Brad liked best.

“We were coming down through Canada, and there is a road that comes east of Vancouver that is amazing,” Brad explains. “There are things you see when you travel that are not a destination.”

Audrey says sometimes it’s the surprises that she remembers most fondly.

“They have Badlands in Canada,” Audrey says. “It is something you would never expect. You drive an hour or two through farm fields and then you come to these Badlands. It is unbelievable, and it is unexpected. It is a part of the world that just opened up where you didn’t expect it.”

They loved the Hells Canyon National Recreation Area, Crater Lake National Park and Klamath Falls, Oregon. Hells Canyon was one of Brad’s favorite places.

“We saw some of the not well-known national parks,” Brad says. “They have their own uniqueness.”

Their trip often took them back and forth from west to east to west.

“I like to think it more like a migration,” Audrey says. “We were working with weather patterns.”

They were also working with costs.

“We are very price conscious on this trip,” she says. “We don’t have an unlimited budget. I looked for sales on time shares. We ended up places where I found a good deal.”

For example, they spent a week in Palm Springs, California, when Audrey found a time share for $267 a week.

They spent some autumn days in Nevada.

“The only time we ever saw Tahoe (before this trip), it was covered with snow in the winter, and it was completely different this time,” Brad says. “This was the first time Audrey had ever seen leaves changed. They don’t change in Miami. That was a new experience for her.”

Brad again pointed to the journey as some of his favor

During their time in Sante Fe, New Mexico, the Vances took a day trip to Taos. They came across this bridge at the Rio Grande Gorge.

ite experiences. He especially enjoyed the road between Mesquite, Nevada, and St. George, Utah.

“The highway goes through mountains and that had some neat landscape,” he explains. “It is just the unexpected things you see on the road.”

Zion National Park was crowded, but they found secluded trails to hike.

“If you are there for a short period of time, you are going to do what everybody else does, but when you are there for a long time, you do the things where nobody else travels,” Brad explains.

“What was really amazing was when we went to Zion in the main area, we couldn’t get a parking space, so we went to some of the other areas of the park that were more sublime,” Audrey adds. “It was fall and the colors were amazing. We took a really good 5-hour hike.”

They did the popular South Rim of the Grand Canyon and then headed to the more secluded North Rim.

“The North Rim — there is a whole different look to the park,” Audrey says.

Then they headed to Phoenix and Sedona, traveled through Texas and went to Louisiana. They spent a couple of weeks with family in Shreveport. Then it was on to northern Florida to explore Jacksonville and St. Augustine. They headed to Myrtle Beach, Williamsburg and Washington, D.C., then back to Gainesville to visit one of their sons.

The Vances are true vagabonds. Before starting their trip, they sold their home in Bonita Springs and put everything in storage. They purchased a Dodge Grand Caravan because it has stow-and-go seats and lots of storage. But they still want the occasional feeling of home. So they carve out time to visit their son Ben in Washington, D.C., and their son Jonathan in Gainesville. They also organized a family Christmas in Louisiana.

“We want to be with our kids for essentials,” Audrey says. “Traveling does not take the place of family.”

Most of their traveling days entailed 5 to 6 hours on the road. The beginning of the trip was longer 10-hour driving days. They also had a very long drive from New Mexico to Billings, Montana.

Audrey loves her adventures, but there are some things she misses.

“I miss things like my KitchenAid mixer,” she admits. “I miss making homemade mashed potatoes, just normal comforts. But getting out of your comfort zone is one of the things I like about traveling. We see things that we would not normally have seen. I miss having a washing machine that I know how it works all the time.”

Audrey and Brad say the trip was more than a vacation. “It is a way to reinvent ourselves,” Audrey says.

They hope traveling will help them determine where they want to live in the future and what they would like to do. They are not done traveling, but their plans are now in limbo. The couple had planned to travel all over Europe next. With the coronavirus, that’s on hold.

“We were actually thinking about starting that this summer, but we will now put that off for a year,” Brad says.

“The plan had been to do this in Europe,” Audrey adds. “I feel confident I can do this type of trip overseas. Until all the health issues are resolved as far as the pandemic, I am not booking anything.”

The Vances share some advice for people who might contemplate a year on the road.

“We learned to try to book at least two to three nights in the hotel, so you had time to explore the city. We didn’t want it to just be a drive and a night,” Audrey explains. “However you book your things, stay with the same companies for loyalty points.”

Audrey advises packing efficiently.

“I have my base clothing and I layer and add a piece here and there,” Audrey explains. “Because I have the restraints on storage, I have worn the same shoes the last six months.”

Those shoes are Asics sneakers.

“You learn to get by on less when you are traveling,” Audrey says.

Talk to locals, she advises.

“Going to the laundromat you meet people and learn about library talks and other things,” she says. “The best tip in a laundromat was to go to a poetry reading at a library in west Yellowstone. You have all this normal stuff you can do, but this was something different.

“You also get restaurant tips. Also it’s learning about different people and different people’s ways.”

For those who want to travel the Alaska Highway, there is one travel guide Audrey recommends.

“Milepost is the bible for doing this trip,” she says. “It is like buying a telephone book. It tells you each mile marker and area facts, like where to get gas, camping, where to stay.”

Another top tip is budgeting.

“Stay within your budget; that is the most important thing,” Audrey says. “Create a budget and stick to it or try to beat your budget, so that you are not broke from doing what you are doing.”

LIGHT VIEWS

STORY BY ANDREA STETSON &

With 5,665 feet under air, the Fontaine model in Quail West capitalizes on natural light and a beautiful landscape.

T

he new Fontaine model in Quail West doesn’t just highlight views at the back of the home, it also highlights the front of the house. Inside the great room, sliding glass doors lead to the lanai. On the other side of the room, floor-toceiling windows overlook a secluded patio on the front of the house and two water elements on either side of the entrance.

“There are not many houses out there with this much glass,” says Ben McGarvey, senior project manager for McGarvey Custom Homes. “During the day you don’t have to turn the lights on. At the front of the house the whole wall is also glass.”

“It’s a great feature,” adds Arlynn McDaniel, interior designer with Freestyle Interiors. “So you are really pulling in the outside into the home. It really opens it up for a lot of natural light in the house.”

The four-bedroom home has four full and two half bathrooms and a three-car garage. It spans 5,665 square feet under air with a total 8,658 square feet of living space.

ABOVE: The designer used a pallet of gray throughout the Fontaine model. In the living room the built-in nooks beside the television match the same gray as the wine area and the kitchen islands. FACING PAGE CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: The Fontaine model in Quail West has four bedrooms and four and a half bathrooms. It is one of the larger McGarvey Custom Homes models. •There are many places in eat in the Fontaine model from this long kitchen island, to the dining area, to the outdoor table. This kitchen has two islands, one for preparing food and the other for eating. • There is a large outdoor living area under roof in the Fontaine model. The designer created a lot of intricate ceilings throughout the home and even added depth and wood to the ceiling on the lanai.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: The master bathroom has two toilets, two sinks and even two shower heads at either end of the glass walled shower. The only thing there is one of is the tub. • The spacious lanai with its pool, spa, eating area, outdoor kitchen and sitting area overlooks the 10th hole of The Lakes golf course at Quail West. • The den is more of another sitting area than a work space. There is a long table for work, but most of the room is decorated in comfy couches and chairs. • The master suite spans the entire side of the home. There is not only lots of room for a king-sized bed, but there is a sitting area with a lounger, night tables, dresser and still plenty of floor space. • A side outdoor sitting area.

“This is one of our bigger homes,” Ben says.

The spacious great room features a palette of grays. The built-in nooks beside the television match the gray of the wine area by the dining room. The same gray wood continues on the double kitchen islands.

“For the size of this house, we had to add an extra island, so we didn’t have this much dead space,” Ben explains. “It adds extra storage plus extra seating.”

One island has a sink and is more of a serving area, while the other has plush chairs beside it and becomes a dining place.

The kitchen has all Wolf appliances. Ben says they opted to pay more to have black knobs rather than the signature Wolf red knobs.

“It just makes everything look a little cleaner,” he says.

The eight-person dining room table looks formal, but it is all part of the open great room.

The dining area ends by a tall gray entertainment center-style piece that houses two wine refrigerators, some art work and a small bar.

The living room is large enough for two coffee tables centered between a couch and four plush chairs.

Arlynn says designing such a big open space was a challenge.

“Because it is such a large area, I needed to come up with a way to define each space,” she says. “The kitchen area, the dining area and the living room area each have their own ceiling detail, yet they speak to each other at the same time. The ceilings are the real wow factor of that room.”

The ceilings all feature a variety of levels in geometric shapes, but each room has its own style. The intricate ceilings continue in the master suite and the guest rooms.

The master bedroom spans one side of the home. The king-size bed is covered with a bright white quilt and navy pillows. There’s a plush lounger nestled by a wall of windows. A glass door leads to the lanai.

“It has lots and lots of natural light,” Ben says.

Between the bedroom and the two walk-in

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: The dining room area is large enough for a rectangular table for eight people. The sliding glass doors open up to the lanai where there is another large table. A wine bar is inserted in the wall just beyond the dining room table. • The new Fontaine model at Quail West recently received the superior award from the Collier County Building Industry Association in the $4.5 to $5 million category. One of the things that make it so special is there is lots of glass on both the front and the back sides of the home. • The Fontaine model is very large so the designer used techniques such as different ceiling designs, multiple tables and wall inserts to break up the huge areas and make the home feel more cozy. tropical colors.

closets is a nook with a large round mirror and a table.

“We didn’t do a sit-down vanity in the master bath, so I thought that was a neat space for makeup or a jewelry area or for her little writing desk,” Arlynn says. “It is kind of a multi-use area.”

The bathroom has two of everything except the tub. There are two toilets, two sink areas and even two shower heads at either end of the shower, which has glass walls on both sides. The exterior glass wall looks out to a small garden hidden behind a tall wall for privacy.

The nearby den doubles as another sitting room. While there is a long white desk and some cabinets, most of the room is decorated more like a small living room. A long chaise lounge creates a buffer between the desk and sitting area. There are chairs, a television and a wall of windows overlooking the lanai.

The guest rooms are clustered on the other side of the home. They all have a bathroom and walk-in closets.

The VIP suite looks like another master bedroom. There is a king-size bed with a long ottoman at the foot. Three windows overlook the garden

and two more windows frame the sides of the bed.

Another guest room has three padded ottomans by the foot of the bed.

In the third guest suite, sliding glass doors lead to the garden patio in the front of the house. Glass doors from the hallway also lead to this garden.

Arlynn created a sitting area among the greenery on this patio by adding four chairs and a table.

By the garage entrance to the home is a drop zone area with a bench and cabinets.

While McGarvey Custom Homes did create scenic features in the front of the house, they also made the back full of grand luxuries. Under the stained cypress ceiling of the lanai is a sitting area, a table that seats eight and an outdoor kitchen. Beyond the roofline is the pool with a raised spa and a raised sun shelf. It all overlooks the 10th tee on The Lakes golf course.

The home recently received the superior award for a house in the $4.5 million to $5 million range from the Collier Building Industry Association. Its award-winning status helped prompt a family who already lived in Quail West to purchase the furnished model.