Pleasantville Yoga Teacher Transforms Yard into Community Retreat
yoga studio. Marra, who had been a part-time instructor, started giving lessons
full-time in March.
By Madeline Rosenberg
For Pleasantville native Jackie Marra, teaching yoga during a pandemic means more than holding outdoor classes and avoiding packed studios. It’s about creating a sense of community and an escape.
Marra, a former part-time yoga instructor who began teaching full-time in March, wanted her latest wellness effort to feel like a magical oasis. She lined her Pleasantville yard with printed rugs and pillows, adorned with vines and sunflower bouquets.
“I wanted people to step into the backyard and forget that we were in quarantine,” Marra said, “forget that we couldn’t hop on a plane anywhere and just be the escape that people needed.”
Marra has been hosting socially-distant outdoor vinyasa yoga classes since early July. As restrictions eased and people felt comfortable gathering outside, Marra converted her childhood backyard into an outdoor yoga studio. She also hosts virtual classes over Instagram and now teaches hour-long outdoor sessions each week.
But this isn’t how Marra expected her spring and summer to go. Yoga wasn’t part of the plan.
As the world abruptly changed in March, the 26-year-old left her job at a boutique travel company and moved home with her family. Marra’s New York City apartment lease was ending, and as she settled back into Pleasantville, she wanted to give back to the community where she was raised.
Marra turned to teaching yoga, a practice she previously called a side “passion project,” leading classes on a beach or a friend’s roof. Now, Marra is running a business she launched in the isolation of March that has grown through the pandemic summer.
She started with Instagram Live classes that connected people stuck at home, tuning in from New York to Chicago to California. But Marra said she and her students craved in-person connection after months of virtual yoga, feeling isolated as their lives moved online.
“I wanted to hold space for people to come together, feel grounded, which has been such a challenge for most among everything going on this year,” Marra said. “Just to be in the same space and feel everyone’s energy is night and day compared to virtual. The in-person connection was so powerful.”
Those who attended Marra’s July “Yoga in the Yard” wellness event distanced across the printed rugs and flowed through yoga and guided meditation. Afterward, they scribbled in mindfulness journals, focusing on gratitude and self-nourishment, and created bath salts with essential oils, dried herbs and flowers. And it almost felt like normal.
“Once everyone’s on their mats six feet apart and we’re moving, it really does feel like normalcy, besides the fact that I’m not walking around and offering hands-on adjustment for alignment and relaxation,” Marra said. “It was just really powerful that we’re still able to connect in that way.”
More than bringing some normalcy, Yoga in the Yard created a sense of community, Marra said. People who have lived in Pleasantville for years connected for the first time and left her home feeling refreshed from the two-hour reprieve. Marra plans to lead another wellness event in September.
“Attendees left literally glowing. Their smiles were huge,” Marra said. “They were so inspired and relaxed, and it really was a true sense of community, which we almost didn’t know we needed as much as we did until the event wrapped up.”
Marra also offers private sessions and corporate yoga, and posts weekly schedules on her Instagram page (@flowwithjackie) for donation-based virtual classes and $10 outdoor sessions. As she looks forward, Marra said she hopes to hold global yoga retreats once the virus subsides, combining travel, wellness and community.
But for now, Marra said she’s glad to be living in Pleasantville again, the first time since high school, soaking up time with family and walks around town.
“It was scary to take on a new direction at first, and then I just knew it was right within me that I had to go along with this,” Marra said. “I love Pleasantville so much, and it feels good to be able to give back to the community that gave to me my whole childhood. Yoga was my side passion project in pre-COVID times, and now it has turned into my everything.”
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