JUSTINE PORTMANN KATZ (she/her)
My relationship to embodiment began with my first childhood dance lesson when I found comfort and ease in the discipline of choreography and practice, and the freedom of expression it provided. A move to rural Maine left a void where years of dance had been, which I filled with athletics, and by starting my days with my mother’s AM Yoga with Rodney Yee VHS tape. I left home for college with a well loved mat in tow and continued practicing before succumbing to the busyness of college life, and eventually city working life in Boston.
In 2017, after years away and waking up to my complacency in white supremacy, I returned to my mat and found again great comfort in unifying my mind, body, and breath. I began regularly attending classes at JP Centre Yoga, eventually joining the work study team, and enrolling to participate in the 2020 yoga teacher training cohort. Throughout the uncertainty and grief of the pandemics we endured in 2020, my practice remained a constant, a place to move, breathe, and rest, to lift out of my joints, and my anxiety and depression, and to expand my awareness of my body and my Self.
As a humble teacher of this practice I consider myself a lifelong student with deep reverence for the heritage, history, and philosophy of its teachings. Among my influential teachers are Alana Brennan, Alex Bauermeister, Ame Wren, Daniel Max, and Kate Johnson, as well as The Bhagavad Gita, Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, My Grandmother’s Hands by Resmaa Menakem, Radical Dharma by Rev. angel Kyodo williams and Lama Rod Owens, and Skill In Action by Michelle Cassandra Johnson.
After four years of studentship at JPCY, I joined the management team to harness my nerdy professional marketing skills on behalf of fostering awareness of and connection to the studio’s offerings and innovations to the JP community, greater Boston, and beyond.
justineportmannkatz.com
What You Can Expect From My Classes
I seek to offer students guidance and tools to explore their patterns, create more space, and use effort in the body to allow for stillness in the mind through physical postures (asana), breath work (pranayama), and meditation. The practice of yoga is for everyone, and my goal is to uphold that truth through verbal cues that provide students with options to access shared muscular actions and engagement within a variety individual shapes to meet their bodies where they’re at while remaining connected to their breath.