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Fellows Riverside Gardens hosts twice-weekly yoga classes
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Marina Perdos (center) got her yoga students ready to begin before the weekly class at Fellows Riverside Gardens.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Yoga instructor Marina Perdos (foreground) started her students off with breathing exercises during the weekly yoga class at Fellows Riverside Gardens.
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Neighbors | Tim Cleveland.Marina Perdos is the yoga instructor for twice-weekly classes at Fellows Riverside Gardens. She has more than 20 years experience as an instructor.
By TIM CLEVELAND
For approximately 10 years, Marina Perdos has been leading twice-weekly yoga classes at Fellows Riverside Gardens, with 10-15 people usually attending.
“Just to give the people in the area some other options,” Perdos said when asked why she wanted to start doing the classes. “It’s a perfect place to get in touch with nature and to help connect with yourself starting on that level and building that foundation.”
Perdos said the classes take place every Tuesday and Thursday from 9:30 a.m. until 11 a.m., with a different instructor teaching another session from 5:30-7 p.m. those same days.
The classes take place year-round, usually in the Gardens’ gazebo. They are moved indoors when the weather doesn’t permit outdoor classes.
Perdos said she started doing yoga when she was 14-years-old and has been teaching for more than 20 years.
“I was a gymnast and it was an opportunity to help connect,” she said of why she started doing yoga. “An instructor had shared some things with me way back when and I just really liked it. It’s just something that I’ve been doing all my life.
“Stretching makes you feel really good. I was always very interested in health and well-being, first for myself, and then sharing that with others. That has cultivated to where I am and what I’ve chosen to do in life.”
One of the attendees of the class was Margi Napoli of Boardman.
“We’re so grateful for this in the Youngstown area,” she said. “God’s gift to mankind is yoga.”
Perdos is a registered nurse who also teaches at the Escape Dance Academy on New Road and she has a holistic health practice.
Perdos said doing yoga can have numerous health benefits.
“The spiritual, mental, emotional and physical, that kind of covers it all,” she said. “There’s benefits of keeping yourself flexible – and flexible doesn’t mean bending in a pretzel – flexible meaning what is flexible to you and your body type and how you are as an individual.
“It boosts the immune system, it works on the circulatory system, on the emotional well-being.”