Jenna Sammartino
EXPERIENCE + APPROACH
I’ve been a yoga teacher here on Cape Cod since 2007 and have been an avid student of the practice for over two decades. The yoga I share with students is as much about our inherent wisdom body as it is about the physical body. The magic of yoga is its yoking of physical strength with the muscles of inquiry and deep listening.
I’m a certified Prajna Yoga SATYA teacher (Somatic Awareness Training for Yoga Attunement). My years of training include a 300-hour advanced certification from Prajna Yoga, as well as 200-hour certificates from both Prajna Yoga and Nosara Yoga Institute. I studied yin yoga with Sarah Powers and completed her Insight Yoga Level I teacher training.
I find inspiration in the threading of Buddhist wisdom teachings into movement practice, and in my ongoing studies in yoga and the Dharma I work with Tias and Surya Little and mentor with Djuna Devereaux.
As a freelance wordsmith, I practice the art of creative word-craft. For nearly two decades, I was also a park ranger with the National Park Service and my background in the natural sciences and reverence for Nature are threaded through my teachings.
More on Modalities
My public classes are designed to be widely accessible to students with varying levels of experience and ability. I will often share inspiring poetry and Dharma passages in class and add these quotes to my website each week so that students can continue to work with them as words of wisdom.
SATYA - Somatic Awareness Training for Yoga: SATYA is a gentle floor-based somatic movement modality that is truly accessible to all bodies and a great complement to the traditional asana practice. Deeply therapeutic, this floor-based practice is non weight-bearing and typically done on a blanket to allow for sliding, gliding, unwinding, and rocking movements. Created by Tias Little of Prajna Yoga, SATYA offers soft, slow, repetitive, and mindful movements taken without force, inspiring a strong connection to the subtle body and strengthening the body-mind connection. Therapeutically, the practice helps to balance the body’s physical structure, reducing tension and fatigue.
Meditation and Mindfulness Practice: Yoga, as a movement discipline, was originally developed as a means of preparing the body for meditative stillness. Practiced for thousands of years in wisdom traditions from all over the world, the benefits of contemplative practice are now also widely appreciated by modern western medicine. When we practice in cultivating moment-to-moment non-judgmental awareness, our whole being benefits. Guided meditations can help us access this deep well of clear calm, one that is inherently within us, but often obscured by the rough waters of daily living.
Yin Yoga: Yin yoga focuses on cultivating suppleness in the connective tissues of the body, rather than the muscles alone. Certain floor poses are held for longer periods of time (3-5 minutes). As a complement to the more typical "active" practice, this more "receptive" style allows practitioners to more deeply explore both the physical body and the mental constructs that tend to rule our lives...allowing for meditations both in motion and in stillness.