Mary Stewart
For the last 30 years, Mary Stewart has been exploring what makes us feel happy, energized, and balanced. Combining years of experience across caring professions, Mary merges her natural nurturing skills with western psychology, eastern philosophy, and human physiology to guide you toward a zestful balance of hand, heart, and mind.
During the early part of her life, Mary lived with a lower back discomfort. Early hip surgeries had left behind an asymmetry of the pelvis, and a body working hard to compensate. Intrigued by yoga, she attended her first class while in university, unable to engage in a single pose. For the next four years believing that yoga wasn’t for her, she participated in other avenues of well being.
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In 1997 she studied Vipassana meditation in Thailand, and in 1998 returned to yoga; this time with an instructor who revealed that, indeed, it was something she could practice.
One day the ache in her lower back was gone, and in its place, an understanding that yoga is a path of mindfulness and grace, not perfection.
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Mary has continued to study and practice, and with the encouragement of her teacher Ann Ford, began sharing the benefits of yoga with others in 2003. She is grateful to her many teachers, from whom she continues to learn.
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Mary creates a safe space to be. Her sessions guide students inward for healing and realization of their personal potential, a journey enhanced by Mary’s BS in Psychology and Masters Degree in Teaching. She has earned 200 hour RYT and pre- and post- natal yoga certifications through 8 Limbs Yoga, many levels including Mood lifting yoga through YogaFit, children's certificates through Young Yoga Masters and Sellwood Yoga among other conference, workshops, festival, retreat courses and continues to learn through classes and intensives.
Mary brings the practice of yoga into community, making its fruits accessible for all bodies and stages of life.
