Baptiste Power of Yoga In the News Baptiste Power of Yoga contact / email Baptiste Power of Yoga testimonials Baptiste Power of Yoga teachers training Baptiste Power of Yoga workshops / retreats Baptiste Power of Yoga on-line store Baptiste Power of Yoga - Family History Baptiste Power of Yoga - story Baptiste Power of Yoga classes Baptiste Power of Yoga

Baptiste Power of Yoga™ in the News
The Power and Potential of Yoga, Meditation and Breathing for the Caregiver
by Sherri Baptiste

Yoga, Meditation and Breathing for the Caregiver 		This is a wonderful article written by Sherri Baptiste that originally appeared in The Career Planning and Adult Development JOURNAL. It is about the challenges many are experiencing with caregiving and the benefits of Yoga in the process.

This is an excerpt of the article:
“   As counselors and coaches, you want to help your clients enjoy fulfilling personal and professional lives. Supporting caregiver clients so they can achieve a healthy balance in their lives can be challenging because they tend to be focused on helping other people rather than themselves. One way to assist caregivers is to introduce them to simple, doable techniques from yoga, meditation and breathing.

Yoga is the oldest system of self-development known and is actively used today by the millions of people. Yoga practices incorporate slow, steady natural weight-bearing, flexibility-enhancing postures that are ideal for everyone.   ”

Read the article in its entirety; the link below is a .pdf document for your reference with the complete text which includes images of yoga poses, references and additional resources for support.
“The Power and Potential of Yoga, Meditation and Breathing for the Caregiver”
Sherri Baptiste Yoga Wheel NorthBay Biz
Excerpt from: NorthBay Biz, May, 2007
Author: Karen Leland
[All articles in NorthBay Biz by this author]

Expanded treatment options are changing the face of spas.

Beyond the gym
As it turns out, the idea of broadening the gym concept beyond a place to work out with weights isn’t all that new. In 1934, former Mr. America Walt Baptiste recognized there was more to fitness than was currently being offered in the San Francisco gyms of his day. Realizing the power of the mind/body connection, Baptiste was one of the first to create fitness studios that brought together yoga, weight training and even juice bars—cutting-edge workout wisdom for the early 20th century.

Today, his daughter Sherri Baptiste continues the tradition. Baptiste, author of Yoga With Weights for Dummies (John Wiley & Sons, 2006), is a prominent Bay Area fitness teacher, offering classes at Gold’s Gym, Bay Club Marin, the Marin Jewish Community Center, Nautilus and Westerbeck Ranch, among others. She believes the most successful gyms are those that have a wider perspective when it comes to enhancing members’ overall well-being.

“Fitness isn’t just about picking up weights or taking an aerobics class,” says Baptiste. “All the best new gyms today are being developed with performance enhancing equipment in the weight rooms as well as yoga studios, Pilates rooms, mind/body programs, spas and child care facilities.”

Within the past year, Baptiste has seen significantly increased demand for her services from gyms and, in response, recently began offering Yoga with Weights classes at Gold’s Gym and Bay Club Marin in Corte Madera (the latter is one of the largest health clubs in Marin and a leader in the field of gym/spa partnering).

Read the article in its entirety at NorthBay Biz
Yoga to Go Yoga to GoYoga To Go Newsletter
Expert Interview Series
Click here to read the, Interview with Yoga Expert Sherri Baptiste

Dear Friends,

Welcome to our "Interview with Yoga Experts Series." This special edition of Yoga To Go's newsletter features our interviews with expert yoga teachers from around the world. These are teachers who are shaping the future of yoga and who I personally find inspiring. Through these interviews, you'll learn about their own journeys with yoga, as well as practical advice you can use to deepen your own yoga practice.
Nancy Wile

Click here to read the, Interview with Yoga Expert Sherri Baptiste 
Inner IDEA Inner IDEA
Move Yourself, Move the World
Thursday, September 6, 2007
by Joy Keller - Joy Keller's blog of Inner IDEA

Are you ready to be moved?

The time is now. The Inner IDEA Conference experience began Thursday at the La Quinta Resort & Club in Palm Springs with a definitive reflective quality. Attendees made the pilgrimage from various pockets of the world, all with a common mindset: consciousness and purpose.

The journey in store this weekend is about allowing yourself to be moved so that you in turn can move others. I've already met quite a few people during the preconference who no doubt are taking their personal journeys to new heights. It was during Sherri Baptiste's all-day session "Power of Yoga Intensive Training" that I first realized how pivotal this weekend was going to be for so many. Baptiste, who is a walking yoga bible, created a very sacred space for yogis and yoginis in what would otherwise be a regular old conference room (albeit a resort conference room). She beckoned everyone-about 60 people-into a circle and gave each one a piece of time to carve out communication.

I was impressed and awe-struck by the variety and depth represented in the room. Many people had retired from other jobs and decided to take the yoga teacher plunge. One woman was a former Air Force officer. Another woman had picked up yoga 10 years earlier-at the age of 62-and was now a yoga therapist. She was a walking testament to the age-defying benefits of practicing yoga. Another attendee made the trip from Japan. Yet another had decided to turn to yoga following years of dealing with chronic pain.

Baptiste listened intently to each individual. She gifted everyone with her attention, and in response people returned the gift to each other. You could see the web of community weaving its way around the room, connecting each individual to another and another and yet another, further defining the sacred space. "We're not doing yoga here today," Baptiste said. "We're learning how to be yoga. To be a yogi is to be on a path. To be on a path is to find a practice." And so it is.

I look forward to being moved and sharing with you highlights from this transformational experience called Inner IDEA.     Namasté.
Yoga Woman Traveler Yoga on the Run -
by Blogger - womantraveler, For the woman traveler and those who travel with her
May 25, 2006

The more I travel, the more I miss -- and need -- yoga. Stretching after prolonged sitting and walking, cramped in coach coast to coast, not to mention the physical and psychic energy that yoga provides, enhance the experience of an active womantraveler.

My best new tips:
Alternative Medicine Magazine

March/April 2006


It always surprises me to hear people say that I have a high threshold for pain. I don’t actually. I’m no saint when it comes to pain, and childbirth was no exception. I certainly was not one of those women who looked forward to the process. I just wanted to get it over with as quickly, safely, and painlessly as possible, but nevertheless I opted for a natural childbirth without any drugs—with all four of my children. As a result I felt it every inch of the way as those babies of mine—two daughters and two sons—worked their way out into the world. What really helped me was my understanding of the power of yoga breathing and an ability to harness that power. Through it all, I stayed calm as the contractions intensified and I gave birth without using any drugs.

Learn about prenatal yoga with weights; float your way to pain relief — click here and learn how!
—Sherri Baptiste-Freeman


Sherri Baptiste - Yoga with Weights
Marin Independent Journal

Instructor combines yoga, weights for faster results

Rick Polito — Marin Independent Journal

YOGA CAN take it.

A practice blending mind and body, yoga draws an aura of spirituality into the gym with a pure form of movement and awareness. So when Sherri Baptiste Freeman drops weights into yoga and calls it a “workout,“ it sounds almost sacrilegious. But yoga can take it, says Baptiste Freeman, whose "Yoga with Weights for Dummies" is new in print ($21.95 from Wiley Press). “It's all yoga,“ she says. And she should know. The inspirational Kentfield mother of four has a virtual yoga pedigree.

The article continues on . . .




09/29/2005

"YOGA WITH WEIGHTS" & Sherri Baptiste
New form of yoga includes weight training

With all of its deep knee-bending poses, yoga is a great workout for the legs. To give the arms more work, some instructors are adding the use of hand weights to the ancient practice.

The popular "For Dummies" book series is releasing in December "Yoga With Weights for Dummies," written by Sherri Baptiste, a longtime yoga instructor and founder of Baptiste Power of Yoga™ from Marin County, Calif., where she operates the Baptiste Power of Yoga studio, retreats, workshops and teachers training programs. Read the complete story by TulsaWorld . . .


Yogi Times Magazine - February 2005 Issue 29

a retreat for the soul by magdalena winter

Sherri Baptiste’s retreat at Green Gulch Zen Center was a shower of light for our souls. The three-day yoga and mediation retreat was a silent one, and that was just what I needed.

I arrived at the center with a broken heart, and a broken spirit. My sweetheart was moving out or our home, and I was not taking it well. Read the complete story.
Marin Independent Journal

Extending the legacy
Born to fitness leaders Walt and Magaña Baptiste, Sherri Baptiste Freeman was destined to teach yoga.

click to read article
Baron Baptiste Baron Baptiste, Boston
People Magazine ~ June 2003


SEX AND THE SUTRA? “A lot of teachers are kids in a candy store I got that out of my system early.” says Baptiste, 39. “Me seing students doesn't work.” (He's dating a yoga teacher.)
IN THE GENES: His parents opened San Francisco's first yoga studio; his three kids “can stand on their heads. But they'd rather snowboard.”
CELEB CLIENTS: Helen Hunt, Elizabeth Shue

Learn more about Baron Baptiste.
More articles about Baron Baptiste
Meet the Innovators!
Anniversary 25 Yoga Journal

“In America is the place, the people, the opportunity for everything new," wrote Swami Vivekananda before he left India in 1893. Vivekananda, had learned from his guru, Sri Ramakrishna, that the world’s religions “are but various phase of one eternal religion” and that spiritual essence could be transmitted from one person to another. He set about to bring that transmission to our shores. His first speech was at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago. ‘Sisters and brothers of America,” he began, and the audience was on their feet, giving him a standing ovation. Our love affair with the East was born, and so began a steady stream of Eastern ideas flowing west. In 1920 Paramahansa Yogananda came to address a conference of religious liberals in Boston. He had been sent by his guru, the ageless Babaji, to “spread the message of kriya yoga to the West.” Although his early works had unpromised titles like Recharging your Business Battery out of the Cosmos, his 1946 Autobiography of a Yogi [self Realization Fellowship] remains a spiritual classic. Yoga was established on the West Coast in the mid-50’s with Walt and Magana Baptiste’s San Francisco studio. Walt’s father had been influenced by Vivekananda, and Walt and Magana were students of Yogananda. The Baptiste family yoga dynasty continues today with their children, Sherri and Baron.

Yoga Journal

SAN FRANCISCO yoga teacher Walt Baptiste, who died on July 6th at the age of 83, was one of Americas’s pioneers. Baptiste began teaching breathwork at the tender age of 17, having been exposed to yoga by his uncle Joseph Baptiste, a disciple of Paramahansa Yogananda. Two years later he opened the Center for Physical culture, where he combined weight training with yoga and meditation. In 1955, Walt and his wife, Magana, opened the first yoga school in San Francisco; in 1971, they founded the Baptiste Health & Fitness Center, which included a yoga room, gymnasium, and dance studio as well as a natural food store and restaurant. Baptiste was also a competitive bodybuilder [he won the “Mr. America” title in 1949], wrote extensively on physical culture, and edited Body Moderne magazine. But as a committed yogi, he was as much concerned with the spirit as the body. Meher Baba called him a “son of Light, “ and Swami Sivananda, founder of the Divine Life Society, bestowed on him the honorific Yogiraj, “king of yoga.” Over the course of six decades, Baptiste taught countless students, and today three of them-his and Magana’s children, Sherri Baptiste Freeman, Devi Ananda Baptiste, and Baron Baptiste, all accomplished and popular instructors-carry on the family yoga tradition.
-Richard Rosen
The Improper Bostonian

Meet the New Guru Baron Baptiste
Unlike most American yogis, Baptiste didn’t discover yoga: he was born into it. His father was a world famous body builder and Mr. America, [see Baptiste Family History] who studied the eastern religions and ancient disciplines of yoga with his father. Barons’s mother demonstrated the benefits of yoga during a San Francisco magazine while he was still in her womb. “Baron has all the knowledge of the purist view of yoga and he’s able to translate it in a way that people understand”.
Natural Health

Baptiste: I was born into a lineage of yoga teachers and yoga scholars. My father Walt Baptiste opened the first yoga center in San Francisco in 1935, and his father uncles, and grandfather were all into the Eastern mystical traditions and yoga. As I was growing up, my father’s yoga center was very busy--over 3,000 people a week coming through. It included a health food store run by my sister Sherri Baptiste, a health-conscious restaurant, and a dance center run by my mother Magana. Then, when I was probably 18 or 19 years old, I was running the health restaurant for my father and I remember getting a call from him, asking me to teach his big Saturday morning meditation class, which has 150 or 200 people in it, because he was leaving town. I said “No,” but he pushed me. I remember getting kid of angry and upset. Then calmed down and said, “Okay, I’ll do it.” I went in, and it was really a wonderful experience. We had always practiced meditation, and it was a natural extension to share what I knew and loved and believed. In. And people loved it.

Our focus is on bringing yoga, the essence of yoga, in a way that is acceptable and accessible to people, into the mainstream.
HEALING RETREATS magazine

The NFL”S Yogi
If you haven’t yet heard of Baron Baptiste, just wait-ESPN’s Cyberfit Power Yoga master is coming to a cable channel near you. Whether He’s hawking his instructional yoga videos on the QVC shopping network, directing his classes with infectious enthusiasm, or leading Philadelphia Eagles football team through integral yoga workouts, Baptiste seems to exist at the calm center of his own promotional hurricane. And then suddenly-and you hear this from nine out of ten people-they’ve tapped into an inner calm, a poise, an equanimity, an inner peach with themselves that they’ve never experienced before in their lives. “ This inner balance, Baptiste believes, forms the essence of yoga, no matter what the style. Even critics admit that ‘their parents were great,” and that Baptiste's lineage is strong. Baron’s father Walt, a world-famous bodybuilder and former Mr. America, founded San Francisco’s first yoga studio in 1935. Magana, Baron’s mother was photographed for a 1963 layout in the San Francisco Chronicle while eight months pregnant with her son, demonstrating yoga for expectant mothers. [“So I suppose I have yoga in me since before I was born,”Baron laughs.] At twelve, Baron was studying, fasting , and meditation in a Himalayan ashram, and at fifteen he was teaching children’s yoga classes in San Francisco. His sister, Sherri Baptiste Freeman, has been a popular yoga teacher in the Bay area for years.
Yoga Journal, OMPAGE

Talking shop with Baron Baptiste

Yoga has always been close to home for teacher Baron Baptiste, who was born into a lineage of yoga teachers and whose parents opened the first yoga studio in San Francisco when Baron was a child.

‘Body Moderne’ and Health and Strength Magazine

Edited and published by Walt Baptiste 1949 to 1955


Baptiste Power of Yoga, L.L.C.