With its broad menu of classes and services promoting health and wellness, spiritual growth and physical well-being, NiaVana Studio has been a space for healing in Pensacola. But after Hurricane Sally, the studio itself needed healing—and Pensacola responded. Now NiaVana Studio is up and running in temporary quarters inside Beautiful You Studio on Intendencia Street.

Donations from the community enabled NiaVana’s owner, Sonya Dukett (aka Zowie Starr), to rent the temporary space. In a Facebook post, she says the studio and instructors lost about six weeks of income before NiaVana started back up again. 

“We continue to survive off your amazing kindness,” she wrote. “In the midst of the storm, the NiaVana family will not back down. We will be here for our community, as our community has been so amazing to us!”

NiaVana offers a variety of weekly classes, including Nia (a fusion movement practice that’s done barefoot) combined with breathwork and meditation. It also offers tai chi, drum circles and sound meditation with crystal singing bowls.

  “Our studio is a safe and sacred place for all to find comfort in their Creator and find peace within,” Dukett says. “Our mission is to ensure each and every soul who enters our sacred space will leave feeling awakened, enlightened and more connected with all living energy everywhere. We are dedicated to the holistic healing of the mind, body and spirit through movement, meditation and motivational thinking. We invite you to come as you are and become all you were meant to be.”

One of NiaVana’s unique offerings is Refuge Recovery, a mindfulness-based addiction recovery community that practices and uses Buddhist philosophy as the foundation of the recovery process. Drawing inspiration from the core teachings of the Four Noble Truths, it emphasizes knowledge and empathy as means for overcoming addiction and its causes.

  “Those struggling with any form of addiction greatly benefit when they are able to understand the suffering that addiction has created, while developing compassion for the pain they have experienced,” Dukett says. “We hope to serve you, and meet you on the path.”

Temporary location: Inside Beautiful You Studio, 513 W. Intendencia St., Pensacola, FL. For more information, call 850-530-5275 or visit NiaVanaStudios.com.