How often do we give ourselves time to just lie down in the grass and gaze at the clouds?
Christa Mabee, owner of Stratford’s Modo Yoga, has added sunshine to hot yoga. Modo is a specific style of yoga that involves a set-sequence of postures in a heated room, but for the past 10 years, Mabee has also offered her class outside in the grass by the Avon River.
Radiant heat provides an amazing detox. Mabee enthuses that, “your body is responding to heat, and you have to stay focused within the breathing and the posture. It helps to stimulate mental clarity, not to mention flexibility, circulation and mobility. Even if you just lie in the heat, it’s good for you.”
Mabee’s first passion was theatre. She attended theatre school and worked as an actor until life moved her to nearby London. There, she sought outlets. A friend introduced her to yoga. It was the perfect fit.
“For me, it was a beautiful energy-exchange. That connection with people that I would feel while performing, where a synchronicity happens, I could also feel from yoga.”
From outlet to new-found passion, Mabee woke up one morning with an epiphany. She left her office-job and enrolled in a yoga training program in India.
“There were palm trees and elephants walking in the streets,” she said. “India changed my life forever. It was the most incredible experience I’ve ever had.”
When she returned home, she began teaching yoga for Lululemon and for Moksha in London, until the opportunity to own and operate a location in Stratford revealed itself.
“Stratford has always been my favourite place. It feels like the most magical town. It was always a place I wanted to go,” she shares. All the elements of that magical attraction have come to fruition, enabling Mabee to bring her style of yoga to a larger Stratford community through Chair Yoga at the Cedarcroft Place and McCarthy Place Retirement Residences, which evokes such healthy catharsis and gratitude; and, on the day of the summer solstice, Mabee kicks off the summer season with 108 sun salutations by the Avon River.
Highly anticipated, with each 45-minute outdoor class, the popularity and number of practitioners grows.
“It’s a really beautiful experience to take your hot yoga practice outdoors, and be able to feel it in the same way, but with the added bonus of nature, and the abundance of space,” said Mabee. “We’re so lucky to have that in Stratford. The river enables such a great environment. It’s really lovely.”
Meditative, with an added focus on breathing, the class can be surrounded by swans, picnics, and the occasional sound of trumpets from the theatre, but the teacher still holds the space. Now, Mabee has enabled parents to bring their kids to these outdoor experiences too, by adding a Kids by the River yoga class. This enables parents to relax and enjoy their practice, while their kids are also enjoying that same healthy discipline.
“I want people to feel they can have a place to come where they can just stop, lie down, and breath, and to trust other people to hold that space for you, too,” Mabee said. “Without having to speak, just showing up, just being there, no matter how you’re feeling that day, no matter how your body is, it allows more ease and more compassion as we practice together; and at the end of it, you can find peace.”
The green space at Front Street and Lakeside Drive enables this yoga by the river experience with seclusion and serenity for a uniquely authentic immersion into Stratford. How many cities or towns can offer this? “I feel honoured to be able to give back to the community in this way; to be able to offer these classes and take advantage of the beauty of our city,” Maybee says. “Stratford has delivered beyond my wildest dreams. It has responded to my salutations.”
