Greater Harrisburg's Community Magazine

A Call to Oms: After much searching, a couple finds their purpose in Yoga Nature.

TheBurg_yogaMisha Kaschock and Sara Rose Bryant separately point out that Yoga means “yoked” or “union,” a well-suited mantra for the meditative practice they both teach. Yet, the union between the two was not a bond supernaturally formed, rather a joining many years in the making.

Misha is a Camp Hill native, graduating from East Pennsboro. He has long (almost-down-to-his-tush long) salt-and-peppered hair, wears almost a permanent smile and a 5 o’clock shadow and walks with a clear bounce in his step. Everything seems to flow with Misha. When you first look at him, he could be a yogi, an artist or a soccer player. And true to form, he is and was.

He doesn’t come from a family of dancers, but his older sisters and older brother both fell into the performance art, as did he.

“I loved it at as a kid, but, from the ages of 7 to 16, I wanted to quit every other day. I also played soccer.”

He wasn’t sure what he wanted to do after high school, so the natural inclination was to continue with his practiced artistry, enrolling at Ohio State University to study dance.

“The story of the youngest child, sometimes, is chasing everyone’s coattails. But I started to become my own man, and in college, that’s where I took my first yoga class. I started off with ashtanga, a specific form of yoga, that is more set, like dance.”

After graduating from college, Misha moved deeper into the Midwest to Chicago, still dancing, but also picking up the time-honored carpentry trade, first working on sets then in woodshops, even securing a position with the Steppenwolf Theater Company. He got the moving itch again, and packed up his clothes and a bicycle—“all I had”—and flew to Seattle.

There, he continued his work as a professional dancer, working in the Scott/Powell Performance Company, and choreographed his own shows, while also finding work with “a ragtag group of guys” led by an eccentric general contractor who “taught me by not teaching me anything,” said Misha. “He would just say, ‘You’ve seen me do this, go for it.’”

During his stint in Seattle, he practiced at Samadhi Yoga, a place he identified as a second home, his teacher a former dancer, who truly understood how and why the yoga practice was attractive to the ever-externalizing dance professionals. She helped direct Misha to take a 200-hour certification class so that he could teach, a badge that would become quite utilitarian.

***

Sara Rose Bryant is a Seattle native, her grandfather the founder and owner of the touristy and legendary Emmett Watson’s Oyster Bar in Pike Place Market. Sara described her upbringing as “tumultuous,” living with a set of alcoholic parents. It’s also a true survivor story, her best friend, younger brother, mom and dad all passing away by the time she was 24.

Sara was considered a misfit in high school due to her absenteeism, a false designation caused by the troubled familial relationships. Leaving home and living with a friend’s family during these years, she began supporting herself in high school, working at the Oyster Bar, but all along knew she had to finish her degree or would be stuck serving seafood for a long time.

She entered the Running Start program, a reciprocal agreement with the local community college and her high school, whereby college credits counted as two high school classes. She took yoga for her PE credit.

“I felt like it was the first time I breathed…and I could create some sort of toolbox for how to deal with the things that were going on with me,” says Sara.

Like Misha, her yoga teacher influenced her future. For Sara, this yogi also was a massage therapist, a vocational pursuit she was taken by.  It’s also something that she had had experience with, on the receiving end.

“When I was 14 or 15, my boyfriend got me a massage for my birthday. Mike Nelson was a good one,” she chuckled, referring to her adolescent sweetheart

Ultimately, she graduated high school, but was left with a conundrum: finance herself through college or become a massage therapist.

Ever the pragmatist, she went on to study at the Brenneke School of Massage. There she found a lifelong passion of healing, yet massage therapy never truly became her only job. She bounced between jobs as a medical receptionist and in the occupational therapy field, helped managed the wellness center at the well-regarded Washington Athletic Club, what she called, “a country club in the middle of Seattle,” and even went on a European tour with the super-group, Audioslave, acting as their in-house massage therapist. All of these gigs, however, seemed like the perfect convergence of skills for what was to come.

Misha and Sara point to a meditative retreat in the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound as the mystical start to their relationship, but it was a bartering deal, a transaction, that solidified their bond.

“She needed a set of bars to do ashiatsu, which is a form of massage that she does with her feet, and I needed a massage, because I was a carpenter and dancer, so we traded,” said Misha.

The rest was history, until, a few months into their relationship, Misha suffered a back injury during a construction job. Without work and unable to afford rent, he went on a sojourn for a few weeks, inching his way across America until settling into his parents home and finding odd jobs around Harrisburg.

Sara, meanwhile, was ready to make a significant move away from her hometown of Seattle.

“It was L.A., Portland or Hawaii, all considerably more sunny than Seattle,” she says.

“Harrisburg is never a place I knew existed. My great-grandmother lived in St. Louis, but I had never been to Pennsylvania.”

Harrisburg and Misha, however, won out on the location lottery. They both began teaching out of Keystone Yoga, the current location of their studio. At the time, it was owned by Joanne Gallagher. The day Joanne met Sara, she disclosed to both of them that her husband had been diagnosed with terminal cancer.

“For me, it was really hard and brought up my own fears about cancer. But also, I felt really equipped, and that there was a reason for this.”

About five months after Sara’s arrival on the “right coast” and the day after her birthday, Aug. 29, Joanne approached them. She was having difficulty taking care of her very ill husband and keeping her young business afloat.

“I could close the studio and sell it or give it to you two.”

They took two weeks to decide, but, ultimately, this was a dream come true for both of them, even given the circumstances of being recently uprooted and the tragic reason for this conveyance.

***

Linglestown Road is the obvious suburban strip-mall commuter route, the typical specialty doctor’s offices, the grocery stores, the unnamed warehouses. Three miles into the drive, you will come upon one of those nondescript buildings where Yoga Nature, formerly Keystone Yoga, is housed. Inside, however, is a different environment.

After the keys were handed to Sara and Misha, they went right to work, trying to use a family’s micro-loan ever so carefully. A little over a year into the venture, a reception space was created, a wall put up between the studio and foyer, bamboo floors were installed, faux Japanese lanterns grace the rafters and two gorgeous reclaimed wooden logs were stripped, washed and set, a hallmark of Misha’s handiwork.

Yet, they were struggling, financially and in their relationship.

“Joann always told us if the studio were to ever negatively affect our relationship, she doesn’t want us to do it anymore,” Misha said. “The most profound move we ever made as business owners was to ask for help.”

It came in the form of a business consultant in Nicholas Banting, a yoga enthusiast and strategist for Freefall Creative, and a local media/account strategist from JPL, Lara Colestock. Misha and Sara all but called them “angels.” They revamped their branding, moving their name from Keystone Yoga to Yoga Nature, helped them financially plan for the present and future and breathed life into their Web and social media presence. Their plea for assistance has paid off.

“Even with all these expenditures…we’re still in the black,” says Misha. “Yoga sells itself…basically, like 85 to 90 percent of referrals come from word of mouth.”

This kind of steady growth is allowing them to expand classes and workshops methodically and truly grow into a more integrative wellness center.

Down the road, they hope to add on an additional studio to focus on kids, bringing in school and church groups, to effect change at the root buds, said Sara. “I think energetically we have more of a return now,” providing us the enterprising spirit to do even more.

Their Yin and Yang skills are slowly breathing life not only into their students but the business and their relationship, truly living up to the Sanskrit definition of yoga, “union.”

 

Yoga Nature

4400 Linglestown Rd., Harrisburg

For class times, rates and services, visit www.yoganaturelife.com

Phone: 717-695-7101

Email: info@yoganaturelife.com

A free community class for beginners is held each Saturday, 9 a.m. to 10 a.m.

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