May 2026

The Way the Corners Turn….

Dear Yogis/Yoginis ,

There is a painting in the Shala — easy to walk past, but once seen, hard to forget: Your day will go the way the corners of your mouth turn.

It sounds almost too simple. And then it stays with you.

These days, moving those corners upward takes effort. Whatever your beliefs, your particular corner of concern, you might feel the weight of the world right now. That is real. The ancient teachings didn’t promise a world without dukkha — the Sanskrit word for the suffering, friction and impermanence woven into human life. They offered tools for moving through it with more grace, and one of those tools has always been each other, community.

Two Nobel Peace laureates who knew suffering intimately — and still laughed more than anyone — knew this too. The Dalai Lama and Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s is a beautiful reminder that joy is not a reward for when things get easier. It is a practice, available right now.

And here is something worth remembering: the simple physical act of turning the corners of your mouth upward , smiling— even before you feel like it — triggers a real chemical response in the body. Endorphins release. Something softens. A simple sweetness of being. This is not bypassing reality. It is exercising one of the most quietly radical powers we have: choice. How do I want to be in this instant? How do I want to feel?

This is where our yoga practice becomes essential. Through stillness, through introspection, through breath, through the yogic art of viveka — discernment — we begin to see beyond the noise of our conditioning. The mind quiets. And in that quietness, something opens. We notice we have more options than we thought. More paths. More ways to meet this moment. We can, quite literally, rewrite the story.

This is what sangha makes possible — the Sanskrit word for community, for the companions who walk the path alongside us. Not because we all agree (we don’t, and we shouldn’t), but because something shifts when we sit together with a shared intention. We remember we are not alone. And in that remembering, joy becomes possible again.

So this season, we are making room for exactly that —joy, connection, lightness- and we invite you to join us:

⭐️ Conversations & Connections : donation-based evenings weaving mindfulness, open dialogue and shared wisdom.

✨ Monday May 4th, 6:30pm — led by Barbara Franzino

✨ Monday May 11th, 6:30pm — led by Evelyne Serais 

⭐️ Free Community Healing Circle : an open gathering to breathe, connect and remember we are not alone, Saturday May 16th, 5:30pm .

⭐️ Line Dance Class : because sometimes the best medicine is music, movement and a little laughter, Saturday May 9th, 4:30pm .

All events and registration are on our website.

Can you be the one to bring a smile to someone’s face today? And when you walk through the Shala door, remember what waits for you here, in the words of the beloved Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, rendered in calligraphy on our wall: You have arrived. You are home.

-Evelyne