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About Us

OUR CORE VALUES:

EDUCATION

We prioritize high-quality and effective training and rehabilitation. Our experiences as professional dancers and movement educators make us stand out in our community. With years of experience and education working with Master Teachers in our trades, we have created broad network of professional resources to help you find strength, stamina, vitality, and suppleness.

EMPOWERMENT

We are here to meet you where you are and provide the tools for you to better understand your pain and work towards true healing. We prioritize embodiment practices that put you in touch with your own learning style in order to help you read your body's signals. We love to watch you learn and your body transform.

WHOLENESS

Uncovering our vital health is a process of remembering that we are, at the core, already whole. We are here to support you in mind, body, and spirit. We work to balance the nervous system, address structural postural imbalances, and leave space for psycho-somatic processing. We find joy in seeing you walk out of the studio and pursue your dreams!

COMMUNITY CARE

We are in this together. Together we heal, strive, love, and create safe/brave spaces for deeper connection and healing. We celebrate the individual healing in order to build a stronger network of community-minded change-makers.

With over twenty years of professional teaching experience, we offer high quality attention in rehabilitation and core connection. We strive to support our clients who are healing from injury, rebuilding their core strength, and striving towards optimal health.

As passionate teachers and lifelong students, we are curious about where classical methods like Yoga, Pilates, and the GYROTONICⓇ method intersect and where they stand apart.

We aim to carefully integrate our training and offer a blend that emphasizes experiential anatomy, creative imagery, and rhythmic breathing and movement.

Owners

Jen Abbott

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Katie Clancy

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Affiliate Teachers

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Nan Cresto

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Kimberly McKnight

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Stephanie Leevan

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Ana Hyatt​

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Danny Weiland

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Studio Soma

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Studio Soma 929A HWY 3 Durango, CO 81302

About Jen

Owner, GYROTONIC®, GYROKINESIS®, Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy

 Jen believes in honoring the body’s natural healing wisdom. She is passionate about helping clients discover where their natural flow is blocked, and empowering them to make changes to restore vitality. With Jen’s guidance, each individual can organically connect with their  breathing, alive body, allowing sustainable changes to begin from the inside out. Jen is drawn to the fluid and fun GYROTONIC EXPANSION SYSTEMⓇ. She is inspired by this holistic way of exercising, and finds it’s complement in Biodynamic  Craniosacral Therapy. The melding of the two techniques offers her a way to treat the whole body on multiple levels.

With over 18 years teaching experience, Jen brings her expertise as a teacher trainer, mentor, and lifelong student to the Durango community.  While living and working in NYC, she had the opportunity to study with various Master Trainers including Juliu Horvath, the creator of the GYROTONIC EXPANSION SYSTEMⓇ.  Jen is also an RCST, practicing Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy and nervous system settling strategies. Additionally, she has participated in anatomy courses with Irene Dowd and continues her education in all areas that interest her.

Jen is a mom and enjoys supporting women as they go through the transformative processes of pregnancy and birth. Her training allows her to work therapeutically with those needing more support for specific issues or injuries. She also provides challenging and unique workouts for athletes, dancers, and those who want to cultivate strong, dynamic connections to their bodies. Jen is a freelance dance artist, and has kept her own body supple enough to dance professionally both in NYC and here in Durango with 20 Moons Dance Theater. 

You are invited to try a way of moving that is beyond merely exercise. With Jen you will learn how to fully inhabit your body, allowing yourself to discover your fullest expression of life!  

GYROTONIC, GYROTONIC EXPANSION SYSTEM and GYROKINESIS are registered trademarks of Gyrotonic Sales Corp and are used with their permission. 

About Katie

Owner, Second Generation Pilates Educator, Certified Yoga Instructor, Intuitive Bodywork

Katie earned a BFA in Dance and a BA in Journalism/Latin American Studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2007.  It was at NYU that Katie began her initial studies in the Pilates Method with first generation Master Teacher, Kathleen Stanford Grant.  Upon her graduation, Katie became Mrs. Grant’s Teaching Assistant for one year and continued to study with her mentor until Mrs. Grant’s death in 2010. She received her Pilates certification through Lana Halvorsen at BodyCraft Studio in Brooklyn, NY. She is a PMA registered teacher, and in 2018 she complete Cara Reeser’s “Kathy Grant Heritage Training Program”. 

Her love for learning the body through movement, story, and therapeutic education inspired her to study Feldenkrais, Klein technique, Body Mind Centering with Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen, Thai Massage, Deep Tissue Massage (Shen Tao Studio, NYC), Butoh Dance, and Contact Improvisation.  She’s trained in Traumatic Release Exercises (www.traumaprevention.com) and is a certified somatic coach (Susan Aposhyan’s BodyMind Psychotherapy Course, 2020). In 2020 she completed Gil Hedley’s 8-day Integral Anatomy Dissection Course. 

Katie has been a devoted yogini since she was 14; she studied the Iyengar system and the Primary Ashtanga Series until she moved to New York City, where she balanced her professional dance training with a dedicated practice with teachers including Genny Kapular, Allison West, Amy Mathews, and guidance from the Jivamukti Yoga Center.  In 2008, she traveled to Kerala, India to study at the Sivananda Yoga Center, and in 2012, she received her 200-hr. teaching certification through Levity Yoga with Peter Sterios. She currently studies Shadow Yoga with Scott Blossom. 

After ten years of dancing and writing professionally and teaching abroad, Katie returned to her hometown of Durango, CO in 2012. Here, she continues to dance as a member of 20Moons Dance Theatre and pursue her athletic passions in the wild of the San Juan Mountains.  Fluent in Spanish, she is an advocate for immigrant justice and co-leads empowerment retreats for the Spanish-speaking community around the Four Corners. She is also a published journalist and is currently working on her memoir “My Own Private Gonzo”. Her latest offering, SomaScribe, is a ritualistic blend of self-inquiry through movement and journaling.  

About Nan

Pilates/Igoscue/CST

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About Kimberly

Pilates Instructor

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Kimberly is the owner of Durango Pure Pilates, an offshoot of Mind’s Eye Movement Pilates, LLC, established in 2003. With more than 16 years of teaching experience, her initial introduction to the Pilates Method was inspired by a search for relief from chronic back pain which she suffered from the age of 18. Through her own journey, she developed a passion for sharing this extraordinary path to experiencing a freedom and joy in movement.

Kimberly received her certification as a Classical Pilates instructor from the world-renowned Pilates Center in Boulder, Colorado, and remains faithful to this traditional Pilates Method as originally developed by Joseph Pilates in the early 1920’s. She enjoys bringing her own unique and seasoned approach to the needs and goals of her clients and offers highly personalized instruction.

Kimberly also brings to her practice a fundamental belief and background in Jungian Depth Psychology. Based on distinguishing the typologies of the psyche – the ways by which individuals experience life (thinking, feeling, intuiting, sensing), Kimberly broadens her Pilates practice by offering assistance to those impassioned by personal growth. Becoming familiar with her clients’ typology, she is able to help her clients explore how these express themselves through the body. By encouraging a parallel path (a mind-to-body connection), clients may enter into a creatively inspiring discovery of their unique self. Kimberly’s passionate belief in this process offers a deep and spirited approach to this journey of self-discovery.

About Stephanie

Stephanie Leevan is the founder of SLMFIT.
 
It is her method of teaching a variety of movement therapies to provide a balanced level of fitness.
 
Stephanie’s career began in 1997 with her first yoga teacher training at the Yoga Institute. In 2004, she certified in Pilates with Master teacher Jill Cassady’s Pilates Technique Program. She administered movement therapy in a medical environment under chiropractors and physical therapists for fifteen years.
 
In 2006, she became a member of the National Association of Certified Yoga Teachers with over 200 hours of training.
 
In 2014, she became certified to teach the GYROTONIC EXPANSION SYSTEM. And, in 2019 she became certified to teach the GYROKINESIS Method.
 
Stephanie enjoys applying her knowledge in private practice, offering group classes and private sessions to those who are looking to achieve a happier , healthier & more fit way of being in their body !
 

About Ana

Ana is a long-time movement educator and classically trained dancer. She began her dance training at four years old as a student in her mother’s local ballet school in Gunnison, Colorado. Since then, she has expanded and explored a wide array of movement modalities and trained with many esteemed dancers/choreographers, Pilates Masters, Pole dancers, Somatic movement educators and Aerialists!

Ana holds her B.A. in Woman’s Studies from UCSC and followed a graduate program in transnational feminist theory at SFSU. She is Mat and Equipment certified by the Integrated Teacher Training program in San Francisco, California.

Ana spent seven years teaching, developing a student base and mentoring at the S Factor studio in San Francisco, the first S factor studio to open outside of its home of origin in Los Angeles. She also danced, created works and contributed choreography to her long-time and beloved dance cohort, Cirque Noir (Alayna Stroud, Amanda (Bassolino) Hunt, and Deb Arana), a “Best of the Bay” aerial burlesque sensation that performed frequently in and around the Bay Area. She moved to Durango in 2020 with her husband and nine-year-old son.

About Danny

I have spent the last fifteen years of my life on a very focused quest for self-improvement and self-discovery in my physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual arenas. Ultimately my deep passion for self-improvement led me to become a bodyworker, fitness trainer, and create an entirely new branch of fitness called Corbing Core and Balance TrainingTM.

Through these various modalities of movement and the healing arts, I have developed hyperawareness and hypersensitivities to even the most subtle shifts in my own body, so I understand how to tune into those subtle energies in others’ bodies. This, coupled with a sharp intuition, allows me to unlock the true healing power of the modalities we practice. I do my best to utilize my skillset in an effort to facilitate the highest levels of self-development and healing in my clients. Everybody wants to be better, to do better, and to become the best versions of themselves. But life is challenging and we don’t always have all the tools to do so. This is why I have chosen the career path of a bodyworker/massage therapist….so I can help you reach that next phase of physical, emotional, mental, or spiritual development.

I am trained in Swedish, Deep Tissue, Advanced Joint Mobilization, PDTR ®, Upledger Craniosacral Therapy, and advanced fascial manipulation. I integrate all these modalities together as needed depending upon the needs of each unique body. I believe holding space for someone to heal and restore is one of the lost arts of our society, and I take great pride in being able to provide that space for people.