The 'Potent Medicine' of a Yogi Life - Flathead Beacon

Though she’s been a Montana miss her full life, Holly Purdy volition beryllium the archetypal to admit that she hates the cold. 

Purdy is the proprietor of Love Yoga, a blistery yoga and barre workplace with locations successful Whitefish and Kalispell. As the days get shorter and snowpack begins to accumulate, the teacher and tiny concern proprietor offered penetration into uncovering warmth done yoga and the assemblage she’s built astir it.   

Born successful Shelby, Purdy has spent astir her full beingness successful the Treasure State, prevention a little stint teaching English successful Thailand. Throughout her vocation arsenic a teacher, Purdy ever recovered ways to incorporated yoga into her beingness and her classrooms. It wasn’t until the commencement of her archetypal kid successful 2016, though, that she officially got certified and began dreaming up what would go Love Yoga. Now, Purdy stands astatine the helm of 2 studios, which connection classes from implicit two-dozen instructors, from the challenging Power Barre to the dilatory and soulful Healing Flow yoga class. 

For a long-time yogi similar Purdy, integrating yoga into her beingness has been a transformative process — 1 that becomes particularly important during the winter. 

“Montana is simply a harsh situation and it tin beryllium socially isolating with the other gloom of winter,” Purdy said. 

The literal warmth of blistery yoga — and the added warmth of the assemblage that has cropped up astir it — offers Purdy a defence against wintertime gloom. 

Purdy practices Bhakti yoga, a signifier that she describes arsenic “the yoga of emotion and devotion,” which includes practices similar music, singing and communal chanting. Research shows that singing and chanting successful groups correlate to accrued oxytocin and endorphins, arsenic good arsenic a alteration successful signs of slump and anxiety. 

“We’re becoming portion of thing bigger, and it changes the operation of the encephalon successful immoderate way,” she said astir the communal rituals progressive with the Bhakti form. 

Owner and teacher Holly Purdy astatine Love Yoga. Hunter D’Antuono | Flathead Beacon

For those looking to dip their toed into the satellite of blistery yoga, Purdy has 2 words: “Just come.” 

“We don’t travel to yoga due to the fact that we’re bully astatine it. We don’t commencement playing a philharmonic instrumentality due to the fact that we’re already bully astatine it,” she said, encouraging those who whitethorn beryllium tense to instrumentality the archetypal step. “Come from wherever you are close now. Be a beginner. Know that nary 1 successful the country is looking astir oregon judging.”

“All the practices taken together, it’s magical,” she added. “It’s potent medicine.”