About Graceful Heart Yoga
Mission
Graceful Heart Yoga’s mission is to promote mental and physical health in working professionals. By using a variety of yogic practices, including asana (pose), pranayama (breathing), and meditation, Graceful Heart Yoga encourages students to find balance their bodies while taming “the monkey mind.”
Grace Rectra, Founder
Grace Rectra has been practicing yoga consistently for well over 10 years. Her first introduction to yoga was when she was 16 years old attending the New York State Summer School of the Arts program for drama, and since then elements of yoga asana (pose) practice have accompanied her throughout her life.
In 2009, she was introduced to Hot Yoga by a theater friend and was hooked on the challenge of moving from pose to pose in a 103 degree room. Ever wanting to expand her practice, in 2017, she pursued her first teacher training in NYC and taught Bikram-style Hot Yoga part-time in Manhattan and Brooklyn studios. This she accomplished while working full-time in finance, maintaining her duties as the team coordinator for the 18-member investment team and teaching what she loved at night and during the weekends. In 2020, she decided to take a leap and pursue further yoga training in Bali, the Island of the Gods. Leaving her full-time job of 8 years, she flew to Bali in March 2020 to learn both Vinyasa and Yin styles of yoga. Halfway through the training, unfortunately, the program was canceled due to pandemic-related border closures. Flying back to Brooklyn in late March 2020 was an adventure in and of itself, as NYC was rapidly becoming America’s epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. Not quite ready to give up on her yoga dreams, Grace pursued online training from Marylene Henry, founder of Zaz Yoga, whom she met in Bali.
She is passionate about sharing the beauty and inner strength one can find through yogic teachings. Not just the asana practices, but through meditation, pranayama, and yoga nidra (yogic sleep) as well. She founded Graceful Heart Yoga in January 2021, with a focus of helping working professionals approach the stress of work and everyday life with a steady mind and open heart.
Yoga Certifications: RYT - 200 hr. | Yin Yoga - 30 hr. | Hot Yoga 100 hr.
““The ancestor to every action is a thought.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson