Swan River Yoga

We offer in-studio and virtual wellness classes and events. Mid-City Yoga Mandir. What is a Mandir?
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Swan River Yoga supports practitioners who are on an inward journey through skillful guidance, therapeutic approach, appropriate challenge, and community connection. The word "Mandir" refers to a large temple where multi-cultural backgrounds gather and humanitarian events take place to best serve the community with beauty, food, the arts, yoga, dance, theatre, healing arts, education, sacred practices, meditation and rituals. There are often schools & Universities within Mandirs, such as our Yoga Teacher Training School & multiple trainings as a means to activate self freedom and respect the diversity of all.

01/08/2026

Looking for a simple way to bring the teachings of yoga off the mat and into your everyday life? 📖✨

Join Keith Porteous-Meade for a playful and transformative practice called The 6X a Day Book—a daily reflection that turns ordinary moments into meaningful actions. With just a notebook, a pen, and a willingness to be curious, you’ll learn how to live the dharma throughout your day. No deep prior study required—we’ll cover the teachings together.

Through a mix of in-person learning and an online platform, we’ll explore practices like protecting life, rejoicing in others’ happiness, and using our words to bring people together. These gatherings are known for being both deeply insightful and genuinely fun—and have been part of Swan River’s community life since 2012.

Investment: $45
Includes the in-class workshop on Friday, January 9th, 1:30-2:30pm, access to our online platform, as well as optional Friday gatherings (1:30–2:30pm) throughout the rest of the month.

We’d love to welcome you into this shared space ❤️🦢🙏

01/05/2026

Our focus of the month, written by Keith Porteous-Meade:

The first step of yoga is ahimsa, which means non-harming. Why does the path begin here? As Lama Marut said, “The order of the limbs is not an accident... a life without spiritual discipline is just going to be repeated suffering.”

We begin by noticing how we may contribute to harm in the world, whether intentionally or not. This is not about blame or guilt. It is about awareness, so we can make skillful choices. Ahimsa helps us align our actions with what we truly want: peace, harmony, and connection, rather than continually participating in cycles of suffering.

In yoga, actions include not only what we do, but also what we say and think. This is a tall order! How do we practice non-harming honestly without pretending to be other than we truly are? The answer is simple: step by step, day by day. As a Japanese haiku says, “O snail, climb Mount Fuji, but slowly, slowly!”

Recently, I received a teaching on ahimsa while waiting in line at the farmers’ market. Ready with my reusable bags (basic ahimsa), I became impatient about the wait (not ahimsa), and then judgmental about those around me (definitely not ahimsa). Then the woman in front of me said something kind and appreciative about being there. Her sincerity shifted my mood instantly.

The Yoga Sutras say that when someone is firmly established in ahimsa, hostility naturally falls away in their presence (YS 2.35). Sometimes, one kind expression can feel like a superpower. This is why we are drawn to wise teachers and kind companions: their presence reminds us of our own goodness and our connection to something larger than ourselves, instead of being mired in a me vs. the world mindset.

Read the full write-up online — link in bio.

12/16/2025

✨ A wondrous holiday class special ✨
8 classes for $88
(Purchase by 12/31 · Use by 3/30)

Plus our upcoming Holiday Events & Classes, including:
• Christmas Day Swan Align
• Restorative Yoga w/ Hot Stones & Sound Bath
• New Year’s Eve Swan Flow
• NYE Full Moon Astrology Journaling Sound Bath
• New Year’s Day Flow & Sound

Give the gift of the space to breathe in peace and stay in the heart this holiday season😌

11/18/2025

Join us for Swansgiving: a Thanksgiving morning sliding-scale, benefit yoga class!

Thursday, November 27th
9:30-10:45 am
Sliding scale: $10, $15, $20

All proceeds benefit YEAH!YOGA, a non-profit dedicated to sharing the tools of yoga and meditation with youth invoked with or impacted by the carceral system in the Greater New Orleans area.

This open-level class will be colead by Swan River teachers: Adrienne Edson, Angela Bergeron, Joy Meade, Kate Aitken, Kathleen Barry, and Lynn Lalka.

Let us be together to practice yoga, raise money for a great cause, and give thanks 🌽 🌎 🌌🙏

.yeah.yoga

11/04/2025

🦢💙November/ December Teacher Feature💙🦢

✨Kathleen Barry ✨

Kathleen has been practicing yoga regularly since 2016 and began teaching in January 2018 after completing her 200 hour YTT (Spark Yoga in Arlington, VA). For her, it was the breath, movement, and community that had her hooked. Before becoming a full time yoga teacher in 2022, she spent 13 years as a management consultant for federal agencies undergoing transformation. She has since become an E-RYT and completed her 300 hour YTT with Janet Stone Yoga in May 2023 (virtual and Bali, Indonesia). Other trainings include Nourish Restorative Yoga with Janet Stone, Advanced Bhakti Yoga with Laughing Lotus, Trauma Recovery Yoga, Living Your Yoga with Judith Lasater, and more.

In addition to the neverending studentship of the practice, yoga teaches Kathleen daily to be present with the breath and body, to find reverence for the little things, to explore discipline and freedom as co-existing necessities of living, and to always start from right now, this moment. When she’s not teaching, she also loves to travel, learn, see live music, eat good food, and lead yoga retreats!

Please join us in celebrating Kathleen for being an incredible part of our Swan River teaching staff! 💙

Catch Kathleen on Monday morning:
9:30am-10:45am
Swan Align + Flow
🙏🦢✨

11/04/2025

Restorative Yoga with Hot Stones and Sound Bath
With Jennifer Martinez and Laura Cherry

Sun Nov 09 2025
5 PM - 6:30 PM
Investment: $38

Ease into the cooler months with a practice that is deeply grounded and supportive.

Jennifer will guide you through a nourishing Restorative Yoga practice designed to gently open the body and connect you with your inner stillness. As your body relaxes and releases, she will place warm basalt stones on the energy centers, or chakras, that correspond to each pose. Basalt—formed from volcanic rock—is known for its grounding qualities and its ability to encourage energetic healing, ease muscular tension, and deepen your connection to the earth.

Meanwhile, Laura will create a symphony of therapeutic sound using crystal singing bowls, harmonium mantra, tuning forks, gong, and chimes to re-tune your energy and calm your mind. If you’ve been waiting for a sign that you deserve rest and renewal, this is it.

Register through link in bio!

11/01/2025

Presenting!

💙🦢Swan River Focus of the Month for November/ December 🦢💙

🍂 Autumn as a Time for Processing Grief 🍁

By Kathleen Barry

“It’s finally autumn in New Orleans, which for many of us can mean a packed social calendar, back to school duties, ramping up of work priorities, and preparing for the holiday season. It’s intoxicating, and it often goes too quickly. Autumn is a time of quickening for many of us. The leaves begin to fall, the air gets crisp, and the days get shorter. There’s a grief, subtle or not so,
that accompanies the quickening. As if our own internal compasses understand change is afoot. This space can carry a flavor of liminality. Impermanence. And so much of life is actually like this: fleeting.

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about my own journey over the past seven years or so. I began teaching yoga in 2018; it was also the year I left a long-term relationship; I left a big, corporate consulting firm; and I lived alone for the first time in my life. All of this happened in the autumn.

In the next three years, I – along with the planet – experienced a global pandemic. I experienced
another breakup that, somehow in just eight months, managed to break my heart even more
than my previous eight year long one. The yoga community that raised me from a brand new
yogi into a teacher closed overnight. I moved away from what I knew as home (Northern Virginia) for the first time ever, quit consulting all together, and became a full-time yoga teacher in a new city, New Orleans, with a handful of acquaintances and a huge amount of unprocessed grief…”

Read the full essay by tapping the link in our bio💙

10/22/2025

Swan River Yoga is honored to connect with YEAH! YOGA this year for Swansgiving, our annual Thanksgiving morning class💛

Join us from 9:30–10:45am as we come together in gratitude, movement, and community — raising funds to support YEAH! YOGA’s inspiring work bringing yoga and mindfulness to youth.

YEAH! YOGA stands for Youth Empowerment and Healing. It is an organization dedicated to sharing the tools of yoga and meditation with youth involved with or impacted by the carceral system in the greater New Orleans area, aiming to disrupt the cycle of incarceration by offering healing tools for youth to develop resilience and wellness.

10/21/2025

Join us for kirtan celebrating India’s biggest and brightest festival— Diwali!!! 🪔

Friday, October 24th
7-8:15 PM
With Joy & Adrienne
Sliding Scale options
For stories and song to remind us of the love that lights our way home!

10/10/2025

Jivamukti Yoga & Sound Bath with Stephanie Stelly & Brittany Roberts

Saturday, Nov 22, 2025

5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

Jivamukti Yoga is a path towards freedom through compassion, join us for a workshop rooted in the foundational five tenets of the method. This immersive experience is designed to bridge the wisdom of yoga philosophy with your daily life, offering both inspiration and practical tools for your practice.

In this workshop we will explore this magical method with a focus on music and vibration. This workshop will be roughly split with an hour focused on devotional movement and an hour focused on sound and meditation. This practice is accessible for all levels of active yoga practitioners, and our fully equipped studio offers props to support your movement and deep rest.

Register here: https://www.swanriveryoga.com/events-and-workshops

10/06/2025

October is breast cancer awareness month, and many of us have experienced this disease or know someone closely who has.

Join for “Healing From The Harp: Sound Bath With Directed Healing Intentions” this Saturday, October 11.

6pm - 8pm

In this sound healing experience, Joy offers soothing and healing frequencies from harp, crystal bowls, and mantras and chants.

A breast cancer survivor herself, Joy has experienced the restorative benefits of this practice firsthand, and is honored to offer the practice that supported her through diagnosis, surgery, treatment and into continued recovery.

In this practice Joy shares pranayama(breath work) and guided meditation for calming anxiety, followed by gentle movements to improve lymphatic flow and release fascia that may be affected by scar tissue and the trauma of illness. All is accompanied by the vibration of healing instruments.

The sound bath will conclude with the opportunity to receive the vibrations of healing mantras by either listening or feeling the most therapeutic of vibrations, your own voice, as the sound waves emanating from your own vocal cords carry healing intentions throughout your body.

Events link in bio to sign up🪉🙏

Address

2940 Canal Street
New Orleans, LA
70119

Website

http://www.swanriveryoga.com/

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