A MOMENT CAPTURED

Tiffany Brown, Las Vegas Sun

Sunday, Dec. 2, 2007 | 1:14 a.m.

As the day goes dark outside, Cicely Valenti finds a few quiet moments to herself in the soft glow of a studio at Sherry Goldstein's Yoga Sanctuary on West Sahara Avenue.

Her breath and gentle stretching are the only sounds. One mat and the spacious room help her release the day's thoughts, concerns and momentum. There are just a few moments before teacher Shawn Hughes enters and raises the lights and other students begin to fill the room.

"I was turning my brain off. The thinking, the running of thoughts, the things you have to do. Just getting grounded," Valenti says.

A nutrition and exercise counselor, she had worked all day with patients before the 75-minute yoga class.

"I think that is one of the biggest fallacies in health care is that the people who are advising us most on health and the practices we should take are not practicing what they preach. They're not speaking from a place of experience or knowledge, they're speaking from the place of a textbook," she says. "I think it's vital for me to do a good job helping take care of other people that I make sure I am taken care of first."

So the 23-year-old practices - focusing, burning up negative thoughts and bringing awareness to her breath as she moves through postures in the demanding ashtanga yoga class on Tuesday and Thursday nights.

A former UNR triathlete and cross country runner, Valenti and her boyfriend traded the mountains of Northern Nevada for Las Vegas this year.

"I had a really hard time at first and then I started taking yoga on a regular basis," she says. "(My boyfriend) said as I started to take yoga that I was handling every situation much better.

"That was the teaching that I like the most, where you are learning to flow and move with things. You don't realize how much internal resistance you carry with you with your attitude, and yoga teaches you to embrace that and then let it go."