Central Iowa Yoga Retreat
The schedule is always changing, just like the earth. Check back for updates!
Join us for the 2025 Central Iowa Yoga Retreat!
Staying true to our roots of growing community, these sessions will help you ground your body on the earth. Our schedule was designed to help you plant seeds of possibility to grow and bloom in new directions. We’ll recommit to taking care of ourselves as integral members of Mother Earth.
This schedule will continue to evolve, just as the earth does!
| Time | Session |
|---|---|
| 8:30 am | Morning & Full Retreat Registration |
| 9:00 am | Welcome & introductions |
| 9:10 am | Morning Program: Move, meditate, and mingle. |
| 12:00 pm | Lunch |
| 12:00 pm | Afternoon Registration |
| 1:00 pm | Afternoon Session 1 |
| 2:15 pm | Afternoon Session 2 |
| 3:30 pm | Afternoon Session 3 |
| 4:30 pm | Closing |
Get to know the sessions and instructors!
Each session and the teachers who lead them will offer a unique perspective, experience and flavor. Some favorites return from the past, and fresh faces are here to inspire you. It’s a stellar lineup that will help you bloom!
Morning Program
Ben will launch the day with a stunning community practice. Next up is Bethany and Heather who will encourage us to pay attention to our bodies. Then, time to reflect, and set intentions, and focus on breath in a sound bath with Hannah.
Community Practice with Ben Spellman
Ben Spellman
With an infectious enthusiasm for life, it’s easy to understand how Ben Spellman became known as Good Vibes. Always an athlete, Ben first explored yoga at the University of Northern Iowa. While enduring tests and challenges, he turned to yoga again when he was provided a list of 90 yoga poses. To reflect and move forward, Ben used that list to learn, and to become a passionate practitioner. His everyday commitment to learning and exploration of all styles and practices molds his teaching.
After working at many yoga studios in Iowa and beyond, he founded Good Vibes Yoga as an all-inclusive community emanating good energy and soulful experiences. Here, you are part of a movement to connect, feel, breathe, love, unite.
He believes in, and delivers yoga for everybody to experience – to get that vibe. He reinvests class donations to grow the community and keep the movement moving. Whether you donate a dime or just commit your time, come be present with us! If you’re ready to experience the power of yoga.
SomaYoga with Bethany Grabe and Heather Moon
What happens when we give ourselves the opportunity to slow down and simply be? Maybe we’d get the chance to know our true being a little better. SomaYoga gives us the tools to sense and feel the body from the inside-out to better understand how we carry ourselves throughout our everyday lives, like walking down the street or in a yoga class. In this session, we will become more aware of our natural posture, easy breathing, and identify held tension patterns which we can apply both on and off the mat.
Bethany and Heather both come from Vinyasa backgrounds, but have found more ease and awareness through the practice of SomaYoga.
Bethany has been practicing yoga for over 15 years and has found great comfort in sharing her personal journey and applying SomaYoga to traditional yoga through her teachings and business, Begin Again Yoga in Indianola.
Heather has been practicing for over 30 years and became a teacher because she loves to share her learnings, especially when it comes to accessibility for every body. She teaches at DM Wellness in Des Moines.
The two have practiced together since 2019 and recently obtained 500-HR certifications from the same program with Yoga North SomaYoga Institute out of Duluth, MN with guidance from Pam Steinick, Atha Yoga, right here in Des Moines.
Bethany: Begin Again Yoga ❯
Heather: Heather Moon Yoga ❯
Sound Bath with Hannah Rush
Sound baths are guided instrumental meditations. Utilizing instruments tuned to specific frequencies to relax the body, calm the mind, clear the subconscious and activate the body’s natural healing systems.
RESONATE Sound Baths are structured to take the body and mind through the different stages of sleep, tapping into Alpha and Theta brainwaves that are active during deep REM sleep. Restoring and repairing the parasympathetic, nervous and glandular systems within the body.
Hannah Rush is a Sound Healer and Yoga Instructor. She studied sound alchemy under Ana Netanel learning ancient gong practices and crystal singing bowl techniques.
Hannah is a 200hr KRI Kundalini Yoga practitioner as well as a 200hr RYT Yoga instructor. She trained under Guru Jagat, Tej, Harijawan, Gurujas and Hannah Muse. Hannah has showcased her practice at festivals, private retreats and events, and been a personal instructor to celebrities.
RESONATE was created in 2018 with the intention to spread healing practices passed down by past masters and teachers to future generations through vibration, mantra and movement.
Afternoon Sessions
Choose from three great offerings per time slot. No need to sign up ahead of time; go with the flow. More information and schedule coming soon.
1:00 Sessions
Yin Restorative Fusion
Yin restorative fusion class with the theme of taking the journey
Zach Johnson
The class will paint the picture of a yoga journey through the movement and poses of the class. It will offer a time of holding space for the students to feel and explore their body and emotions through each of the poses. For those who are new to yoga it will offer the opportunity to explore the concepts of opening up, closing in, holding space and exploring movement. For the seasoned students it will offer the opportunity to remember their journey or take time to explore themselves again.
Travel Around the Hips
In this slow moving explorative class, take a journey around your hips with a mobility-infused yoga sequence.
Explore dynamic and passive movements that will guide your ability to activate and release, build control, and heighten your hip awareness. Ground with a closing meditation in your newly awakened hips.
Lisa Acheson, RYT-500 stepped into her first yoga class her senior year of college desperate to feel better in her body. Twenty years later her yoga practice continues to be an anchor practice for her own well-being. Today in her 14th year of teaching, she strives to be curious and open-minded pulling from multiple styles, healing modalities, and movement techniques to create a practice that cultivates curiosity of self and still incites the magic of enabling her students to feel better in their bodies. She teaches at Shakti Yoga in Des Moines.
Kundalini
Energize, revitalize and upgrade your life with the technology and tools of Kundalini Yoga.
Kundalini Yoga is the yoga of awareness that combines movement, mantra, breath and meditation. Using these tools to work together to activate the energetic and subtle bodies to achieve physical and mental prosperity. RESONATE Kundalini classes include physical yoga, breath work, mantra, meditation and gong baths.
Hannah Rush is a Sound Healer and Yoga Instructor. She studied sound alchemy under Ana Netanel learning ancient gong practices and crystal singing bowl techniques.
Hannah is a 200hr KRI Kundalini Yoga practitioner as well as a 200hr RYT Yoga instructor. She trained under Guru Jagat, Tej, Harijawan, Gurujas and Hannah Muse. Hannah has showcased her practice at festivals, private retreats and events, and been a personal instructor to celebrities.
RESONATE was created in 2018 with the intention to spread healing practices passed down by past masters and teachers to future generations through vibration, mantra and movement.
2:15 Sessions
Yoga and Crystal Healing
Select your crystal intuitively, then dive into a yoga asana practice, harmonizing your energy with your chosen stone.
Lily Allen-Dueñas is the founder of the Wild Yoga Tribe and host of the Wild Yoga Tribe podcast. She has taught yoga classes and wellness workshops all over the world. Her journey has led her to a life of flexibility, fluidity, and has fostered a vast reservoir of compassion, curiosity, and creativity. She teaches at Inner Space and Power Life in Des Moines, and teaches yoga often with nonprofit organizations such as Special Olympics, Easter Seals, and at the YMCA Supportive Housing Campus.
Restorative Yoga
Restorative yoga asks students to use supportive props to help hold poses for longer periods to open areas of the body central to a full range of yoga poses.
Restorative yoga was created by B.K.S Iyengar early in the 1930s to accommodate students with various bodily challenges who came to his school in Pune, India. He created various “props” that enabled students, who had been injured and/or had limited joint mobility, to do the poses he taught. Later, the restorative practice became a distinct teaching. It asks students to use supportive props to help hold poses for longer periods to open areas of the body central to a full range of yoga poses. It is a restful and quiet practice that also enables us to explore resistance and limitation. The practice assumes some experience with yoga.
Joseph is a long-time practitioner and teacher at Shakti Yoga in Des Moines. His teaching draws primarily on the alignment-based traditions of Iyengar and Anusara Yoga. He regularly teaches a restorative yoga class at Shakti Yoga, located in the Black Box Movement Space, 1221 Center St.
Magical Movement
Experience a harmonious fusion of strength, mobility, agility, and flow. Step into your personal power and joy with a mix of guided and free movement. Receive guidance to connect your breath with movement to elevate and balance your energy.
Sandi Hoover, RN
It is said we teach the lessons we most need to receive. I’ve been teaching yoga and movement classes for over 23 years and am still learning so much. For many years I was a yoga studio owner and embraced a niche of teaching yoga and workshops to expectant and new mothers as well as leading yoga teacher trainings.
Beyond 500+ hour yoga certification I’m also certified in Prenatal Yoga and am a Core and Pelvic Floor Specialist. I am a Certified Wellness Coach and have been a Teaching Reiki Master for almost 20 years. I am a Multiple Sclerosis Certified Nurse currently working as a Nurse Educator.
My focus through my business She Moves Me is on celebrating the wisdom of women, easing transitions and bringing magic to the mundane through movement and energy. I am so grateful to share a piece of this with YOU!
Website: She Moves Me ❯
Facebook: She Moves Me ❯
Instagram: She Moves Me ❯
3:30 Sessions
Breathwork
Breathing is the process of taking air into and expelling it from the lungs. Breathing – the passage of air into and out of the lungs – is movement, one of the fundamental activities of living things.
According to the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, there are eight categories of Pranayama but there are said to be anywhere from 400-600 individual techniques that direct and re-direct one’s vital life force. While the techniques may be great, the outcome and ultimate state of Pranayama is one of an even, unbroken, quiet, and prolonged breath. From this state, the physical body softens while the mental body becomes steady and calm.
Join Stephie for this exploratory workshop of the techniques of pranayama to aid in clearing the subtle energy channels in order to grow in the capacity and receptivity of one’s innate aliveness and vitality.
Stephie Foley
Stephie’s earliest memories of yoga are of standing in shoulderstand with her mom and the Jane Fonda vinyl playing in the background. Stephie’s first “official” yoga class did not come until the late ’90’s when working for a touring children’s theatre company. She fell in love all over again. Wanting to share that love, Stephie’s journey led her to the east coast and Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health. There, she has completed the 200 and 500-hour teacher training programs and has been given the honor of being named an acharya (teacher of wisdom). She continues to study in the Kripalu and Pranakriya tradition with master-level teacher Yoganand Michael Carroll. Stephie’s thirst for knowledge and quest to uncover the connection between the yoga techniques and mental health has taken her to study with the pioneering teachers of trauma sensitive yoga, Dave Emerson and Jenn Turner. Through the Center for Trauma and Embodiment at JRI, she has completed the 300-hour Trauma Center Trauma Sensitive Yoga (TCTSY) facilitator program. Stephie’s intent is to provide various tools and techniques so that students are able to take the teachings from the mat and apply them in their daily life. Stephie’s classes combine her love of fluid movement and breath work to create a meditation in motion – allowing for inquiry and exploration of one’s true Self.
Rhythm, the Elements and the Chakras
You are invited into a direct experience of Akashic Evolution and Karmic Unfolding! What would it be like to remember our cosmic status and to align ourselves with the flow and rhythms of the Earth and Cosmos? How do the Cakras and Bhutas (elements) guide our evolution? How can we consciously tune to our True Frequency and live into our Sacred Role in the ecosystem? What does spiritual sovereignty feel like? This experience is designed to reawaken full spectrum awareness, dharmic purpose, and Self Love.
Zaria James
Zaria (she/her) is a lifelong student and a deeply devotional yoga practitioner. Zaria’s journey has led her through the fires of continual awakening, karmic healing, and a deep desire to ask big questions, gain wisdom, and pass what she finds along to others.
Zaria is a Yoga Teacher, Yoga Therapist, Comparative Mysticism Educator and DEI Facilitator. She has received advanced training in Yoga Philosophy, History, and Yogic Counseling, with connections to multiple lineages and streams. Zaria merges Yoga Therapy, Ayurvedic Medicine, and Vedic Astrology, informed by her background in social service delivery, community organizing, and non-profit work.
Zaria’s community work has been focused on serving folks with chronic mental health challenges, intellectual disabilities, LGBTQIA populations, as well as working and supporting incarcerated folks and those returning to the community post-incarceration.
Her academic background includes social justice, human rights, metaphysics, religious studies, and international sustainable development.
These days, Zaria is synthesizing this experience to offer yoga therapy, yoga nidra, and sound healing containers for grassroots visions for collective liberation.
May we bow to the lineage of realized beings from all the world’s guiding traditions, and may we live with Divine Love in our hearts as we honor The Living Divine in All Being, known by Many Names.
Please bring your own yoga mat, straps and blocks. We will not provide props this year.
