Close your eyes, count to three, and listen to my voice. Linda Morse’s repeats this phase every Monday morning at the Pilgrim Senior Center. Morse says yoga and senior centers have one thing in common.

“They both about building community,” she said.

Morse is a professional yoga instructor who has been teaching for over 20 years. She directs yoga at the Pilgrim Senior Center on Monday mornings. Morse teaches three distinct styles of yoga: mat yoga, guided mediation, and chair yoga. Mat yoga is the most active style of the three and involves doing yoga on the floor. She breaks down the mediation class into to five categories: body, breath, vision, sound, and feelings. Each session she guides the class through 4 to 5 mediations, allowing her students to walk away with a “bag of tools” to help them. The class size varies but stays around 8 students. Guided mediation is when teacher is guiding you step-by-step trough the process of mediation. Throughout the class Morse acts as the guide instructing students to relax their muscles until they are comfortable She then leads students through mental images and visualizations as they sit and listen.

Chair yoga involves all of the aspects of regular yoga but done in a chair. It allows those not comfortable with being on the floor the chance to experience yoga.

“And because of this it holds a special place in my heart,” said Morse. Chair yoga class can have anywhere from 15 to 30 students in attendance.

Morse’s passion for yoga comes from the benefits she has seen in her own life and watching her students overcome challenges. During her years of teaching she has seen multiple lives transformed through the healing power of yoga. Students have overcome stress, addiction, and loss weight all by attending Morse’s classes. Her students keep her going.

Linda Riley, a Warwick resident, has been attending Morse’s meditation class since it was re-introduced at the senior center in the beginning of June. She recently began attending Morse’s chair yoga class as well. Riley particularly likes the mediation. She said the class is extremely calming.

“It gets all the junk out of your head,” said Riley.

Kathleen Bohl, senior center program manager spoke highly about Morse.

“Linda is an amazing instructor. The students love her,” said Bohl.

According to Morse doing yoga with a group can feel very different from doing it by yourself. A positive aspect of doing it in a group is “feeding off the energy from everyone else,” she said.

Morse and her husband sold their Warwick house and bought a motor home in 2014. They spent the next five years traveling the country and doing yoga wherever they went. Around two years ago they moved back to Rhode Island and settled down in Warwick in a home without wheels.

“Covid’s been a bear,” said Morse. During the pandemic, Morse taught yoga classes virtually through the Osher Lifelong Institute (OLLI) program at URI. The program provides learning opportunities to enhance the enjoyment, meaning and direction of adult lives and seeks to develop a community of older learners. Although she is grateful for that opportunity Morse is thrilled to be back in person. Morse hopes that her yoga classes will help people cope and get their lives back on track. She is doing this one breath a time.

“A lot of classes have picked up, and I think now more than ever reflection and mediation, hold so much value for our participants,” said Bohl.

For Morse, yoga is about centering yourself and finding peace. She knows that everyone gets something different out of it but yoga for Morse is all about joy. She confronts the fact that life can be hectic but during a yoga session the world stays still even for just a second. And that second is enough for Morse.

Chair yoga is on Mondays from 9-10am and has a $2 fee.

The meditation class is on Mondays at 10:30-11:30am and has a $3 fee. Both of these classes require no appointment.