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Goleta is good, and now it’s enlightened.
Husband and wife team Sathya and Brian Fennell have opened Goodland Yoga Studio in Goleta, at 7394 Calle Real, Suite G, above 7-Eleven.
Sathya Fennell is a longtime massage therapist and decided amid the COVID-19 pandemic to journey into a new venture, the art of yoga.
The studio offers a variety of classes, including hatha yoga, slow yoga, pre-natal yoga, vinyasa yoga and eventually kundalini yoga. It’s open Monday through Thursday, and classes can be booked online by clicking here.
One of Sathya Fennell’s massage therapist clients suggested that she look into yoga — kundalini yoga, to be specific — and she did, and fell in love.
“I was called to open this studio for the Goleta community,” she said. “We don’t have anything like this here. And now, especially coming out of the pandemic, people are searching for that community again, that family setting, easy going. We just want everybody to feel safe, but be happy and be feeling lighter and enlightened.”
Brian Fennell set up the studio, including the mirrors on the wall, the water fountain and all the decor. He grew up in Goleta and attended El Rancho Elementary School, Goleta Valley Junior High School and Dos Pueblos High School.
Starting next month, Sathya Fennell said she plans to launch kundalini yoga, which is the yoga of awareness. It involves chanting mantras, mediations and exercises.
“Doing that training, you are heightening your awareness, your infinite awareness, to yourself, to your body, soul and mind,” she said. “When that happens, you are able to deal with life’s stressors in a more positive, better way. When you come up against something hard in life, when you have this type of training, you are able to think about things better, be in a more neutral state of mind to be able to handle those difficult situations.”
She said she dabbled in yoga her entire life, along with working as a massage therapist, manucurist and esthetician. She owns a separate massage business across the hall from her new studio, called Spathya.
Sathya Fennell said practicing yoga has changed her life.
“I have become a much calmer person in just handling daily situations,” she said. “My mind just feels clearer of all the nonsense chatter that goes on in our brain. All around, I just feel better. I am just really excited to share that with the community.”
The studio opened Oct. 1. The classes are $20; a package of 10 classes drops the price to $15 each.
Athleta Opens on State Street
Athleta opened this week at 733 State St. in downtown Santa Barbara.
“Athleta creates versatile, premium performance apparel designed by women for women,” according to a news release. “Recently, the brand launched AthletaWell, an innovative new well-being platform or our community of empowered women. The new platform aims to increase engagement and loyalty among our customers by building a community of women around premium content and conversations on a range of topics including body positivity and health.”
Athleta is a brand of Gap, and in 2020, the company opened 12 Athleta locations for a total of 200 across the country. The company plans to open 25 more stores by the end of 2021.
Athleta also includes a Buy Online Pick Up in Store (BOPIS) option, including curbside pickup for contactless shopping, and a designated pickup station in-store where customers can pick up orders without waiting in line.
Beachside Restaurant Gets Cookin’
After years of closure, Santa Barbara’s Cabrillo Arts Pavilion has a new restaurant.
The Orange County-based Reunion Kitchen + Drink will take over the spot formerly occupied by East Beach Grill, at 1118 E. Cabrillo Blvd. adjacent to East Beach.
The locally owned East Beach Grill operated the restaurant for decades, but it lost out on a request for qualifications to a different restaurant operator, La Sirena, when the City of Santa Barbara sought to seek other operators. However, that deal fell apart financially amid the pandemic.
The investors behind the project then reached out to Reunion Kitchen to take over the space and run the restaurant.
Reunion Kitchen + Drink will feature local seafood, wines and beers. Other Reunion Kitchens are located in Anaheim Hills and Laguna Beach. The restaurant is open from 3 p.m. to 9 p.m. daily.
Mollie’s Closes
Another State Street restaurant has apparently met its demise.
Italian-food restaurant Mollie’s, 1218 State St. in downtown Santa Barbara, has closed its doors and papered its windows.
The restaurant was owned by the same mother-son team who own Trattoria Mollie in Montecito.
They opened in the summer of 2018, at the site of the former site of Tupelo Junction.
— Noozhawk staff writer Joshua Molina can be reached at jmolina@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.