Fall 2026 Newsletter

Written By Caitlin Vanderwolf

🍂 Fall Announcements: website, retreat, new classes, and massage offerings

I have struggled with the second iteration of this newsletter because it seems there’s too much to share all at once! As I’ll discuss in the Theme Writing section, I believe one can have too much of a good thing, in this case, news. That said, I’ll do my best to stay brief and organized.

First, I am excited to announce that I finally published this website! In the months since I shared the Summer Newsletter, I have been working quietly in the background creating this resource as a one-stop-shop for all the things. You can access present and previous newsletters, information about upcoming events like the Yoga & Creativity Retreat, and my Contact page to send me a message about massage or interest in collaboration. Click away!

Second, I will quickly mention the aforementioned retreat in Pennsylvania’s serene Pocono Mountains from October 9th-11th, 2026. While I will describe that offering in more detail in the Special Events section, I hope to convey here that the Yoga & Creativity Retreat is for folks of all ages, genders, and abilities who enjoy quality time with like-minded creatives. Please scroll to that section or read about it on the Offerings tab if you’re interested in learning more about that special weekend and how to sign up (just email me)!

Regarding my regular yoga classes, my schedule and class titles have shifted slightly. I am still teaching on Monday nights at 7:45 PM at Petworth and on Thursday nights at 6:00 PM and 7:10 PM. I have a new class with an online component on Wednesday nights at Yoga District’s Bloomingdale location. From 7:45-8:45 PM, I will be hosting a Pre- and Post-Natal Parents and Partners Yoga class, where people journeying through pregnancy and their loved ones can practice yoga to ease their bodies and minds, build strength, and foster connection. 

Finally, massage. I am about halfway through my massage therapy program--I graduate in March--and it’s important that I practice my craft as I approach graduation and licensure. You can help me along this path if you’re comfortable giving honest, direct, clear feedback. Please reach out to me using the Contact form if you’re interested and I’ll get in touch with you. Phew, that’s a lot of  announcements 😮‍💨

🗓️ Weekly To-Do's (all on my “Offerings” tab, as well)

  • Monday Restorative and Yoga Nidra at 7:45 PM at the Petworth Yoga District location

  • NEW Wednesday Pre- and Post-Natal Parents and Partners Flow and Restore  at 7:45 PM at the Bloomingdale Yoga District location

  • Thursday Slow Flow at 6:00 PM and Restorative Express at 7:10 PM at the 14th Street Yoga District location

⭐ Special Events: 2nd Annual Yoga & Creativity Retreat

Last fall, my dear friend Britt and I hosted my very first yoga retreat. In the past, I’ve attended beautiful and exotic yoga retreats and trainings, a few of which were actually orchestrated by the lovely Britt, my now-collaborator. I think because it’s ours, and it’s set in the picturesque Pocono Mountains of my home state, Pennsylvania, this event is just… special. It’s the first yoga event I’ve attended that I feel genuinely welcomes all people, from all walks of life, to move, breathe, and express themselves together as a gorgeously multifaceted portion of the universal Self. 

Now, that’s a lot of woo-woo talk. Practically, what I mean is, Britt and I offer the gamut of our collective fifteen-plus years of yoga leadership and group facilitation expertise to design accessible asana sequences, develop creative and spiritual workshops, and shape the generally cozy autumnal vibes characteristic of this homey getaway. If you’re a visual learner, please see the photo gallery on my website’s Offerings tab from last year’s retreat. If you’re interested in attending the retreat from October 9-11, 2026, please reach out to me directly using the Contact form on my website. 

👀 What’s Next? Pre- and Post-Natal Parents & Partners Yoga

In this new stage of my yoga-teaching career, I am drawn addressing specific life challenges, primarily off the mat.  In part, that is why I have stepped away temporarily from teaching vinyasa classes and lead folks in slow and restorative practices centered on nervous system regulation. That is also why I have sought to deepen my understanding of the needs of yoga practitioners experiencing the many changes associated with pregnancy and parenthood. I’m currently working towards an 80-hour prenatal yoga certification with Yoga Renew and putting my learning to use on Wednesday nights at 7:45 PM at the Yoga District Bloomingdale location and online.

While not a parent myself, I have found since beginning this new educational journey that life is blossoming all around me! In my family, at work, in my friend group, and in my neighborhood, I witness people becoming parents for the first time or welcoming brand new members into their family units. I am in awe of the dual strength and softness it takes to do this magical thing. Raising children and caring for people, parents included, truly takes a village, and it’s been an honor to be a small part of some peoples’ villages through my Pre- and Post-Natal Parents and Partners Yoga class.

Inspired by the mentorship of one of my yoga teacher friends, who is a mother and pre-natal teacher herself, the late-night class offers time for students to move and strengthen, with ample time allotted for transitions between poses, and equal time to restore their bodies and minds supported by props. We often move according to how the students present are feeling on that day, focusing usually on hips, low back, calf muscles, shoulders, essentially anything that could be giving parents-to-be and post-partem parents trouble. It’s been especially sweet to witness pregnant people attend classes with their partners or other familial support. I hope it’s a lovely reminder that they aren’t alone on this path.

🖊️ Theme-Writing:

Saṁtoṣādanuttamaḥ sukhalābhaḥ

By contentment, supreme joy is gained.

I don’t really have hobbies. That is, I don’t have activities that I do just for me and not as means to some productive end. Oftentimes, my creative juices or general energies are used up in everyday obligations like work or study. I also have this awful habit of turning things I enjoy like exercise, writing, even time with friends, into semi-obligations by over-scheduling myself. While it usually means I do all the things I want and need to do in a week or a month, it’s a recipe for eventual burnout. And when I do have a rare break, I don’t know how to entertain myself. Nothing sounds fun. 

That’s why, when I woke up from a glorious summer nap inspired to do something new one afternoon in June, I could barely contain my excitement. My eyes shot open, I jumped out of bed, and dug into the back of my closet for a dress I hadn’t worn in two years, not since I bought it from a second-hand store. Out of nowhere, I decided I was going to tailor it. Nevermind that I hadn’t sewn more than a few patches onto my jean jacket in many years. Disregard the fact that I didn’t own a sewing machine. Excuses be damned! If I messed up, I’d have cleared space in my wardrobe. 

I was so thrilled by the impulse to make something, my hands shook as I crudely marked where I would cut the bright green fabric. Each subsequent phase of the process unfurled in my mind’s eye exactly three seconds before I took one critical step after another. Before I snipped, leave some room for a hem. As I pinned, look for that iron, it’s around here somewhere. Time moved quickly and slowly as I punched the needle in and out, creating a wobbly line of hunter green stitches along the fringing bottom of my project. I finished the back and looked at the clock. Miraculously, only fifteen minutes had passed.

Even more miraculously, at that very moment, I decided to stop. I’ll explain why that’s significant with a tale from another time. When I was very young, likely under ten, I got a set of glitter glue pens. I remember running to every room to find stuff to customize, drawing gloopy hearts and blobby butterflies on notebook pages, my purple Caboodle, and my blue and silver CD player. Very Lisa Frank. In an instant, it felt like, I was out of glitter glue, and nothing I had created satisfied me. I craved more, and I needed to maintain momentum. Yet, without my sticky medium, I was genuinely bereft.

This memory resurfaced as I considered whether to push myself to finish hemming the front of the skirt. I “played the tape,” as they say in some recovery communities, and witnessed myself turning pure joy into stress and emptiness by rushing, inevitably doing a sloppy job, and having nowhere to go with my energy once I was done. No, this feeling was too precious. I carefully stuck the needle at the shoulder of the garment and hung it on the closet door where it awaited my return.

The beauty of this choice to wait was manyfold. In short, it meant I could sustain my creative passion beyond that immediate moment. In the interim between putting down the dress and picking it back up, my brain mused on thoughts of sleeves and collars which I might not have otherwise considered. I composed a month of dharma* talks about lengthening, physically and mentally, lingering in postures and suspending gratification to increase contentment, or santosha, over time. In fact, I attribute my ability to slow down, even marginally, to both my yoga practice and the gift of growing up.

Swami Satchidananda translates Yoga Sutra 2.42, featured at the beginning of this section, from the original Sanskrit: “by contentment, supreme joy is gained.” He elaborates, “contentment means just to be as we are without going to outside things for our happiness. If something comes, we let it come” (The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, 137). One of the shorter segments of Satchidananda’s commentary, this thread of yogic philosophy is no less challenging nor important. What I will add is when feelings like joy and inspiration do come, by not grasping or clinging onto them, but through awareness and self-discipline, we might experience them more authentically and hang onto them a while longer. 

Not isolated to creative endeavors, this skill is essential in a world which literally profits from our collective inability to simply be. I don’t have to catalogue the ways we are encouraged to improve, optimize, and produce; we’ve all witnessed it personally. The drive towards better, manipulated by the wellness industry in particular, is not inherently negative. But if we are unable to sit with a feeling, circumstance, or even a version of ourselves that is without nitpicking, as I often find myself doing, we are certainly missing out on the present we’re distracted from. 

In a way, we’re always a half-sewn, upcycled garment. It’s possible that for years, our potential lies dormant, at the back of a closet, but not immaterial. Then suddenly, we realize ourselves, the possibility of our being, and begin picking up a thread, following a path. However, if we get too set on an outcome, on an end, we risk losing the meaning of the means which carry us forward and forgo divine inspiration in favor of completion or certainty. The stuff of life mutates into chronic stress. My advice? Don’t use up all your glitter glue in one go. Savoring the steps along the journey towards reinvention--which actually happens whether we will it or not--makes the project of living a more mindful, easeful, and open one.

📚  Resources (in order of appearance/significance):

Caitlin Vanderwolf
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Summer 2026 Newsletter