In the hustle and bustle of downtown Phoenix exists a quiet, serene place: yoga studio Sutra.
This studio gave pediatric-intensive-care nurse and full-time yogi Chloe Burtcher a sense of direction in her life. Burtcher is now a full-time instructor at Sutra Midtown and Sutra Roosevelt, where she dedicates her life to helping others.
“That’s what I feel like my purpose is here,” Burtcher said. “To help others and teach, and to teach others how to help others.”
From spending time in local food kitchens and teaching yoga at Relay For Life to bettering global health in the rural slums of Costa Rica, Burtcher’s sole mission is to give back.
Burtcher also created her own non-profit foundation called HELP, which stands for healing, evolving, learning and peace. Burtcher has worked with organizations such as Feed My Starving Children, André House of Hospitality, St. Vincent de Paul, St. Andrew’s Children’s Clinic in Nogales and many others.
HELP has also provided volunteers for the Abrazo Health Care system for stroke screenings, cardiovascular screenings and overall health risk-assessment screenings.
“There are people who are suffering right outside the door that do need your help. There are people suffering in other countries, and it is really important that people have that perspective,” Burtcher said. “Providing those opportunities to people, even if it is from my non-profit or another person’s non-profit is really important because it gives a concept of, ‘It is bigger than you.’”
With goals of global health in mind, Burtcher has spread her cause for giving as far as Costa Rica and Mexico. Burtcher will go to Peru next spring.
While in Costa Rica, along with meeting simple health-care needs, Burtcher also taught yoga to other volunteers and locals.
Burtcher discovered her love of yoga in her first year of college. Even though she was going to school for 12 to 16 hours a day, Burtcher decided to take a yoga class in the middle of her day.
“Kind of as a reset button,” she said.
Ever since then, yoga became a daily ritual.
Burtcher originally found Sutra studios when some of her instructors at her original studio—people she considered her mentors—left to teach at Sutra.
“I followed them here, and when I came across the studio, I was just enamored with it,” Burtcher said.
She eventually received her teacher training at Sutra and continues to teach and practice there.
Sutra is not any ordinary business. Rebecca and Matt Fritz deeply invest themselves into Sutra and they like to call it a home—something Burtcher said she feels.
“I call it one of my homes,” she said. “There are certain places that you resonate with that become a place of refuge, and I can come here or I can be around the people here and immediately it’s that feeling of everything is okay.”
One of Burtcher’s students, Ted Jachimowics, says the soulful yoga teacher has changed his life.
“Chloe is a really good mix of pragmatism and idealism. She knows realistic ways to help go about your goals,” Jachimowics said. “And she is someone who will go over ideas with you and how to get there time and time again.”
At the end of every single class, Burtcher likes to leave her students with a quote.
Today’s quote, from Maya Angelou:
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
Contact the reporter at nisreen.mandviwala@asu.edu.
