Who We Are.
Our Values
Our Story
Our Teachers
Student Testimonials
Our Values.
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AUTHENTICITY
Yoga asks a lot of us.
When you really commit to it, it can help you shed the layers of protection you’ve built up. That can be scary and liberating.
Day by day, we work to cradle and support that little light in you, that little glimmer of joy that struggles to shine, by teaching with authenticity and by supporting a safe and authentic community.
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KINDNESS
Yoga works because it gives us space to let go of our worries, our judgments, our sadness, and our fear—about ourselves and other people.
Our studio is built on the belief that we don’t know what the person next to us is carrying, but we can always lessen that load simply by being kind.
You may be 19-years old or 70-years-old. You may be doing your thousandth warrior pose or your first.
It doesn’t matter to us. What does matter is that you will feel safe and supported, not just by your teacher, but by your community too.
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DEDICATION
Our teachers are experts, well-trained, and experienced.
But what makes Shine’s classes and workshops exceptional is that they are also inspired and curious. They design and teach their classes out of dedication to their craft.
Every student who comes to Shine will grow in physical strength, flexibility, technique, and heart because we are always growing too.
Where we came from.
Shine was built out of proof that yoga works.
Shine’s founder, Sara, had gone through a rough couple of years. She was diagnosed with cancer at 38 years old. The size of her tumors forced a specific treatment approach and timeline, which, a year later, left her unable to lift her arm, along with bone-deep exhaustion and mental mud. At the same time, her husband lost his job.
With a two-year-old, lots of worries, and financial instability, Sara made the decision to move back home to Hamburg, after 20 years of being away.
Yoga became a key part of her recovery. She brought an intensive daily practice into her life, and one day she could lift her arm, and then a month later, she had feeling in her shoulder again, next her pec muscle engaged and the Lymphodema in her arm shrunk.
When she did yoga, she ate better. She took her dog for walks, she made decisions that brought her joy. Her family was happier. The deep fear of a recurrence softened its grip. She could sleep.
High quality classes and the personalized programs that Sara developed are the cornerstone of Shine. But more than anything, Shine is a reflection of Sara’s heart—who she is and what she wished for people.
She was guided by things she learned from yoga but also from her parents and grandparents, her teachers and friends. Things like ahimsa ( kindness and gentleness), satya (authenticity and truth) and dharma (dedication to your life’s calling).
How we grew.
At first, Sara’s teaching was very anatomy-based. The physical effects of yoga were profound in her own body. She had learned so much about body mechanics, strength, and flexibility from her own limitations and the training she did with Yoga Medicine. She wanted to share that.
As a result, Shine’s first home was in a progressive, research-focused chiropractor’s office that largely served Buffalo’s Professional Athletes. Sara taught four classes per day and held private therapeutic sessions for over a year.
During that time, she realized the value of teaching body mechanics, so that everyone could live better in their bodies and grow in their yoga practice. She also learned that what people needed more than anything was permission to rest. Both of those things continue to drive Shine’s approach to yoga.
When Shine moved to The Grange, two years later, it got bigger. Both physically and conceptually. We had a beautiful old theater space to grow in. Shine added more teachers and worked to support their passions and visions alongside Sara’s.
We also held our first Yoga Teacher Training.
Where we are now.
Like so many small businesses, we suffered during the pandemic.
And we lost our home.
We worked hard to keep offering yoga and trainings. We did our best to respond to what we saw our students needed during this hard time in their lives. We kept showing up.
But we needed a real home to offer the unique safety and support that Shine is known for.
Sara bought a Historical Victorian, built by the owner of Pierce-Arrow Motor Car Company in 1896. It was Hamburg’s first library and hosted the area’s suffragette meetings. It had seen better days, had been empty for a long time, and was in foreclosure.
It’s taken nearly a year and a half of non-stop renovation to bring her back. We replaced all of the floors with beautiful red oak, repaired and replaced plaster and woodwork, put in a kitchen for us to gather in and cook together. We also did the things you can’t see. We replaced all the electricity, plumbing and heating systems. We brought her back to the beautiful landmark she had once been.
Our studio is a special place, full of light and warmth.
The perfect place to return to our origins, Sara’s heart.
This space will be filled with smaller classes built and taught with intention.
This space is devoted equally to education and healing.
This space is built on the foundation of kindness, authenticity, and dedication.
This space is a place of safety and growth for everyone who comes through our doors.
This space is home.
Meet Your Teachers.
Your teachers were drawn to yoga for different reasons and have different passions and approaches to teaching.
What we all have in common is that yoga truly changed our lives. We needed yoga, and it worked for us.
The other commonality among our teaching community is heart.
You won’t see your teachers doing acrobatic poses on Instagram. Classes won’t be standing room only and you won’t be wondering where we got our fabulous outfits.
You will feel our deep care and desire to support you in every way we can.
P.S. Click on the + by our picture to learn all about us.
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Sara opened Shine in 2015, a year after she finished her treatment for Stage 2B Breast Cancer.
She opened Shine’s doors as a means of helping other people who had gone through a life changing experience physically, mentally or emotionally to find joy and steadiness again. This has always been her mission and still is, eight years later.
Sara is known for her deeply focused alignment and anatomy-based classes (The Details), her restorative classes (Rest), and her flow classes (Flow to Rest, Steady Vinyasa, Shiny Happy People).
She is a Certified Yoga Medicine Therapeutic Specialist and has eight years experience helping individuals better understand their bodies and heal through private sessions.
Sara also taps into her experience as a professional writer, researcher, and federal behavioral health program developer to design trainings, workshops, and programs. Her work as a teacher at the University-level has helped to make her Yoga Teacher Training program exceptional.
Work with Roswell Park Cancer Institute
Yoga 4 Cancer Survivors Class for Roswell
Yoga 4 Cancer Survivors Class for Roswell Variations
Bed Yoga for Cancer Patients ( Roswell)
Chair Yoga for Cancer Patients (Roswell)
Sara is certified through Kripalu, Dr. Ray Long, Jason Crandell, Yoga Medicine, and Katherine Templeton.
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Barb began her healing journey 31 years ago as an RN.
As she continued along the medical path, she was drawn more and more to the mind’s ability to heal, leading her to become certified as a psychiatric nurse.
Fifteen years ago, she found her way to Reiki, becoming a certified Reiki Master.
It was only natural that she was guided to yoga, where she found a new way to integrate mind, body and spirit.
Barb is certified through Shine Yoga and Grief Yoga.
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Connie has been interested in yoga for many years. She dabbled in video classes but didn’t make it into a studio until her 40’s where she started at Bikram. A week in she wanted to learn how to teach yoga but was too busy to take training. When Shine Yoga opened in Hamburg she went to her first class and found her home. During the pandemic she became a certified yoga instructor through Sara’s YTT program. She has been teaching one day a week to teenagers after school since as well as meditation classes whenever there is time. She enjoys any style of yoga and explores the transformative aspects of all yoga. Connie has been interested in energy work for 25 years, exploring ways of alternative healing. This exploration brought her to Reiki, a divine life force energy and Kundalini, breath/energy movement to help your inner connection. Reiki is an energy healing technique that promotes relaxation, reduces stress and anxiety through gentle touch. While Shine was on break, Connie has continued her training in meditation and kundalini through Kia Miller, Radiant Body Yoga and has come to this style of flow mixed in with kriyas, a prescribed movement in Kundalini. She has taken her 60 hours in Pranayama, breath work and plans on completing her 500 hours with Kia Miller as well as additional training through Shine Yoga. Connie does daily Sadhanas, morning practice, just to be prepared for what life has to offer setting her up for new possibilities.
Connie has taught art for 25 years at Fredonia Central. She’s a member of NAEA, NYSATA, NCECA, World Organization of China Painters; She regularly takes and presents workshops. Not only is she an art teacher but a ceramic artist as well. She has over 50 sculptures in private collections; have exhibited locally, nationally and internationally. She spends her summers getting ready for Lewistion Art Festival and other gallery shows. On top of all of this she has celebrated 35 years of marriage. She has three grown/successful boys, 4 grandchildren, one step grandchild and one on the way. Teaching is her inspiration, creating is her passion and family is her life.
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Jenni has been teaching yoga since she finished her training in 2020 with Shine.
Everyone who meets Jenni feels like they have had an encounter with a magical being and her classes are magical too.
Jenni has studied the subtle body and energetic work, which brings a unique quality to her classes.
While her classes include a lot of movement and can be challenging, they focus on exploring energy together. Her classes are intuitive and responsive to the students in her class and the effect is long lasting.
Jenni is also a visual artist and writer and worked as a social worker for many years.
Jenni is taking a break from teaching a regular class for health reasons, but will be subbing for us this summer.
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Before beginning to teach yoga exclusively, Courtney was a Certified Oncology Nurse for 28 years. She specialized in infusional chemotherapy, hospice, and palliative care.
In February 2023, she retired from nursing in order to pursue her passion for yoga. Her background guides her approach to teaching yoga. She teaches with caring and sensitivity and sees yoga as another path to help people heal, not dissimilar to nursing.
Courtney began practicing yoga 20 years ago. Being on the mat brings her peace and perspective in her everyday life.
Her practice has been instrumental in healing from complicated trauma related anxiety and PTSD. She is focusing her continuing study on trauma informed yoga and yoga for anxiety and grief so that she can share what has been transformational in her life.
Courtney is originally from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, but has been in Buffalo and with Shine for the last 7 years. She is married to a pilot and a mom of 5 kids-a big blended family of young adults and teenagers.
Courtney was certified through Shine Yoga and wants to share that “Shine has been such a bright light in my life. I’m so very honored to be part of the Shine family. “
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Amanda began her yoga practice because she had an endless feeling of burnout. She was doing too much of what she didn’t love and not enough of what brought her joy.
She practiced yoga on and off for over a decade. Even when the practice was irregular, there was one constant; whenever she practiced, everything else in her life became clearer and more balanced.
She took a leap of faith and joined the Yoga Teacher Training program through Shine, hoping to find a regular practice, learn more about yoga and herself. Not only did she find those things, she also found joy. Something that was really missing from her days on a burnout hamster wheel.
Yoga brings Amanda peace, it makes her feel balanced, centered, strong, courageous, it’s given her support through the good and not so good times.
She hopes her students will take the opportunity to go inward in her classes, to ask themselves what it is they need in the moment, to take good care of themselves, and to listen to their inner voice and trust it. She wants her students to have self-compassion, to find inner peace and courage for themselves.
You can expect to feel like you belong in Amanda’s classes, to feel safe, and to both receive and give kindness.
As a dancer for 15 years, Amanda loves that yoga includes the body as a means of emotional connection and growth.
Amanda received her certification through Shine Yoga.
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Erin is a former dancer through the University at Buffalo dance department and a retired pediatric Speech Language Pathologist for the Lakeshore School District.
While working as a therapist at Lakeshore, she saw the need for mindfulness approaches for students and teachers alike. She spearheaded a program that became district wide and has served as a model for other school districts.
We were lucky enough to have Erin teach our School Teacher’s Yoga Camp participants’ strategies for implementing mindfulness in their classrooms and districts.
Erin’s understanding of movement is exceptional and her classes include unique and fluid transitions from posture to posture. Underlying all of Erin’s classes is a gentleness and care that leaves her students feeling supported.
Erin is training in somatic movement, which is especially helpful for seniors and people recovering from surgery as it helps student’s nervous systems to reconnect with natural muscle movements.
Erin is certified through Shine Yoga.
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Guangyu was one of the first Shine Yoga Teacher Training Program graduates and began teaching yoga classes in Hamburg and East Aurora right after graduating. When she signed up for Shine’s YTT, she was going through some personal life challenges and was most drawn to taking time to learn more about herself.
She was most drawn to yoga philosophy during the training program and has applied the eight limbs of yoga to her daily life and to the classes she teaches as the Chair of Fredonia University’s Education Department.
Her teaching philosophy is rooted in Neil Nodding’s theory of caring. In her college classroom as well as the yoga studio, Guangyu begins the class by asking students to check in with themselves and acknowledge how they are feeling, physically and emotionally.
Guangyu is an avid distance runner, and she has run and paced multiple half marathons. Yoga dramatically improved her running experience, and she loves to teach her fellow runners how yoga can benefit them in mind and body.
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Mary Beth took her first yoga class when her youngest of four kids went to preschool. There was a gap in her days off from work and a yoga class fit into it.
She immediately loved it. Mostly she loved how yoga gave her space to turn inward, to a place of just being. It was like releasing a breath of fresh air. And then she started noticing that she felt more calm and physically strong in her everyday life.
Her yoga practice has helped her with raising her family and with her lifelong job as a Labor and Delivery nurse at Mercy Hospital, a job she cherishes. She loves being able to support women physically and emotionally through pregnancy, the birthing process, and postpartum. She sees yoga as an extension of that work and looks forward to providing all of her students with care and support.
Her goal in class is for students to feel, safe, and nurtured. She hopes her students will have that same experience she had in yoga class —time where they can just be without the worries and fears of daily life.
Mary Beth is certified through Shine Yoga.
Mary Beth is also teaching a special Post Natal class from August-October.
Interested in becoming a yoga teacher or furthering your education post-certification?
Love Notes from Our Students.
Join Us.
Get started by getting a complimentary Yoga Prescription, a customized schedule and suggestions for lifestyle support.
Meet with Sara, Shine’s founder, for 15 minutes to get the most out of your experience. We can meet in person, zoom, or even text.