Welcome to Central Mass Yoga and Wellness, inc.
CMYW is a yoga school and resource center for wellness founded in February 2000 by Lucy Cimini.
In March of 2020, after 20 years in business, the Covid-19 pandemic closed all businesses for an indefinite period of time. Lucy identified the need to think out of the box and decided to transition out of her three physical yoga spaces and develop a virtual studio. She began to offer classes, workshops, private student sessions and trainings virtually. This was successfully implemented with the help of her staff and teachers.
These are unprecedented times, and we must all embark on this new world and flow with the present moment and whatever changes lie ahead.
At Central Mass Yoga, we have certified, caring instructors who are committed to your yoga experience. All of our teachers are certified yoga teachers at the 200 and 500 hour level. Learn more about them by reading their biographies or taking a class with them. Our certified and experienced teachers bring significant talent and dedication to their teaching. The discipline and philosophy of each instructor is different as yoga is an individual practice. Even instructors who have been certified by the same institution often have different approaches and teaching styles.
CMYW classes draw from three traditional lineages of yoga: Hatha, Iyenger and Ashtanga. By combining the strengths of each, we have created programs that offer yoga to beginners and advanced students alike. Our classes safely offer students long lasting benefits. Our classes include: Gentle, Beginner, Vinyasa, Heated classes, Power Yoga, Women’s, teens & tweens, yoga kids, prenatal, restorative, yin yoga, Yoga Warriors (for combat veterans) and so much more. To Learn more about each class, click here. We regularly run specialized workshops on the weekend and during the week. In addition to the workshops, we run a yearly retreat on the Maine coast and a 200 hour yoga teacher training program approved by Yoga Alliance.
Yoga Warriors International™
Yoga Warriors International™ (www.yogawarriors.com), founded in 2005 by Lucy Cimini, is a movement-based program that integrates treatment principles from the field of neuro rehabilitation and cognitive-behavioral therapy. In January 2012, the American Journal of Occupational Therapy published the Iraq study. The Iraq study was a formal collaboration between Yoga Warriors (Lucy Cimini), the US Army Institute of Surgical Research, and Major Jon Greuel, USAF, Principle Investigator.
Yoga Warriors incorporates evidence-based treatments for PTSD (Kirkuk, Iraq study 2009 , Published in the Journal of Occupational Therapy, Jan. 2012). The yoga classes include slow, rhythmic yoga movements to calm the mind, breath work to reduce hyper arousal (which is the hallmark of PTSD), and affirmations/guided relaxation techniques adopted from cognitive-behavioral therapy. Using an interdisciplinary approach enables us to tackle the problem of combat stress and PTSD from both the bottom-up (i.e. body affecting the brain) and top-down (i.e. brain affecting the body).
Classes are currently being taught throughout the United States and Canada as well as overseas to deployed military from more than 300 certified Yoga Warriors teachers.
Mission of Yoga Warriors International™
To alleviate symptoms of combat stress (COSR) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and increase the resilience of critical task performers working in high stress environments, including affected caregivers and family members by providing evidence-based yoga practices.
Many teachers at CMYW are trained in the Yoga Warriors method and use this method in their classes