About Us
An exquisitely restored New England barn located in a beautiful pondside meadow, the Yoga Barn is a transformational space for yoga and bodywork. The light-filled studio will inspire you to deepen your practice under the expert instruction of our teaching staff. Two comfortably appointed bodywork rooms offer the best in massage therapies and traditional Chinese medicine to enhance your well-being.
Our building is as yogic as we could make it. We salvaged as much as possible of the Vermont dairy barn that it was and then rebuilt it here on Martha's Vineyard with recycled plastic shingles on the roof, sustainably harvested cedar side walling, plaster walls painted with low-no VOC paints and bamboo flooring throughout. Appliances are all of the highest efficiency available, even the variable speed well water pump. The radiant-heat system is powered by our 10 kW turbine and the antique frame is surrounded by one of the tightest modern building envelopes on Martha's Vineyard plus super-insulation of over R-50 in the roof and over R-40 in the exterior walls. Even the low-e coating on the glass makes the insulated-glass casement windows more efficient at heat absorption in winter and deflection in summer. We glass in our porch in winter to take advantage of the passive solar gain to that southeast facing end of the YogaBarn.
We use only environmentally friendly Green Irene cleaning products and we wash all our laundry, including organic cotton hand towels and sheets, with phosphorous-free, low impact detergents to keep the septic system as gentle as can be on the ground water table. The solar panels on the roof of our home are yoked to the YogaBarn electrical system so they send electricity here anytime it is in abundance after the demand is met at home. We use toilet paper that is made from the greatest recycled content that we can find, and our office paper is 100% recycled. We give away our carbon filtered well water, and also sell local spring water of the highest quality. We are working up a design for our own organic cotton, environmentally friendly printed shirts - coming for summer 2011. We recycle all business by products and carry in trash that we can at our local waste transfer station.
And people are managed in a green way here as well. We welcome the community to a free class every Friday PM (April 1st- December 31st). The studio is provided free those nights, and we pay volunteer teachers a stipend of $25. Teachers share the income from every single student that pays for a class at the Yoga Barn, and, in fact, have a larger take than does the Yoga Barn business entity. We are working toward additional benefits for teachers, and we have partnered with Kripalu Center and four other local organizations as leader and sole funder of a Yoga in the Schools pilot program. We have great hopes that this program will evolve into an island-wide project that enhances mind-body hygiene for local students, with the potential to positively influence the U.S. Department of Education to provide funding for mind-body hygiene in the form of yoga as a preventive and holistic health program/systemic tool that has the potential to educate individuals and communities in ways of moral autonomy, mastery, wisdom and compassion.
The Yoga Barn is on South Road, just over the Chilmark town line, .5 mile from Alley's General Store. Google us at 1 Red Barn Road, West Tisbury, MA 02575.
