Reimagining the Body
Where Architecture Meets Longevity
In architecture, form follows function. In Katonah Yoga®, the same principle applies to the body. The body is your house. You live in it. And like any well-built structure, it needs to be measured, mapped and maintained.
Rather than chasing symptom relief or fleeting wellness trends, our work focuses on renovating the interior landscape—structuring the body so that form supports function. When form is functional, energy flows. Breath is efficient. Perspective is possible.
Katonah Yoga® is not a style—it’s a technique. Rooted in Hatha yoga, informed by Taoist theory, and refined over 40 years by Nevine Michaan and others, it’s an open system built on pattern, metaphor, and repetition. These tools allow us to train for life, not for class.
We use maps—of the body, breath, and psyche—to orient ourselves. And through practice, we embed well-being into the nervous system and tissues—not as a momentary high, but as a sustainable state of being.
Origins of Katonah Yoga®
(from the Katonah Yoga website)
Katonah yoga has been being formulated and conceptualized by Nevine Michaan for the past 40 years. Born in Egypt in 1954, Nevine moved to New York at the age of three. In her early 20’s, while studying history and comparative religion at Vassar College, she discovered meditation. She understood that there is a function, a formality, and a fit to the universe and that yoga is a tool, a technique – a practice with repetition which gives us the opportunity to participate in life with intelligence and joy.
Nevine started a daily practice in NYC with renowned yoga instructor Allan Bateman in the 1970s and became fully immersed in what would become her life’s work. She began teaching Yoga in 1980, and founded the Katonah Yoga Center in Katonah, New York in 1986.
For more information please go to www.katonahyoga.com, where you will find access to all of the Katonah materials for free download.
