Letters: Woodstock Yoga Center

Kimberly Truitt in the August 11 issue of the Healthy Hudson Valley supplement made a serious omission when she didn’t mention, in her article “Yogastock”, Woodstock Yoga on Deming St. If anything in our community says Yoga — it is the Woodstock Yoga Center on Deming Street.  Not only are a variety of classes offered for every “faith” of Yoga, the is also a Qi Gong class, a foam rolling class, workshops from skilled teachers, and cultural events — kirtans and concerts.

Woodstock Yoga Center embraces the educational, cultural, and artistic aspects of Woodstock as well as the mental and physical health of Woodstock’s visitors and residents.

It would be nice to see and article, maybe by Ms. Truitt, devoted solely to Woodstock Yoga Center — a true gem of an institution in the heart of our town. At the very least an apology is due, to Woodstock Yoga and the people who work, study, and practice there.

Sincerely,

Karen Sahulka

As a practicing yogini of 35 years, I avidly read the August 11 article in the Woodstock Times, waiting for my current teacher, Barbara Boris, and her exceptional studio, Woodstock Yoga, to be mentioned. Imagine my disappointment when I found no mention of Barbara or the famous studio space where she teaches.
When I moved to this area from Boston in 2006, I asked for recommendations for a teacher who was able to teach the science of yoga with integrity, knowledge and awareness of the possibilities of the practice as it applies to the whole being; physical, mental, emotional, and as a result, spiritual. After trying various classes in Woodstock, I was recommended to Barbara, who was then teaching at Mountainview Studio.  t was with her that I found my yoga cohort and home. She has since become a Certified Iyengar teacher and at Woodstock Yoga on Deming Street, she has developed a friendly, unpretentious, and very grounded environment for the serious yoga student. Woodstock Yoga continues to expand in its offerings of the finest Indian Music, workshops with renowned teachers, readings and commemorative events, as well as all levels of Iyengar Yoga, including classes for seniors and teens.
We are fortunate to live in an area with a wealth of high quality yoga practices available, and many fine teachers. There is certainly something for everyone who wants to practice, but people looking for a serious yoga practice should know about Barbara Boris, Woodstock Yoga, and the Iyengar practice, and have it in their palette of choices.
Thanks for your attention to this oversight.
Dr. Barbara Wild
Saugerties

Thank you Ulster Publishing for including the special section Healthy Hudson Valley on August 11th, the two-page spread about yoga in Woodstock, titled “Yogastock, NY,” in all your papers. Imagine our dismay when the author failed to mention the most prominent, active and vibrant yoga studio in, literally, the middle of Woodstock, Woodstock Yoga Center.

Barbara Boris, who runs the Woodstock Yoga Center, is an integral part of the yoga community here and has supported all facets of healthy, yoga based living and culture for years. She has dedicated her life to a deep understanding of yoga and yoga culture and sharing that with her students and our community. For our purposes, there is no other studio in the local area with a staff as competent, friendly and knowledgeable.

For your author to overlook Barbara and her many dedicated instructors at Woodstock Yoga as well as her contribution to sustaining yoga in our town, is frankly inexcusable. I can’t imagine why a fair and impartial publisher such as Ulster Publishing would allow an editorial oversight of this magnitude.

Rob & Claudia Gahagan

I feel compelled to write to you and inform you of a gross omission made in an Article published in the August 11th Healthy Hudson article page 12 about yoga Studios in Woodstock NY. I am a student at Woodstock Yoga Center a very active dedicated yoga studio run by Barbara Boris. This studio is located in the heart of Woodstock at 6 Deming street. You can find a wide range of yoga classes as well as a community Kirtain, Meditation gatherings, wonderful workshops and incredible classical Indian music concerts. Please see this link https://ulsterpub.staging.wpengineyogacenter.com/ for the Woodstock Yoga Center’s current offerings.

Woodstock Yoga Center is an incredible resource for the community. I am so grateful to Barbara for choosing Woodstock as the home for her center. It is an invaluable resource that our community deserves to know about. The omission of this information from the article reflects poorly on Ulster Publishing as the author appears not very well informed and researched.

Thank you for your attention to this matter,

Corinne Jacobson

I was extremely disappointed when I read the “Yogastock, NY” article by Kimberly Truitt in the August 11, 2016 special “Healthy Hudson Valley” section.  For Woodstock Yoga Center, at 6 Demming Street, to be blatantly left out of a comprehensive feature story about yoga in Woodstock is really mind-boggling.

I have been a student of Barbara Boris and a full time Woodstock resident for the last 17 years.  I study with her both privately and in her classes and specialty workshops at Woodstock Yoga Center.  Barbara and her team are some of the most dedicated, inspiring and knowledgeable yoga instructors that I have ever met, and her studio has an atmosphere of openness, warmth and professionalism.  They are an incredibly important part of our community and to make no mention of Woodstock Yoga Center in your article is hurtful to Barbara (who is an advertiser in your publication) and insulting to her loyal students and friends.   As a small business, Barbara relies heavily on exposure from local publications and for Woodstock Yoga Center to be excluded from her own hometown newspaper’s two page spread on Yoga is ridiculous.

Evie Preston

Woodstock

It is inexplicable that the recent article, “How one community’s  practice keeps growing”, which purports to discuss yoga practice in Woodstock, fails to mention our community’s premier yoga studio, Barbara Boris’ Woodstock Yoga Center.

Ms. Boris, an internationally recognized practitioner and instructor of Yoga Asana, Indian Philosophy and Sanskrit for more than twenty-five years, has assembled a versatile, A List group of instructors, in addition to maintaining her own full teaching schedule. The physically attractive and spiritually centered Studio in the heart of Woodstock is open seven days a week to accommodate its substantial number of devoted students and enthusiastic beginners.

Clearly The Times owes Ms. Boris an apology for its egregious omission.

Richard and Mary Pat McDermott

I was shocked to see Woodstock’s preeminent yoga studio omitted from the “Healthy Hudson Valley” article called “Yogastock, NY”. It was a little like omitting the Smithsonian from an article about D.C. museums. Woodstock Yoga Center, in the heart of Woodstock, is home to the incomparable Barbara Boris, who is the only certified Iyengar teacher in Ulster County, and her dedicated and celebrated roster of teachers. People come from all over America to practice here in Woodstock because of them. Barbara has worked passionately to establish a thriving yoga community in town and it is incredible to see this important Woodstock institution overlooked by your newspaper.

Stacey Jarit

Woodstock

The article on yoga in Woodstock published August 12 in the Woodstock Times “Healthy Hudson Valley” section was very inaccurate.  There are three dedicated yoga studios in Woodstock — Woodstock Yoga which has a focus on Iyengar Yoga was not mentioned at all.
Barbara Boris has been teaching Iyengar Yoga in Woodstock since 1996.
I started studying with her at Mountain View Studio over 10 years ago.  Since 2012 she has a wonderful thriving studio Woodstock Yoga on Deming Street which offers a variety of classes.
The omission of this studio is unbelievable and unacceptable.  I sincerely hope the paper will publish an correction and apology.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Lucy Nurkse

It was surprising and rather remarkable that a recent article (“Yogastock, NY”) published in your supplement, Healthy Hudson Valley, made no mention of Woodstock Yoga!

Perhaps you could make up for the omission by running a story on this beautiful, beloved Woodstock institution? With its strong foundation in the Iyengar tradition and the many gifts it offers our community beyond the mat, I would think that your readers would want to take note!

Maria Bozanto

I was very disappointed to find Woodstock Yoga Center on Deming street omitted from your “Yogastock ” article last week. The owner Barbara Boris is the only certified Iyengar Yoga teacher in this area with over 30 years of experience enriching the lives of her students through a very complete and focused practice. Those of us who have studied with her for years have benefited profoundly. There are currently a diverse array of classes with different teachers whose work complements the study of Iyengar Yoga . There has been a series for teens this summer as well.

For the record she has also bought advertising in this newspaper on a regular basis. Professional Indian music concerts are held in the studio space transformed into an intimate theatre many times each year as well.

Barbara has contributed to many fundraising events in Woodstock as well, recognizing the importance of community health and wellness in mind and body.

Please make sure this kind of negligence in research has oversight in the future.

Lucinda Knaus

Woodstock

I am writing on behalf of my favorite yoga studio, Woodstock Yoga. I was dismayed to see that Woodstock Yoga was not mentioned in the recent Woodstock Times spread on yoga in Woodstock.
Barbara Boris, owner and director, is a veritable treasure. We are so very lucky to have a teacher in our town who studied directly under B.K.S. Iyengar, who brought yoga as we know it to the West, and is responsible for enlightening countless suffering humans on this earth. We have a direct lineage to this modern master, who left his body in 2014, right here in Woodstock! I have studied and in the past, taught, at this yoga center for over a decade, and have seen it change ownership several times. While each owner had a unique offering, Barbara is so very knowledgeable, invests in the yoga center by creating beautiful surroundings and the largest and best-maintained selection of props I have ever seen in any studio. She is dedicated to her students, keeping tabs on who has what current physical challenge, serving the community by offering affordable classes, music, workshops, and generally enriching the lives of many Woodstockers.

As far as I know, hers is the only local studio to pay for advertising in your publication. I think she is owed an apology at the very least, and think it appropriate to feature her and her studio a full-page article in your next issue.

Thank you for your time.

Best wishes,

Alicia Mikles

I am writing in response to Kimberly Truitt’s article on yoga in the Healthy Communities section. I was traveling out of town for a few days and so just had a chance to see the article. As a local yogini who has been practicing yoga for over 20 years, I was astonished at Truitt’s glaring omission of the Woodstock Yoga Center. This is where I practice yoga and maybe a couple of hundred other people every week as well. Truitt inaccurately states that “the hamlet of Woodstock has two dedicated yoga studios, Shakti and Euphoria…Shakti has studios in Saugerties, Kingston and Woodstock.” Woodstock has three studios and they are Shakti Yoga, Euphoria and Woodstock Yoga Center. Shakti has locations at MAC Fitness in Kingston, Saugerties and on Sawkill Road in Kingston (called the Woodstock location). I have taken classes at Euphoria and Shakti and they are great studios also. But Woodstock Yoga Center is actually the other studio located right in the village of Woodstock and Truitt does not mention it at all.  In an article titled Yogastock no less. I believe Woodstock Yoga Center, of those three studios mentioned,  is the only one I have ever even seen advertising in the Woodstock Times almanac section and Truitt does not even mention it. Truitt teaches at Euphoria Yoga but neglects to disclose that either that I could see. Yet she goes far and wide mentioning yoga classes in Chichester, at gyms in West Hurley and other places but omits Woodstock Yoga Center in the center of Woodstock on Deming Street.
I could go on and on about the variety and high standard quality of classes at Woodstock Yoga, the community involvement and dedication, the dedication of Barbara Boris the owner and of the other instructors at Woodstock Yoga but I will keep it more personal, in keeping with the theme of the article. I have taken yoga classes at the places and festivals Truitt mentions in the article. I have taken yoga classes up and down the East Coast from Maine and Montreal to Florida. People do practice yoga for all the reasons Truitt discusses in the article. Woodstock Yoga Center, its community, its classes, everything, has literally saved my life and that is why I feel so strongly about it being left out of the article. I am incredulous I guess. Many yoga teachers actually take classes there themselves. Briefly, my son passed away a little over 3 1/2 years ago when he was 24 years old. I had been practicing yoga at Woodstock Yoga Center (and when it was previously Bliss Yoga) and it had helped me through stressful times before my son passed. Since my precious son passed away, my practice at Woodstock Yoga has been the bedrock, the support, the needed distraction from my grief at times, given me some semblance of control when I felt I have no control over anything else, the physical and emotional strength that yoga gives and that is needed when grieving the unimaginable loss of a child. My passion for Woodstock Yoga Center is not unique here as far as how the people who practice at Woodstock Yoga Center feel about Barbara Boris. Not because she is some kind of superhuman but because she is a super human being. Her yoga practice is inspirational, that is undoubtedly true, but each of us who take her classes can attain this in our own way for ourselves. She makes us feel this — no small feat. There are people in Woodstock Yoga Center classes practicing from teenagers to people in their 80’s. All together. Gay, straight, transgender, international, young, old, healthy, injured, people with cancer, Lyme Disease, thin, overweight, men, women, all are welcomed and it is refreshing. So this is why I felt strongly I had to write to you, the editor. And the other instructors and guest instructors there are professional, excellent, dedicated and passionate as well. The studio makes a positive impact in the Woodstock yoga community and welcomes people from everywhere. Many yogis there are from the city on weekends and in the summer from around the world.  I just thought the oversight of leaving out Woodstock Yoga from the article was something I needed to point out. Thank you.
Sari Grandstaff

I was delighted to see a feature on Woodstock’s yoga scene (“Yogastock, NY” by Kimberly Truitt) in last week’s Healthy Hudson Valley supplement. But my delight quickly turned to dismay when I reached the second paragraph: “The hamlet of Woodstock has two dedicated yoga studios, Shakti and Euphoria…” No, it does not. Woodstock has three such studios, the third being Woodstock Yoga Center on Deming Street. Simply googling “yoga + Woodstock + NY” would have yielded this information. Yet Woodstock Yoga Center is not mentioned once in the article.

Before opening Woodstock Yoga in the center of town four and a half years ago, owner and director Barbara Boris had been teaching yoga in Woodstock for sixteen years. She is one of only a very few certified Iyengar yoga instructors in the area. The Iyengar yoga certification process is arguably the most rigorous in the world, and Barbara trained with the late B.K.S. Iyengar in India on many occasions before his death two years ago. She is also formally trained in or deeply knowledgeable about a number of other yoga and spiritual traditions. I have been a student of Barbara’s for over a decade. She brings to her teaching not just a long set of credentials, but also warmth, compassion, support, and humor.

But beyond Barbara’s qualifications as a yoga teacher, she has created an essential community resource in Woodstock Yoga Center. She and her diverse staff offer a wide variety of types and levels of yoga for all ages and abilities, including donation-based yoga classes and special workshops. Together they draw some of the most accomplished practitioners in the world as guest teachers. The studio itself serves as a venue for kirtan, meditation, Indian music concerts, and other spiritual practices.

Woodstock Yoga Center’s presence in the community is so meaningful to so many that I can only describe this omission as mind-boggling. The slight is not just to Barbara and her dedicated staff, but also to her many devoted students and supporters.

Alexandra Anderson

Woodstock