About Us
3198 Old Kings Rd, Catskill, NY
Our Mission
Rivertide is a center for mindful movement – including yoga, fitness and martial arts. In addition, Rivertide is home to practitioners of various therapeutic modalities who work with a holistic approach to wellness. Our mission is to cultivate embodied practices that help to integrate mind and body, to support overall well-being in individuals and in community.
We emphasize agency-based and trauma-informed guidance. We wrestle with the complexities of cultural appropriation, draw wisdom through lineage, and look to current research to refine our techniques and practices. Recognizing that cultural tradition and modern science are both valuable yet imperfect containers, we define our practices as “Post-Lineage” (adapted from the work of Dr. Theo Wildcroft), understanding that it is in community, here and now, that we infuse these containers with accountability, vitality and mutual care.
Rivertide Center recognizes that wellness is not cultivated in isolation but is integrally connected with community care and responsibility. We are committed to our own continuous process of growth and learning so we may better support wellness in ways that do not commodify health or the human experience.
Land Acknowledgment and Stewardship
Rivertide Center is located on the land of the displaced Mohican Nation Stockbridge–Munsee Band. As part of our stewardship of this land, Rivertide Center prioritizes ecological sustainability and protection of our other-than-human communities. Ways in which Rivertide works towards these values include permaculture cultivation of native and keystone plants, building bird and pollinator habitats, utilizing solar power instead of fossil fuels as our electricity source, and using the most energy-efficient building materials and systems accessible to us for our recently built Wellness Center. We were also part of the coalition that fought off and permanently incapacitated the Pilgrim Pipeline, a proposed project to build a massive fracked gas pipeline through the NY/NJ corridor west of the Hudson River.
Building Community
In the spirit of the Aikido IDEA Project, Rivertide Center is committed to Inclusivity, Diversity, Equity, and Accessibility. Recognizing that our learning and growth is interdependent and strengthened by diversity, Rivertide seeks to provide a framework for mind/body (heart/spirit/vagus/et al) development that incorporates social justice values. This includes facing and confronting our own biases, along with removing barriers and taking concrete steps to create an actively welcoming environment for BIPOC, neurodivergent and LGBTQIA+ members of our community, as well as folx from a diversity of backgrounds, abilities, and resources.
Our vision includes seeking ways to amplify marginalized voices at Rivertide as well as in the larger community. Moving forward, we hope to develop community partnerships that enhance these efforts.
Health and Wellness Policy
As part of our ethic of community care, we seek to foster wellness practices that nurture, support, and restore our well-being in body, mind, and spirit. At the core of Rivertide’s practices is the understanding that community care and self-care are intersecting and mutually transformative.
Rivertide has adapted our COVID safety policy to reflect the current state of our larger community’s safety recommendations, as well as our own commitment to equity and accessibility. We understand that for many people, COVID has become something akin to the common cold. We also understand that for some, the consequences can be much more severe.
Experiencing the pandemic has enhanced our own awareness that there are members of the community who are more medically vulnerable, and whose lives may be vastly constrained because of this. In addition to our existing policies that support financial and other forms of accessibility, we maintain a safety policy that recognizes and respects the experience and needs of those who might be more intensely impacted by respiratory illnesses such as COVID or the flu. In the interest of community care, we ask that members of our community follow the guidelines below:
Refrain from joining class if you have had a recent close contact exposure to COVID.
If you are experiencing symptoms of illness — such as fever, sore throat, persistent cough, fatigue, or digestive discomfort, please stay at home and rest until you are fully recovered. Practicing while sick can prolong healing and put fellow students and teachers at risk.
As per current prevention guidelines, after recovering from a respiratory illness, refrain from close contact practice (ie, aikido) for 24 hours after your symptoms and any fever have resolved. Use extra precautions (ie , wear a mask during training) for the next 5 days.
Take a COVID test before attending class and/or wear a mask during class if you have recently been in high-exposure risk situations such as travel or attending indoor events with a high density of people.
Students are encouraged to wear a mask during class any time they feel more comfortable doing so. We always have masks on hand.
Wash hands before entering the practice space, and after coughing or sneezing. (And please note that the general recommendation to sneeze into the crook of the arm is NOT helpful during aikido practice! Please try to sneeze or cough into your hands and promptly hop off the mat to wash up.)
We ask that you take other reasonable precautions to protect yourself and other members of our community from respiratory illness, including following current guidelines regarding safety and respiratory illness.
While we no longer require them, we strongly recommend that members of the Rivertide Community stay current on COVID and flu vaccines and boosters.
Also in the interest of community care, we encourage you to come to us with questions or concerns about this or any other Rivertide policy.
If you are a new student, please fill in Rivertide’s Intake/Release Form before your first class.
Rivertide Center’s Founders
We are committed to our own continuous growth and learning so we may better support wellness in individuals and our community.
Co-Founder, YOGA & AIKIDO
Embodied Yoga Therapy Guide, C-IAYT, OM-CFSM
I believe that the deepest learning occurs by investigating rather than receiving information, and that the communities in which we practice are the heart from which we grow. As a yoga instructor, i am certified by heart/movement teacher Sondra Loring, founder of Moving Potential and Sadhana Center for Yoga and Meditation (where i continue to practice regularly with my beloved trinity of teachers, Sondra, Dwayne and Dale). I also certified as a Yoga Therapist through the School of Embodied Yoga Therapy, where Anne Pitman has taught me the art and heart of wonderment. My original aikido teachers are no longer part of my practice, but as my lineage of origin, remain a valued source of my early aikido learning and growth. Aikido teacher extraordinaire Claire Keller continues to be an inspiring source of wisdom and aikido technique.
The fire for justice and deep compassion of Matthew Remski’s work has helped guide me to a practice that weaves threads of magic out of the shards of disillusionment. As both practitioner and teacher, i have adopted and adapted the concept of Post-Lineage Yoga created by Dr. Theo Wildcroft, as a framework of Post-Lineage Aikido, guided by the idea that practice and community take precedent over hierarchy and source. A core element of my practice is the study of how different lineages and even different arts intersect and inform each other.
Training in martial arts since 2001 and deeply immersed in yoga since 2016, my practices also include gardening and foraging, wildcrafted herbalism, mystical atheism, following the mycelium threads of intersection and asking too many questions (or perhaps too many is always one too few).
Co-Founder, Fitness & Aikido
Certified Personal Trainer & Chief Aikido Instructor
I thoroughly enjoy helping people move better! Whether I’m teaching Aikido, training a small group in kettlebells, creating full body workout classes, or one-on-one personal training, it motivates me to see my students and clients achieve greater balance, coordination, mobility, strength and endurance. Over the course of my life I’ve had periods of intense focus on basketball, weight training, yoga, martial arts and mountain biking. By trying to be the best I could possibly be at all my physical endeavours, I learned that it’s all of a piece and the most valued take away is better movement and quality of life.
I believe movements requiring the mind and body to work as one have the most profound effect on activities of daily living, and through personalized and small group training anyone can aquire skills leading to greater physical awareness and confidently take their training out into the real world!
- Started training in Aikido in 2003, achieved Blackbelt in 2010, began teaching in 2011
- Co-founded Rivertide Center in 2013
- Created “Body & Blade” fitness class in 2015
- Started training in Iaido in 2016
- Started practicing Yoga in 2017
- Became an ACE certified personal trainer 2024
