Kelsey Davis, director of Blue Ridge Service Corps and Campus Missioner at Western Carolina University and the University of North Carolina – Asheville, discusses her role of providing collegiate athletes spiritual guidance and the challenges athletes face.
Different yoga studios, styles and teachers can each offer completely different takes on the practice, each suited for different wellness needs. Xpress set out to explore some of the varieties of yoga available in the area and spoke to a number of local teachers about their yoga journeys.
By day, Patrick Hanaway and his wife, Lisa Lichtig, are physicians at their integrative and functional medicine practice, Family to Family, in Weaverville. By night, the couple are stewards of a different type of healing practice: They are fire keepers with Sacred Fire Asheville, the local chapter of an international nonprofit. Since 2002, Hanaway says guests […]
The Episcopal Diocese of Western North Carolina’s multimedia project includes Asheville’s St. Matthias.
“We’ve seen a steady flow of people who are Jewish who’ve come [here] because they see a vibrant Jewish community that they can be part of,” Rabbi Batsheva Meiri of Congregation Beth HaTephila tells Xpress. “And so Asheville becomes attractive to them.”
In partnership with the WNC Farmers Market, the Asheville zoo launches its Educational Farmers Market Garden starting Wednesday, Nov. 16. The new exhibit focuses on sustainable relationships between agriculture and nature.
To bring old buildings up to modern-day standards involves architectural assessments, electrical upgrades, plumbing revamps and structural repairs — challenges that many preservationists are now facing, and seeking to fund, as Asheville’s turn-of-the-century landmarks continue into their second hundred years.
Public health is the science of improving health and safety within communities. Fabrice Julien, assistant professor of health and wellness at UNC Asheville, knows that it’s also an art. Julien teaches health communication and the theory of health promotion at UNCA. He thinks a lot about how to break through medical distrust and skepticism, as […]
Kelly Bruce, a certified Forest Therapy Guide with Natural Wanders and Asheville Wellness Tours, speaks with Xpress about her approach to the work and what people can expect from a bath in the forest.
Don’t tell the kids, but Asheville’s most beloved Santa doesn’t live at the North Pole. Dennis Reed and his wife Deborah — aka Mr. and Mrs. Claus — reside in Haywood County, where they both grew up. Dennis worked for 35 years at the Blue Ridge Paper plant and got his start as Santa in 2004 after […]
Ballard specializes in Appalachian folk magic and folkways.
David Eck, Erin Maxfield-Steele and David LaMotte discuss how their original music does (and doesn’t) intersect with their religious work.
On Aug. 12, a subsidiary of nonprofit Conserving Carolina completed the $7.8 million purchase of the currently unused Ecusta rail line, stretching 19 miles between Hendersonville and Brevard, from the Blue Ridge Southern Railroad.
The murder of George Floyd, a Black man, by white Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin on May 25, 2020, spurred nationwide Black Lives Matter protests. In Asheville, Floyd’s murder had the immediate effect of religious institutions looking inward and engaging with their congregations around racial justice. More than a year on from those events, many […]
Sybriea Lundy counts herself lucky to have been able to participate in programs offered by Light a Path, an Asheville-based nonprofit that brings yoga and movement to underserved populations, while serving the final 2 ½ years of her sentence for drug trafficking at the Swannanoa Correctional Center for Women. The organization also helped Lundy reenter and connect with the Asheville community upon her release.
In early April, Mars Hill University professor of religious studies Marc Mullinax debuted his new book, Tao Te Ching: Power for the Peaceful, a translation and interpretation that blends a scholarly awareness of the text’s original historical context with an accessible connection to the contemporary American experience.
Appalachian Dowsers members discuss the numerous benefits they find in looking beyond the visible world.
The Asheville-based nonprofit Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy’s work included both valuable wildlife habitats, such as the Wiles Creek and Little Rock Creek preserves, and prime farmland at risk of development. Sandy Hollar Farms in Buncombe County and Bowditch Bottoms in Yancey County were among the agricultural projects completed in 2020.
In his new book, local author Ryan Bush builds on the philosophies of Buddhism and Stoicism to describe a system for rewiring the brain’s response to external events, a method he dubs psychitecture.
As congregations across the region grapple with shifting demographics and a year of racial upheaval, multiracial congregations find themselves tackling tough conversations in the way they know best: Worship and fellowship.
Burnsville resident Katherine Savage feels a unique kinship with a small patch of ground on the campus of Warren Wilson College. The 5-foot by 60-foot plot was home this year to a crop of flax, a traditional Southern Appalachian fiber plant, which she is helping process into linen that she will someday wear as her burial shroud.
