Ever since Elizabeth Luce began training to become a yoga teacher, she wanted to teach classes outside. Now, every Tuesday evening, she leads a class right on the Delaware riverfront.
“The best part about being in this location is it’s so active,” says Luce. “Everyone is out. If they’re not here doing yoga, they’re out walking their dog, or fishing, or taking a hike or a bike ride.”
On a grassy pier at the southwest tip of Pennypack on the Delaware Park, Luce tells her students to become aware of their natural surroundings. Between cues to “reach towards the pier” and to breathe in the cool breeze, she points out the park’s natural ambience: chirping cicadas, speedboat engines passing by and the wings of waterfowl flapping overhead.
Now in its sixth year, Yoga on the Pier is one of about 250 free public programs offered annually by Port Richmond-based Riverfront North Partnership (RNP), says programs director Brian Green, and the nonprofit’s longest-running outdoor yoga program. The class is hosted by Roots2Rise, a nonprofit offering free and low-cost yoga and meditation programs across the city to learners of all ages and ability levels.
With yoga’s rise in popularity, Luce says the practice has become more commercialized, and therefore less accessible for those who can’t afford expensive studio memberships. Although teaching Yoga on the Pier is aligned with her mission of making yoga more accessible, she also sees it as an opportunity to help connect her students with the riverfront.
“To be part of something that is starting to bring people back to an outdoor space, both the green and the blue, I think is exciting,” says Luce.
Everyone is out. If they’re not here doing yoga, they’re out walking their dog, or fishing, or taking a hike or a bike ride.”
— Elizabeth Luce, yoga instructor
Studies have shown that spending time in green spaces and in nature can provide both physical and mental health benefits similar to those of physical activity, with health outcomes like decreased stress and reduced risk of cardiovascular illness. “Green exercise” — combining physical activity with time outdoors — may also lower negative emotions like anxiety, anger and depression, while leading to improved moods and relaxation. There is even evidence to suggest that exercising in and near blue spaces, like riverfronts and beaches, can yield similar health and wellness benefits or even result in better outcomes than exercising in green spaces alone.
“Being out on the river in these green spaces has a huge impact on folks’ mental health,” Green says. And with COVID-19 both increasing wariness of indoor proximity and highlighting the dangers of isolation, park spaces have become key venues for community programming.
Luce reports that being on the pier, surrounded on all sides by the Delaware River, brings a calming atmosphere to the yoga class.
“There’s been some evenings during shavasana [corpse pose] where the sun is going down and you can feel that little bit of air go over your face as your eyes are closed,” says Luce.
The pier is also just feet from the Pennypack path, where runners and hikers often pass Luce leading a class. For her, those other park goers contribute to a sense of riverfront fellowship.
“When you see a community feeling comfortable enough to just come out, lay their mats down and do yoga, while you’ve got all these other community activities [going] on, I think that just adds a great element to it: seeing people coming together as a community on a Tuesday night,” says Luce.
Transforming Riverfront North
In several Northeast Philadelphia neighborhoods, including Port Richmond and Wissinoming, I-95 has cut off access to the Delaware waterfront for decades. Outdoor exercise classes like Yoga on the Pier are part of Riverfront North Partnership’s efforts to bring people back.
Since 2004, RNP has been working to reconnect Philadelphians with the Delaware River through the completion of an 11-mile greenway system of trails and parks stretching from Port Richmond to Glen Foerd. RNP offers a variety of environmental, volunteer and community programming, including a diverse range of group exercise options in parks like Pennypack on the Delaware and Lardner’s Point.
Green says the former fishing pier where Yoga on the Pier meets was sitting “untapped” for years before the organization reactivated it. Several of the parks in RNP’s system, including the newly opened Robert A. Borski Jr. Park in Bridesburg, involved the transformation of vacant industrial property into green space for recreation.
“People think about Philly for industry, but not often for our green spaces, even though we have so many great ones,” says Green. “I think it was always the Schuylkill in the past. But now we’re seeing a surge of more opportunities on the Delaware River.”
Soulful line dancing
A pier a couple miles downriver from Pennypack on the Delaware hosts Green’s favorite RNP program: Monique Burrell’s Monday evening R&B Soul Line Dancing class at Lardner’s Point Park.
“It brings so many diverse audiences all together from all over the city,” Green says. The class even sometimes lures people right off the nearby Kensington & Tacony Trail; as hikers walk by, Burrell “strongly encourages” them to join in for a line dance.
“Folks are just walking by, and she somehow pulls them in,” says Green. “And then they come back [a] week later.”
We have the outdoors, we have the scenery, we have what we all have been blessed with, which is nature.”
— Monique Burrell, R&B Soul line dancing instructor
R&B Soul Line Dancing is a community favorite and draws a committed crowd of weekly attendees. In the three years it has been offered, the class has always gone beyond the six-week session for which it was originally scheduled, usually running through most of September.
Burrell, who teaches under the name Mo’Smooth, first discovered R&B soul line dancing in the early 1990s, seeing dances like the Electric Slide performed at weddings and block parties. Watching groups of people falling into so many synchronized dances, she wondered what she was missing and signed up for her first line dancing class in Germantown in 2001.
Now a 24-year dancer and a teacher of three years, Burrell has always seen line dancing as a way to both build community and boost fitness. Going to the gym can be intimidating for some, she says, but she teaches line dancers of all body types, ability levels and age groups. Line dancing can also be a low-impact activity for those with injuries and chronic pain, like Burrell herself, who has a torn meniscus.
“How do I stay mobile? Because at the end of the day, you always still hear the doctor saying, ‘Stay active. Continue to work out,’” says Burrell.
Burrell says that being on the riverfront adds interest to the class. Recently, for instance, attendees witnessed the nearby Tacony-Palmyra Bridge opening for a cargo ship to pass.
“You can see people fishing, people walking on the trails, you have the bridge — that’s the experience that you’re not going to get inside a line dance classroom,” says Burrell. “We have the outdoors, we have the scenery, we have what we all have been blessed with, which is nature. We get most of our strength through nature.”
