Our Story
Pam Johnson founded the Heights School of Yoga in 2008 as a studio dedicated to teaching techniques of cleansing the body, clearing the mind, sharpening the intuition and opening the practitioner to their inner pranic waves of light and healing energy. The quality of teaching is to facilitate the students to embrace all areas of yoga and become fully present to their daily experiences. The Heights School of Yoga is dedicated to the ancient tradition of connecting teachers to students and students to teachers. HSOY is a small studio where neighbors meet and teachers teach!
The Beginnings of Yoga
The firmest evidence for yoga’s origins lies in North India, between the 3rd and 5th centuries BCE. Self-aware renouncers realized that their bodies and minds contained the potential to perceive reality correctly and rise above the suffering of existence. They understood that thoughts vibrate eternally in the cosmos and are universally and not individually rooted, for a truth cannot be created only perceived, making the goal of yoga science one of calming the mind, so that a mind without distortion may mirror the divine visions of our universe.
They were often known as shramamas, munis, and yatis
“They radically reshaped their relationship with ordinary life to devote themselves to meditation and austerities. Over time practitioners of yoga built upon this foundation, incrementally honing the techniques of physical and metaphysical transformation, by the 7th century BCE, the core concepts, practices, and vocabulary of almost every yoga system was established and continues to the present day.”
These great 'rishi's systems to bring human beings into harmony with their current plains of existence and to aspire for direct contact with higher plains. With techniques that seemed at times exotic, mysterious and mystical, these Yogis manifested the universe in powerful and peaceful ways. They developed balance, harmony and cared for their own bodies by tuning the mind and calming the breath. They focused energy in the heart, infusing vibration of the breath to transport themselves as vessels immersed in fields of sound and light.
The yogi's knew that their practice was more than a system of exercise.
“By opening themselves to waves of energy within and around them, they fueled-as we do now- the relationship with the divine soul. The ultimate goal of every yoga practice is to become a vessel able to sail into the analytical mind and resonate with the senses, both inward and outward, to explore the infinite properties of light and dark, breath and silence, movement and stillness, to infuse the brain and heart with light and love.”
- Jai Uttal