Centered, a recently opened Sausalito studio, is the nexus of pottery and wellness. It’s a place where students begin pottery classes with guided mindfulness exercises to smooth the transition between daily life and playtime.

Registration is open now for eight-week sessions that run from 6 to 9 p.m. Wednesdays from Aug. 20 through Oct. 8 or from 6 to 9 p.m. Thursdays from Aug. 21 through Oct. 9. Each session costs $500, which includes the use of class tools, 25 pounds of clay, glazes and firing. Additional clay is available for purchase. Students must be ages 16 and older. No experience is necessary.

“I teach the full ceramic process, which includes throwing, trimming, glazing and an introduction to hand-building and surface design methods,” said founder Serenity Joy. “People make many pieces during the eight-week classes, including bowls, plates, mugs, vases and anything else they can dream up.”

Sessions are geared toward beginners, but Joy says she has many intermediate students, and she offers intermediate and advanced demonstrations by request.

“I also encourage students to bring images of things they want to create, and I give individual guidance, including order of operations and any supplemental skills needed to achieve their goals,” she said.

She says she’s growing Centered’s membership slowly and intentionally in order to create a community that’s “safe, supportive and kind.”

To meet that commitment, “all members, regardless of skill level, are required to take one eight-week class before they’re given open studio access,” she said. “Once students are approved to transition to membership, they have unlimited access to the studio between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. daily.”

This process “is an opportunity for us to build a relationship and for me to teach studio-specific processes and safety and ensure potential members are a good fit for the community,” she said.

For anyone who isn’t sure if they’d like pottery, she offers a mindful making workshop from 6 to 8:30 p.m. on the first Saturday of each month for $75. The next one is Aug. 2.

“The mindful making workshop is a great place to dip your toes in and see if you like the medium,” she said.

In this one-evening workshop, she teaches participants the basics of how to “throw” clay on a pottery wheel before shaping it by hand into a small piece of their choice, which they retrieve in three weeks after it has dried.

Currently, the yoga room is used primarily for grounding before pottery classes, but private and small group yoga classes with Joy or Gillian Confair are also offered.

“These sessions are a great place to work on body-specific goals and safety and start or deepen your practice,” Joy said. “In the future, I may add a few slow flow, restorative or yoga workshops.”

Joy, a native of Minnesota who now resides in Mill Valley, blends pottery and yoga into her own life as a designer in the housewares department of Williams Sonoma.

She landed the position after a corporate shake-up at Target’s headquarters, where she also worked as a designer, and moved to Marin in 2015 after searching for a job in California as a way out of “the brutal winters” of her home state.

She had double majored in college in interior design and art studio, where she focused on sculpture and slip-cast porcelain.

“I actually didn’t learn how to throw until 2019 when I took a workshop with (ceramicist) Wyatt Mathews,” she said. “He teaches from a perspective of body mechanics, and that was the unlock that I needed to fall in love with the process.”

As for her yoga practice, Joy has been doing it off and on for about 20 years.

“I became serious with my personal practice when Metta Yoga reopened post-pandemic,” she said. “I took its teacher training in 2024 and have been teaching regularly ever since. I love the flow and the breath of yoga and classes that have a rhythmic, almost dancey flow. I love practicing challenging transitions and poses. I fall constantly, and I learn as much from my failures as I do from my successes.”

With pottery, she “loves seeing something take shape under my hands and having an idea in my head and then watching it come to life.”

“Both of these practices teach me to slow down, breathe and be present,” she said. “They give me opportunities to play, to practice nonattachment, to iterate and learn, and most importantly, to connect with myself and others.”

It’s what she hopes for her students, too.

“I want them to remember what it feels like to play and to do something just for the joy of it,” she said. “To slow down and set aside perfectionism and just be present for a few hours a week. The best compliment I ever received from a student was that they now find themselves talking more gently to themselves because of the example I set in class.”

Details >> Centered is at 3020 Bridgeway in Sausalito. For more information, email Joy at info@centered-sausalito.com or go to centered-sausalito.com.

Show off

If you have a beautiful or interesting Marin garden or a newly designed Marin home, I’d love to know about it.

Please send an email describing either one (or both), what you love most about it and a photograph or two. I will post the best ones in upcoming columns. Your name will be published and you must be over 18 years old and a Marin resident.

PJ Bremier writes on home, garden, design and entertaining topics every Saturday. She may be contacted at P.O. Box 412, Kentfield 94914, or at pj@pjbremier.com.