Testimonials

Regular Class Testimonials

Prenatal Testimonials

Private Instruction Testimonials

Prenatal Partner Yoga Workshop

Regular Class Testimonials:

I wholeheartedly and without any reservation whatsoever recommend Yoga in Harvard Square to any and all who are in search of a sound base on which to build a more centered and positive life. Portia Brockway is a skillful instructor, whose approach to the discipline and practice of yoga is at once easy to follow, and enormously subtle in its impact. Classes are neither casual nor overstructured, and the group dynamic is deftly managed. Portia's gift is to instill a sense of peaceful purpose in even the simplest of routines, and by doing so she empowers all those who are part of the extended community of Yoga in Harvard Square.

Since joining Portia's yoga class I have learned how to de-stress. With her gentle guidance and instruction I have taken my body and spirits to new limits. I am still a novice to yoga, but, with Portia's continued support I have gained confidence and flexibility to do the most challenging poses. I find that her yoga classes have given new clarity to my life.

Portia does a phenomenal job at creating a peaceful environment, with candles and music - and often a rock arrangement or flowers as a focal point in the center of the room’s labrynth. She is so gentle and attentive to everyone in the class. The quality of the instruction, coupled with Portia's warmth is really unique. I highly recommend the classes!

Having served in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam era, I held many thoughts and traumatic events inside of me. It reached a point where I was diagnosed with PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). Over the past four years Portia has taught me many ways of controlling and relieving this condition. She is a compassionate friend concerned for her students, a fantastic individual and a supreme yoga teacher.

Portia's Yoga classes fuse spiritual focus and physical benefits. I love her individual support. I often have pleasant flashbacks to my childhood ballet teacher, whom I have remembered with love all my life. She is open to new ideas and feedback. I highly recommend Portia as a Yoga instructor!

In a time and place saturated with various yoga styles and studios, I am thrilled to have found a style of yoga that suits me with an instructor who knows me by name and by my individual yoga challenges. I have tried a few different styles of yoga and have found that the flowing, meditative and balanced style presented by Portia is for me! Portia has a way of knowing what the collective energy of the class is and seems to fine tune her routine to meet the needs of the moment while offering a future challenge for various poses. Portia’s classes are a great balance between an exercise for the body and the mind. I leave each and every class feeling like a million dollars!

Prenatal Testimonials:

This is my second pregnancy with Portia. I had a great first pregnancy and felt fit and healthy throughout, due in no small part to the weekly yoga classes. Although I ended up having a c-section, the breathing, visualization exercises and positions we had practiced in class were extremely useful to me during labor and helped me stay calm and focused. I am now expecting my second child and find Portia's Monday evening class an oasis of peace after a long day interacting with a high-energy two-year-old. I often go into class feeling tired, heavy and achy and come out feeling light and full of energy. My partner and I also attended Portia's prenatal partner workshop the first time around and plan to do so again, interestingly, at his insistence. This is praise indeed for Portia as prior to attending the workshop he was a definite "yoga skeptic"! Portia's classes are a very important part of my birth preparation and I would highly recommend them to all pregnant women.

Portia is a wonderful instructor. My son and I experienced her classes both pre- and post-natally and enjoyed both immensely. Portia is very in tune with the general dynamic of each individual class, and is flexible enough, in terms of her teaching style, to "go with the flow" and work with what the participants seem to need that week. This is especially the case with the post-natal class in how she knows that it is time to do more baby stretches, or that the babies are calm enough so that the moms can do more mom stretches.

My son seemed to know Portia from day one, because he heard her voice weekly even before he was born. She was one of the first non-family members to whom he smiled! He loves the baby stretches, and Portia's explanations of the poses are so complete that we perform them at home on a regular basis. Outside visitors are always impressed to see how happy and calm my son becomes while doing yoga.

In addition to Portia's intuitive instruction, we also enjoyed the other participants in the classes. Especially in the post-natal class lunches we had a chance to chat with other moms and have the infants interact with one another. This was always fun, informative and connecting. We (my son and I) really encourage new moms and moms-to-be to take yoga from Portia!

I started to attend Portia Brockway's Monday night prenatal class when I was just 15 weeks pregnant. I had taken some prenatal yoga classes with another teacher but realized immediately that Portia's soothing voice and emphasis on relaxation and flow were what I desired.My weekly yoga class with Portia soon became essential to me. It was the one thing I did for myself, without fail, every week during my pregnancy, until I was 40 weeks and a day along. As my belly grew over the months, so did my appreciation for Portia and for the class.

Yoga helped to slow me down. It gave me space and time to relax and to focus on myself and the baby that was growing inside of me. The stretching, and emphasis on breathing and imagery all helped to reduce pregnancy aches and tension, to keep me in shape and to prepare for labor and birth. I would always leave class feeling both wonderfully relaxed and energized at the same time. Portia would end each class by leading us through a relaxation exercise. Her voice, thick and soothing like honey, the candlelight, the soft music and the imagery would always calm me, often to the point of falling asleep.

My husband and I both felt strongly about preparing ourselves to have a natural childbirth. We attended Bradley classes for a few months but, in the end, it was the breathing and the relaxation techniques that I had learned through Portia that most helped me to deliver a nine and a half pound baby boy without any medications or interventions. In fact, during my labor, as I lied curled up on my side breathing deeply through my abdomen, I could hear Portia's lulling voice, "rock your baby forward". If you take the class, you will know what I mean!

The class also became an informal support group, made up of mothers-to-be who, for the most part, were fit, healthy women tuned into their own bodies and very much connected with their babies. It was such a joy to watch each others' bellies grow and to anticipate our births together. Being in a room full of other pregnant women is indeed a powerful thing.

Two and a half weeks after Aidan was born, the two of us returned to yoga, this time for the Wednesday morning postnatal class.It was so nice to have a place to go to so soon after giving birth, someplace where I could take Aidan and feel totally comfortable.I was again able to see the women from my prenatal yoga class who had delivered before me, and also meet new people. It was like coming home. Portia and her classes became an integral part of my childbirth experience. They are so intertwined, that there is no way for me to separate them. Now, whenever I meet a pregnant woman around here, I always recommend Portia's classes because I want others to experience the same emotional, physical and spiritual benefits that I did.

She is doing great, I am doing great, we had a completely natural childbirth with no pain or other medication, and most of the labor at home! I have to say I really feel so strongly that prenatal yoga kept me going and mobil and feeling good during pregnancy, helped so much w/ the birth, and is part of my speedy recovery.

Portia, your class was a time of woman-centered calm and body work my entire pregnancy. Thank you for this gift!

Private Instruction Testimonials:

I became a private student when my struggle with asthma became serious. The private classes, which I continued for nearly 8 months, were incredibly beneficial to me. Portia researched breathing techniques which helped me cope with the asthma and she was very responsive to my energy level and capacity, which varied week to week. Gradually, I regained my strength and Portia modified my class to reflect that.
I am now back taking group class with Portia and am glad to be able to keep up. However, private lessons with Portia guided me through a difficult time. She was knowledgeable, patient, and understanding of my limitations. This experience simply confirmed for me what I've known all along - Portia Brockway is an exceptional teacher and I am very fortunate to have her yoga classes in my life.

Portia - It was great to be with you and start our journey together. Indeed. I felt a calm after you left, which I only became aware of gradually. I know that you know a lot about me, intuitively, and it feels reassuring in a way I never would have imagined. I've certainly paid my dues getting here- to a place where I'm able to open myself to the kind of transcendent experience I long for, where peace and healing are possible because the channels are open- the ones which will be forever blocked until mind and body have found some harmony. That menopause is occurring for me now makes the time feel even more right.

Do you know how difficult the very act of deeply, mindfully breathing can be? It is for me. Allowing myself the intense experience of taking in- anything - as deeply as I am being asked to take in air- as much as I could need or want, is threatening, as is expelling what has been inside of me- AIR- without apology; unashamedly; and even noisily. I will try to focus on the life- affirming nature of this particular process.

Surprisingly, as profoundly outside of comfortable experience chanting is to me (with the possible exception of the Benedictine monks), within moments of you beginning to chant yesterday, my resistance must have fallen away, because I took it all in; I found something familiar and comforting in it; found the low register of your voice very pleasing...and I forgot all about all of this until I began writing tonite...

Prenatal Partner Yoga Workshop Testimonials:

Pre-natal partner yoga is an experience I would recommend to any couple looking to enter into the labor process with a new and different insight. Portia Brockway’s afternoon workshop combines meditation, massage and practical exercises that both partners must participate in together. She has created a safe space for couples to truly enter into and practice her labor and pain management positions. While there were four other couples practicing these at the same time, I was often unaware of their presence. The experience left us both feeling that we had shared something intimate and had tools that would make the labor and delivery process much more of a shared event instead of an event experienced by one.