An Interview with Mandala Yoga Center Founder Jolie Parcher

Jolie Parcher is the founder and director of The Mandala Yoga Center for Healing Arts, a yoga studio located in Amangansett, New York. Mandala Yoga offers daily yoga classes for all levels, classes on meditation and ayurveda, and teacher trainings in yoga, aromatherapy, and Ayurvedic Yoga, and is now offing CBD oil in the studio. In the 17 years since Jolie Parcher founded Mandala Yoga, it’s served as a beautiful healing hub for the surrounding community, bringing people closer to each other, and themselves.

Mandala Yoga is now carrying our Plant Alchemy CBD products, and are also offering our CBD as part of their yoga classes. Our marketing team recently made a trip out to Amangansett to visit the center – read their blog about it here!

I spoke with Jolie Parcher about what led her to open the studio, how Ayurveda is infused into her yoga practice and teachings, Mandala Yoga’s impact on the community, and how CBD complements yoga.

How did you get into yoga and meditation?

A dance teacher in college I had great respect for brought yoga into our classes. I felt such obvious calming and reconnecting and relief from my anxious college mind that I really fell in love. I traveled to India after college for more learning and fell upon a yoga teacher training that was actually an immersion in ayurvedic daily rituals and cleansing, as well as yoga and chanting, pranayama and meditation.

What made you decide to open a yoga studio?

I worked as a special ed teacher in the local schools, and the daily routine of the school day and pressure from administration was taking a big tool on my physical and spiritual being. When I left the school system to have my first child, I knew I needed to find work that would allow me to take better care for myself, give me room to be with my child, support a healthier lifestyle, build community and feel joyous to me. I had already been teaching yoga so when a space opened up in Amagansett Square, it felt like an answer to my prayers.

Jolie Parcher

How does Ayurveda inform your yoga practice and teachings?

At this point Ayurveda is infused so thoroughly in the way I see and respond to the world I can hardly separate it out. I observe my yoga room – the noise level, chatter, buzz/energy as people come in – and set the pace and intensity of my teaching to balance that out. I massage a clients scalp and observe their body temperature and pace of breath and adjust my touch accordingly. I get on my mat each morning and observe my mind’s calm or busyness, listen to my body’s alertness or heaviness and begin my practice to create balance. I observe the weather and how my gut feels and notice my family’s rhythm and sounds and adjust our meals to support our vibrant health.

Ayurvedic daily rituals/dinacharya has become my consistent practice, meditation and prayer.

How has the Mandala Center served the surrounding community of Amagansett?

I am touched beyond expression at what people, our students, have shared about the role Mandala has played in their lives. It’s been over 17 years since I opened, and there are so many stories of people feeling safe enough to move through grief in our classes, of celebrating children and love with us, of witnessing amazing healing of body, mind and spirit. My aim has always been to offer a space where people can practice in a way that inspires awareness, teaches healing tools and opens our minds to caring for each other, no matter how different we might seem.

How does CBD complement the yoga experience? What makes them go well together?

CBD is great tool, much like meditation, essential oils, music and other sensory awareness tools that help us tune into how we are right now. They help to turn the channel off of the chatter and actually land in the moment. In a good yoga class, we are guided to move step by step, breath by breath, away from the pulls of the world and our concerns into an experience of joy and appreciation of our experience. This experience of heightened awareness is like a full food cupboard we can reach into when we are feeling out of sorts, strengthening our ability to stay conscious and compassionate through challenging times. The combination of CBD and Yoga is a graceful dance of similarities. It’s very exciting to have access to such high quality plants these days and products that are made with so much integrity.

Faye Sakellaridis

Faye Sakellaridis’s interest in psychedelics and consciousness led her to become an managing editor at The Alchemists Kitchen and Reality Sandwich, where she enjoys the scope of visionary thought that she regularly encounters from the site’s many contributors and the “rich spectrum of intellectual essays on consciousness through a diverse lens of art, culture, and science.” Faye recently earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Queens College in NYC, and her professional and academic life have been centered on journalism and creative writing. However, Faye—a classically trained improvisational pianist—says that spiritually, she identifies herself first and foremost identify as a musician. “Music is my most intuitive language,” she says. “If it weren't for music I'm not sure I'd truly understand the concept of the sublime. Writing and music are two are elemental parts of me, and communicating through them is what I do.”