Finding ‘Home’ on the Mat

Despite Losing Multiple Teaching Spaces in the Palisades Fire, Yoga Instructor Kim Harrington Keeps Her Community Grounded Through Classes Across the Westside

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

Though she has pivoted where she practices and teaches following the Palisades fire, Kim Harrington continues to foster community at various venues across the Westside through a series of yoga classes.

Harrington lost or has been displaced from several venues where she previously taught, including her Marquez Knolls home, Palisades-Malibu YMCA on Via De La Paz and MAVVEN on Antioch Street.

Originally from Scotland, Harrington said she grew up with an “incredible childhood and family.” Her mom was a yogi, exposing her to the practice at a young age before she ran “into the world,” studying international business at university before traveling for a year.

Harrington described meeting her husband, traveling some more before getting married and having kids. Then they lived in Santa Monica where he was offered a job, before going to Amsterdam, then returning to the Los Angeles area.

When deciding where to live, Harrington said they chose Pacific Palisades after becoming familiar with the area while their children attended Canyon Charter Elementary School.

“Palisades offered us a community,” she described. “It was absolutely beautiful, we could just see ourselves living there. We were very fortunate that a house came up in our budget. The rest was kind of history, [we] felt incredibly at home, incredibly grateful.”

Harrington has been teaching on Zoom since she moved to the area from the Netherlands in 2019, as her clients there wanted to continue practicing with her. She continued to offer classes virtually through the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as in her garden.

Harrington moved her at-home classes indoors from the garden after her daughter, who attends Palisades Charter High School and is a member of Theatre Palisades Youth, asked if they could host a cast party at the house. She talked to her husband about emptying a room of furniture to accommodate the party.

“We emptied it, we had this party, it was a success,” Harrington described. “And then we were like, ‘I can use this for yoga.’”

Harrington said she was able to host up to 12 people for classes inside. The rental home survived the fire but has not been remediated. Harrington said that at this stage, they are unsure if they will return or not.

“I had a community of people who lived in the Palisades, some in Santa Monica also came to me,” Harrington said. “I was teaching five days a week in that studio.”

In addition to teaching clients privately, Harrington also taught chair yoga at the YMCA, she described, introducing yoga to people for the first time in their 70s and 80s in some cases.

“I taught teenagers as being one of my specialties, having children who were teenagers and having started yoga as a teenager, I focused on that group” Harrington said. “I did teenage classes twice a week at the YMCA.”

Following the Palisades fire, Harrington has continued teaching on Zoom, renting from Fancy Feet Dance Studio in Santa Monica, Palisades Studio and Collins & Katz Family YMCA.

“That’s been meaningful,” Harrington said of the programming at YMCA, “because I see a lot of clients from the Palisades.”

She said the connection with Fancy Feet happened “organically,” as her daughter dances with the studio. Harrington described “hanging on” to studio Owner Emily Kay Tillman’s emails after the fire, when Tillman was working on securing a space at the time to get the group back dancing together.

After running into each other at the post office, Harrington and Tillman connected about Harrington using the converted warehouse space during the day to teach yoga.

“It’s been incredibly healing because it’s given us a sense of community,” Harrington described of continuing to see clients. “It’s given us a place to meet. It’s given us a sense of gratitude. It’s given us gratitude because we’re practicing. It’s a practice we’re familiar with … we have this practice where for an hour, we’re transported somewhere else.”

Harrington described clients being able to empathize with one another, and also use the space to share resources, like contractors, as well.

“The mat is our symbolic home,” Harrington said. “This is coming home to yourself, everything else seems unfamiliar, but this is really familiar … this is you coming home to yourself.”

She said this has also been reflective of her own journey—staying in Airbnbs and on friends’ couches—and that practicing yoga has helped her see she is OK and gives that “resilient strength.”

“A lot of the time, when we’re in stress, trauma, panic, we’re in our heads,” Harrington described of practicing yoga. “So what yoga does is it brings us back into our body. It offers a physical practice, but in a gentle way that we’re not jarring the nervous system.”

One place where Harrington has been able to teach at before and after the fire is Rustic Canyon Recreation Center, where she offers chair yoga classes. She also gives private lessons in the Palisades with residents who have returned.

Heading into the holiday season, Harrington commented on the restorative nature of yoga, especially for a community who has faced so much in 2025.

“Yoga supports the nervous system in a way that talk alone often can’t,” Harrington said. “After the year our Palisades community has been through, especially heading into the holidays, many of us are carrying stress in our bodies as much as in our minds. Yoga offers an opportunity to breathe again—to slow down, reconnect and gently restore. We’re a resilient community and healing doesn’t happen all at once, but it becomes lighter and more possible when we do it together.”

For more information, including a complete list of classes and offerings, visit yogawithkim.info.