Sarah Sloan, a teacher at PC Yoga Collective, blends her Iyengar roots with Vinyasa flow and a Midwestern warmth in her classes. Photo: Tara Sylvester

PARK CITY, Utah — Sarah Sloan grew up 45 minutes south of the Mackinac Bridge, tagging along to her mother’s Iyengar classes and hearing Sanskrit at home. After moving to Park City in January 2021, she found her way back to a steady practice and eventually into the teacher’s seat at PC Yoga Collective.

“I took a 6 a.m. class with owner Jenn Solomon and was pretty hooked right away,” Sloan said. “It’s nice to feel a part of the community,” she added, noting familiar faces who return to class, studio partnerships around town, and a recent morning she taught at Summit Community Gardens for PC Yoga Collective.

Sloan’s teaching is grounded in Iyengar’s focus on alignment, props, and injury prevention, while also incorporating the pacing and sequencing she found in Vinyasa. She said her Iyengar roots make it “very important to teach more slowly and to hold shapes for a long time and cue small anatomical adjustments so students can settle into the shape and come back to their breath.”

A season-ending ski injury coincided with her decision to enroll in teacher training at PC Yoga Collective. The timing, she said, gave her focus during recovery. “I had this thing to throw myself into, and it totally changed my relationship with everything in my life positively,” Sloan said. “Practicing a little bit of nonattachment was huge.”

Sloan went on to complete both her 200-hour and 300-hour certifications at PC Yoga Collective under the guidance of Solomon and Kelly Sandahl. Solomon’s teachers, such as Dr. Richard Miller and Thomas Myers, shape the training, Sloan said, but it was the studio community that provided the most grounding. Now, she has begun teaching modules in PCYC’s 300-hour program, something she never imagined when she first walked through the door.

“I love learning, and I love teaching,” she said. “It’s been so rewarding to sit in these spaces with people for 20 hours on a weekend and have fascinating discussions. Every time you’re teaching a course, you’re learning something new, too.”

She describes her classes as “Midwest meets mountain town,” blending long-held postures with beat-driven EDM playlists. “I love making the playlist for my classes — finding the build and arc, then letting it come back down at the end,” she said. “Ultimately, I hope there’s a container for people to do whatever they came to do. It shouldn’t feel like a race or competition.”

For Sloan, the real impact of yoga shows up in daily life. “The whole point of putting your nervous system in a state of intentional discomfort is to allow your mind to lengthen its response time,” she said, citing Viktor Frankl’s teaching about the space between stimulus and response. “If you don’t have to spike your heart rate like that during the day, you have a lot more energy to do other things.”

To those stepping into PC Yoga Collective for the first time, Sloan emphasizes the studio’s welcoming energy. “You will not walk into a space that feels more immediately welcoming than PCYC,” she said. She also encourages students curious about deeper study to consider teacher training. “Do it for yourself,” she said. “It’s going to change the way you show up for yourself, your family and friends, at work— it’s so much more than just changing how you show up on your mat.”

Sloan said the best part of her work is the sense of belonging. She moved to Park City not knowing a soul, but now runs into fellow students at the grocery store and leaves with “the loveliest conversations.”

“Community is why I’m here,“ she said. “I love the people I work with and the conversations that spill out beyond class — it’s been really unexpected and super rewarding.”

Class schedule: Sloan teaches “Rise and Shine“ hot power yoga at 6 a.m. Tuesdays, a 6:30 p.m. PCYC Sculpt class, on Wednesdays, and a 4:30 p.m. hot power flow on Fridays.