Somatic Exploration
About this Event
Armen Menechyan is a certified yoga therapy practitioner born and based in LA specializing in yoga therapy, somatic practices, breathwork and meditation. His work is informed by sensory awareness, anatomy, energetics, contemplative traditions, and an ongoing inquiry into the relationship between body and mind. The founder of Pür Joy Yoga, Armen approaches somatic practice as an invitation into exploring our innate, inexhaustible joy rather than following a set of dogmatic rigid rules. His sessions create space for presence, play, dialogue, and self-inquiry—encouraging people to listen more closely to their bodies and discover their own pathways toward ease.
For Armen, the body is not something to overcome or perfect, but a place of ongoing inquiry. Through mindful awareness and embodied exploration, he invites participants to notice what is present, stay curious about sensation, and trust the intelligence that can emerge when we slow down enough to listen. He offers weekly evening restorative classes and Sunday morning yoga sessions in Echo Park, and leads domestic and international retreats. His next retreat, Wisdom of the Whales, takes place in Maui this January.
A Somatic Exploration of Tension, Ease & Creativity
What if tension doesn't need to disappear for us to experience ease?
In this experiential somatic awareness session with Armen Menechyan, we’ll explore our relationship to tension through sensation, breath, gentle micromovement, and mindful attention.
Inspired by Brook Shane Salzwedel's Surface Tension, currently displayed at the gallery, we'll consider tension not necessarily as something to forcefully release, but as something to become curious about.
What happens when we can feel tension without immediately trying to change it?
What happens when we create enough spaciousness around an experience to let it move, transform, or simply be?
Together, we'll explore the subtle territory between effort and ease, holding and releasing, structure and spontaneity. Trusting that creativity can arise when we learn to stay present with what is.
No previous yoga or somatic experience necessary. Come curious. Come as you are. Bring a mat!
Now on view
SURFACE/TENSION
Brooks Shane Salzwedel
Lola Gallery is pleased to present SURFACE/TENSION, a solo show featuring the work of Brooks Shane Salzwedel, on view from August 6 through September 5, 2026.
SURFACE/TENSION explores the emotional terrain between observed and imagined landscapes. Salzwedel’s layered mixed-media works merge forests, mountains, coastlines, atmospheric phenomena, offshore structures, and industrial remnants into environments that exist between memory and invention. Rather than depicting a specific location, Salzwedel constructs places that feel psychologically familiar, landscapes shaped as much by perception and emotion as by geography itself.
Lola is dedicated to art that transforms vulnerability into resistance, connection, and community.
Lola Gallery opened at 716 N Figueroa St in Chinatown, Los Angeles, as a home for contemporary art by emerging and established artists. Inclusion and diversity shape the program through the artists Lola presents and the range of perspectives, materials, subjects, and forms of expression represented in the work.
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