The midweek has become a little more relaxing thanks to Jacquelin Walker, a yoga facilitator and founder of Fete-Fete.

Fete-Fete, founded in Brooklyn and based in Pittsburgh, is an organization centered around art, life and culture. It hosts Reset at Emerald City on Smithfield Street. Reset is a community movement practice that welcomes folks of all levels for a free, 45-minute session at 12:30 p.m. every second Wednesday of the month.

This month featured Tye Clarke, a creative wellness practitioner, leading Sacred Sounds & Sun Salutes. Clarke’s business gooxjy co is a digital wellness and creative space based in Homestead.

The class started with gentle movement guidance into the sequences. Clarke’s mat was the color of the sun, and class attendees laid out their mats in the formation of sun rays around Clarke. The breeze and sunlight poured in through the windows.

Emerald City is a space for Black entrepreneurs and professionals to thrive. It’s a co-working and events space, part of the Greenwood Plan owned by two Black women, Samantha Black and Khamil Bailey. When Walker thinks about the partnership with Emerald City, it came out of the need for Black entrepreneurs and Black and Brown people to have access to wellness.

“Black entrepreneurs and Black business owners are under significantly more stress and pressure because we are undercapitalized,” said Walker, of the Hill District. “Many of us are entrepreneurs because we are forced to be, because of the violence that we experienced out in the rest of the market.

“We are pursuing entrepreneurship as a way of funding our own liberation and freedom. So having access to wellness practices is equally as important as we define new ways of being and sustainable ways of making a living for ourselves.”

Walker and Clarke formed a friendship through their training at Yoga Roots on Location with Felicia Savage Friedman. Walker invited Clarke to lead the class June 12.

“It’s a beautiful opportunity to be able to invite the entire community, but really targeted to Black and Brown people, to experience different types of wellness,” Clarke said.

Toward the end of the session, Clarke incorporated singing bowls — metal or crystal bowls that help to enhance meditation. She said it helps to dull the mind and drown out the noise.

“I feel like that’s something that, beyond yoga, some people aren’t familiar with. I love the meditations on frequencies. They’re very therapeutic,” Clarke said.

Norma Jean Barnes, a member of Emerald City and owner of Xpressions Art & Movement based in Pittsburgh with plans to hold workshops Downtown, said, “It was a good community gathering. The sounds vibrated through me. They were so relaxing.”

Barnes, a dancer, has always done some form of yoga. The gentle movement allowed her to slow down and check in with her body, she said.

Brandey Smith, also a dancer, is new to practicing yoga, but she said it helps her with flexibility, balance and being aware of her breathing.

“The breathing is super big for me, especially during dancing. You know, it’s like you have to breathe in order to get through,” Smith said.

Clarke is trained in Raja yoga — the study of the mind and meditation that encompasses eight limbs as a pathway for yoga practice.

When managing burnout, Clarke said, she uses breathing exercises and takes breaks from too much stimulation. This also includes practicing nonviolence and other yoga methods.

“My physical practice helps me get energized and move emotions through,” Clarke said.

The June 12 session consisted of two sun salutations.

“If you look at them all together, kind of like a circle, you see the flow, so you begin and end kind of the same exact way and it’s just a repetitive movement and opportunity to challenge yourself,” Clarke said.

The sequence transitions from a mountain pose to folding, then to a plank and downward dog. The flow ended in child’s pose and in whatever position felt comfortable for sacred sounds meditation.

“Repetition is a really good way to check in with yourself to see how far you’ve come,” Clarke said.

Clarke is spending more time understanding how emotions and experiences live in the body. “I focus a lot on the way that wellness, specifically creative wellness, is a machine for liberation,” she said.

She also has spent a fair amount of time working in the activist space. When she stepped away, she realized having a joy practice was radical.

“That’s also how we get free,” she said. “There are all of these parts, and there are parts that require being in the streets and that form of activism, but there are parts of it that involve joy.”

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