Michele Bulgatz

"In yoga, the body is a tool to develop the heart," says yoga teacher Michele Bulgatz. "Coincidentally, you can get a strong body." A native of Southern California, Bulgatz began her study of yoga shortly after moving to Eugene in 1992. Six years later, newly certified as an instructor and newly pregnant, she began to teach when her own teacher suddenly left town. "'You're going to take over my classes,' she told me," Bulgatz relates. "I was thrown into six classes a week!" After a two-year hiatus while her son River was an infant, she gradually worked her way back, and currently teaches 10 classes weekly at the UO and at the Four Winds Yoga Center. (She ranks second on EW's 2003 list of favorite yoga instructors.) Bulgatz is the principal organizer of the Loving Kindness Yogathon, a 12-hour yoga-practice and meditation event scheduled for 7am-7pm on Saturday, October 2, at St Mary's Catholic Church in downtown Eugene. "The first purpose is to increase the level of loving kindness," she says. "The second is to raise money for good causes." Birth To Three and Healing Harvest will benefit from donations. Find details at heliosnetwork.org.

happening people photograph and story by Paul Neevel Eugene Weekly / 9 September 2004