Westport Connecticut's Kaia Yoga: For a New Year Filled with Health and Peace

Recently, I had the chance to check out the newest Kaia Yoga in Westport, Connecticut (there’s two locations in Greenwich too), and walked away from my visit with the wonderful post-yoga calm and a pleasantly full belly.

The former was due to an invigorating Vinyasa class in a gorgeously lit studio; the latter was the direct result of a smorgasbord of raw, mostly-vegan foods and juices I had the opportunity to try while I spoke with the center’s co-founder, Stan Woodman (the other half of the team is his wife, Gina Norman).

“The practice of yoga is a detox itself,” Stan told me. “When you do yoga, you are really feeling your body, and you can really feel how bad food affects you, so you make different choices.” The juices on offer, which are made fresh daily and can be taken to go or enjoyed in the super sunny cafe area (Yep, it has WiFi!), are the next step in ridding the body of toxins after a good practice. The center offers 1, 2, and 3 day juice cleanses too, a great way to kickstart a spring refresh (or get back on your New Year’s Resolutions bandwagon).

Food from the Westport Kaia Yoga mostly raw, veggie cafe.

But I didn’t need to take a yoga class to enjoy the Kaia cafe; I stopped by a week after our meeting and enjoyed a superfresh kale salad and an organic, Fair Trade coffee for lunch one day when I was out running errands in Westport. Kaia Yoga makes all their food (and juices and nutmilks too) at the cafe, and Stan had told me that as many ingredients as possible were sourced locally. Everything is 100% organic. I took home a to-go container of the guacamole, which was tangy and fresher tasting than any guac that doesn’t come out of my own kitchen, and I ended up eating it with baby carrots later that day.

Food varies by day and what’s in season, but there’s always a fresh soup, a salad bar (with all sorts of really healthy additions and options), and I can vouch for the deliciousness of the quinoa salad, the supergarlicky hummous (the only way to make it in my opinion!), and the local goat cheese. These are all satvic foods; nutrition that supports a calm mind.

If you want to take your healing to the next level, the center also has a number of wellness programs, including ayurveda, bodywork, Eastern thereapies, and energy work.