By Ekahi Aloha Dale Michaels

There are many ways to come home.

Sometimes it happens through the body—one breath, one movement, one moment of stillness at a time. Sometimes it happens through the land beneath our feet, through the ocean, through community, or simply through the quiet realization that we have been carrying home within us all along.

In lower Puna, yoga takes many forms. It can be a flowing sequence of asana, a practice of breath and mantra, a heated discipline, a meditation, a way of listening inward, or a pathway into deeper relationship with the ʻāina and the people around us.

Here, yoga is not confined to a single studio or a single definition.

It lives in retreat centers and intimate home practices, in community gatherings and classrooms, in the lushness of Hawaiian Beaches and Seaview, and in the longtime gathering places of Pāhoa and lower Puna.

Most importantly, it lives in the people who practice and teach it.

For this story, I invited several local practitioners to share not simply what they teach, but what yoga means to them. Their answers revealed something much richer than a list of classes. They spoke of healing, discovery, resilience, grounding, community, stewardship, and the deeply personal experience of finding one’s way back to oneself.

Perhaps that is what makes yoga so at home here.

There is no one path.

There are many.

And somehow, they meet.

THE FIRST STEP: REMEMBERING

For Lori Bothwell, the journey began almost by chance.

Just over a decade ago, she stepped into her first yoga asana class on a whim. During that very first practice, she experienced something she could hardly put into words—a feeling of being transported someplace both forgotten and indescribably familiar.

She was immediately hooked.

What began as an unexpected encounter became a transformative relationship with yoga. Her practice eventually carried her through some of life’s most profound challenges, including divorce, the death of her father, breast cancer and a mastectomy, and the devastating loss of her child, Ronnie.

Through it all, the eight limbs of yoga—and especially the practice of asana—became a lifeline.

Lori’s teaching now grows from that lived experience. Her approach combines Vinyasa with an Iyengar influence, emphasizing mindful movement, breath, alignment, presence, vitality, stillness, and connection.

Rather than simply asking the body to perform a series of poses, her practice invites a slower kind of listening.

A coming home.

That spirit is reflected in her Root to Rise Yoga offering: a 75-minute Slow Vinyasa Flow on Fridays at 8:30 a.m. in the Blue Moon Room at Kalani, welcoming all levels.

Her story reminds us that sometimes we don’t choose a path because we know where it will lead.

We simply take the first step.

And then discover that something inside us already remembers the way.

“YOUR YOGA DOES NOT NEED TO LOOK LIKE ANYONE ELSE’S.”

That sentiment could almost serve as a guiding principle for this entire community.

Connie Campos, creator of Kupukupu Yoga in Hawaiian Beaches, describes yoga as a “sacred journey inward.”

Her own journey to teaching began after moving to Puna 27 years ago, seeking a different quality of life and committing herself to a daily yoga practice.

In 2002, she began studying with Hayward Coleman at Yoga Oasis. By 2007, she was teaching and leading retreats there. In 2012, she opened Kupukupu Yoga in Hawaiian Beaches.

Her path has continued far beyond Hawaiʻi. She teaches in Greece, including on Paros, studies annually in India, and has represented the United States at the International Yoga Festival in Rishikesh since 2021.

Yet beneath all of those experiences is something remarkably simple.

Connie speaks about creating a place where people can feel safe enough to explore their own practice.

“I always kept my doors open and held space for those who were uncertain or isolated,” she shared.

That idea of holding space feels especially meaningful in a community where people arrive from so many different backgrounds and life experiences.

Yoga, Connie reminds us, isn’t a performance or a competition.

“Your yoga does not need to look like anyone else’s.”

It can be movement. Breath. Meditation. Philosophy. Chanting OM. It can be a physical practice or a quiet inward journey through the eight limbs.

It can change as we change.

And perhaps that is one of yoga’s greatest gifts: permission to meet ourselves exactly where we are.

COMING HOME TO THE BODY

For Signa Cheney, yoga is also a homecoming.

Signa has been teaching yoga since 1988 and brings decades of experience as a movement artist and somatic facilitator. She was formerly the founder and director of Mandala Yoga in Portland and has explored a broad spectrum of practices, including Hatha, Iyengar, Kundalini, breathwork, mantra, movement, and sound.

Her relationship with yoga reaches beyond the physical postures.

Yoga offers her a way to “come home to myself”—to feel the body, listen inwardly, and discover steadiness.

In lower Puna, she weaves movement, breath, mantra, and sound together, inviting students to soften, reconnect with vitality, and become more fully themselves.

The image of Signa moving freely beside the ocean seems to capture something essential about that philosophy.

Yoga doesn’t necessarily have to happen on a mat.

It can happen through movement, through listening, through the meeting of body and breath with the natural world.

Her “Kundalini Bliss Flow” at Kalani on Fridays from 10:30 a.m. to noon includes a generous warm-up, kriyas, pranayama, mantra meditation, and a gong savasana. All levels are welcome, with an invitation to listen to one’s own body.

For Signa, the practice is ultimately about reconnection.

And perhaps that is another meaning of coming home: not becoming someone new, but remembering who we are underneath everything that has accumulated along the way.

WALKING THE YELLOW BRICK ROAD

For Robin Duryea, yoga has been a lifelong journey.

She discovered yoga at a young age, after an accident at seven, encountered Krishnamurti by the age of 15, and attended her first asana class at 18.

She describes her life as “walking the Yellow Brick Road.”

There is playfulness in that image, but also something profound: the willingness to keep walking toward the unknown.

Robin says, simply, “Yoga offers me everything.”

For her, yoga has become an anchor—a North Star—and a way of accessing “the mystery and infinite possibilities.”

That sense of possibility is not merely philosophical.

Her practice has changed the way she experiences the land around her.

Robin speaks of the body as an extension of the land, and how caring for her own body and caring for her ʻāina became intertwined. Even something as ordinary as weeding takes on another dimension: removing what constricts the land allows it to breathe.

In the same way, yoga can create space within the body.

Her practice has deepened her ability to steward her own land, while her connection to herself has deepened her engagement with the world.

It is a beautiful reminder that the boundaries between body, practice, nature, and community may not be as firm as we imagine.

Robin teaches a 75-minute public Vinyasa Yoga class at Kalani on Wednesdays from 4:30–5:45 p.m. She also offers private classes and retreats from her Puna home and welcomes varied bodies and levels of experience.

Her invitation is both grounded and expansive.

And her goal?

To “make you both laugh and cry.”

Perhaps Robin’s most provocative reminder is that we need to “stop outsourcing our power.”

Yoga, in this sense, becomes less about finding someone else to tell us who we are and more about developing the capacity to listen deeply enough to know for ourselves.

The mat becomes a place to begin.

The rest of life becomes the practice.

A LIFETIME ON THE MAT

Some paths are measured in years.

Marcia Galleher brings a particularly long perspective, having been on the mat since 1969.

Her relationship with yoga is not a passing interest or a temporary wellness practice. It is a lifelong companion—one that has evolved alongside her through the changing landscapes of her life.

There is something powerful about hearing from someone whose practice has unfolded across more than half a century.

Yoga changes because we change.

The body changes. Circumstances change. The world changes.

Yet the practice can remain a place to return.

A place to breathe.

A place to remember.

Marcia offers “Roots of Yoga” at Kalani Oceanside Retreat on Thursdays from 8:30–9:45 a.m., bringing that lifetime of experience into a community setting.

Her story adds another important dimension to the many paths represented here: yoga can be a lifelong relationship.

It can grow with us.

WHERE YOGA MEETS COMMUNITY

Lower Puna has long been a place where movement, spirituality, creativity, nature, and community overlap.

Two of the area’s best-known retreat centers—Kalani Oceanside Retreat and Hawaiian Sanctuary—illustrate that beautifully.

Yoga has been part of Kalani since its inception. Kalani holds a particularly significant place in the history of embodied movement here: it is recognized worldwide as the birthplace of Ecstatic Dance.

In 2026, Ecstatic Dance celebrates its 25th anniversary.

The Sunday Ecstatic Dance tradition has long included a yoga warm-up, creating a natural progression from grounding in the body to free-form movement and communal expression.

Yoga and Ecstatic Dance are different practices, but they share something essential: both can invite us out of our heads and into direct experience.

Into breath.

Into sensation.

Into presence.

Into connection.

In a place like lower Puna—where the Earth itself is constantly reminding us that nothing is static—such practices can offer an anchor.

The land changes.

Our lives change.

Our bodies change.

Yet we can learn to meet change with greater presence.

That theme runs through so many of the voices in this story.

THE SANCTUARY OF THE BLUE DRAGON

For Simona Gai’a Bliss, yoga has also been a pathway through change, healing and transformation.

At Sanctuary of the Blue Dragon in Seaview, her practice includes hot yoga and an infrared-heated environment, drawing from the tradition of Bikram Yoga and its structured Hatha practice of 26 postures and two breathing exercises.

But, as with so many of the practitioners featured here, the physical practice is only part of the story.

Simona’s own healing journey has taken her through experiences of anxiety, depression, and significant lifestyle changes. Over time, the discipline of the physical practice became something deeper.

A way of cultivating equanimity.

Not because life stops being turbulent, but because we can learn to remain more centered while the storms move around us.

That idea feels particularly resonant in lower Puna.

This is a place shaped by powerful natural forces. We live with the knowledge that the Earth is alive beneath our feet. We experience change not as an abstract concept, but as something tangible.

Simona’s practice offers another response to that reality:

Ground.

Breathe.

Feel.

Stay present.

The practice doesn’t promise that life will stop changing.

It offers another possibility—that we can change our relationship to change.

A PATH THROUGH THE GARDEN

Not every yoga community in lower Puna is built around a conventional studio.

Hawaiian Sanctuary, near Pāhoa, is a retreat center whose relationship with yoga goes back to its beginnings.

The sanctuary emerged in the early 2000s after Steve Lund purchased its 44-acre parcel in 2004. Yoga has been offered there consistently since the beginning, with classes available seven days a week.

But yoga is only one thread in the larger tapestry.

Permaculture, retreats, community events, nature, education, and opportunities for personal and collective growth are all part of the experience.

This makes Hawaiian Sanctuary a particularly fitting expression of the idea behind this article.

Yoga doesn’t always need to stand alone.

It can exist within a larger ecosystem of relationships—with land, food, community, learning, and one another.

There is something about a pathway through a garden that naturally invites reflection.

One step leads to another.

The destination matters, but so does the experience of walking.

Perhaps yoga is like that.

We don’t practice simply to arrive somewhere.

We practice to become more present for the journey.

MANY PATHS, ONE COMMUNITY

Looking across these practitioners, it’s easy to focus on their differences.

One teaches Vinyasa.

Another Kundalini.

Another brings a lifetime of practice.

Another works within a heated Hatha tradition.

Another creates a community around the inward journey.

And the retreat centers offer yet another dimension—places where yoga intersects with nature, movement, creativity, permaculture, and community life.

But beneath those differences, a common thread appears.

Come home.

Come home to the body.

Come home to the breath.

Come home to the land.

Come home to stillness.

Come home to movement.

Come home to community.

Come home to the part of yourself that may have been waiting quietly beneath the noise.

Lori found that feeling in her first class—a place both forgotten and familiar.

Connie calls yoga a sacred journey inward and reminds us that our practice does not have to resemble anyone else’s.

Signa speaks of coming home to herself through movement, breath, and listening.

Robin follows her Yellow Brick Road, guided by a North Star and an openness to mystery and infinite possibility.

Marcia carries more than five decades of practice as a living testament to yoga’s ability to remain a companion through a lifetime.

Simona has found a deeper sense of equanimity through disciplined practice and life’s storms.

And the larger communities of Kalani and Hawaiian Sanctuary remind us that yoga does not exist in isolation. It can become part of the culture of a place.

Perhaps that is what makes the yoga landscape of lower Puna so distinctive.

It doesn’t demand that everyone walk the same road.

It simply offers roads.

Many roads.

Some winding through gardens. Some beside the ocean. Some beginning in a studio. Some beginning with a single breath.

Some lead toward healing.

Some toward strength.

Some toward surrender.

Some toward community.

And some simply toward the quiet realization that what we have been seeking may have been within us all along.

COMING HOME

Yoga is often described as a practice.

But listening to these local teachers, it sounds like more than that.

A relationship.

A remembering.

A way of meeting ourselves—and one another—with greater awareness.

In lower Puna, where the landscape itself teaches us about impermanence, yoga offers a place to feel grounded without becoming rigid.

To move without needing to arrive.

To listen without needing immediate answers.

To discover that strength and softness can coexist.

And perhaps most beautifully, to understand that there is no single right way to come home.

There are as many paths as there are people willing to take the first step.

So whether your path begins on a yoga mat, beside the ocean, beneath the trees, in a heated room, through breath and mantra, in Ecstatic Dance, or simply in the quiet decision to pause and listen inward—

there is room here.

Room to explore.

Room to heal.

Room to move.

Room to remember.

Room to become.

And perhaps, somewhere along the way, to come home.