About RiversZen

Your Body Is Part of Your Life.
Not the Point of It.

You want to keep doing the things that make your life worth living. Walking. Traveling. Gardening. Playing with the grandkids. Getting down on the floor and, preferably, getting back up again.

RiversZen exists to help you stay capable enough to keep doing them.

We're Not Chasing Perfect.

We're interested in useful.

Can you move better? Get stronger? Trust your balance a little more? Stay flexible enough to do the things you enjoy? Feel better in your own body?

That's the stuff that matters to us.

We use strength work, Contracted Stretching, Qigong, yoga, Pilates, breathwork and whatever else we've learned that seems useful. But none of those things is the point.

They're tools. Living better is the point.

And we don't believe there's one perfect plan everybody needs to follow. Bodies are different. Lives are different. What works beautifully for one person may need to be changed for the next.

So we pay attention. We experiment. We adjust.

Dave and Peggy Stevens, founders of RiversZen Fitness

Why We Care About This

We Didn't Start Out Feeling Great.

Back in 2007, Peggy and I were dealing with our own collection of aches, injuries and health problems.

I was facing several recommended surgeries. Peggy couldn't sit comfortably for any length of time. We started looking for other ways to help ourselves.

Movement became a big part of that. So did resistance stretching, changing how we ate, and paying a whole lot more attention to what actually made us feel and function better.

It changed our lives.

Not because we discovered one magic system. We didn't.

We found useful things, kept the things that helped, dropped some things that didn't, and kept learning.

Peggy once summed up why we teach in one sentence: “Because it fixed me and I want to share that.”

Then Other People Started Surprising Us.

We opened the first RiversZen studio in 2012. Since then, we've taught classes and worked hands-on with thousands of real bodies.

We've worked with people who were strong and active, people who hadn't moved much in years, and plenty who arrived convinced that stiffness, weakness or poor balance was simply their new normal.

Sometimes the changes have been small. Sometimes they've been remarkable.

One of our early students came in using a cane after years of trying different approaches. Within a couple of months of working with us, she wasn't using it anymore.

Stories like that got our attention.

They didn't prove that we could fix everybody. We can't. They did teach us not to be too quick to decide what somebody's body is capable of.

After all these years, we're still curious about what might improve when somebody gets the right movement, the right help and enough time.

How We Work.

RiversZen has never fit neatly into one fitness box, and we're okay with that.

Our work grew from resistance stretching, yoga and years of training, but it also grew from thousands of classes, private sessions, experiments, conversations and moments when something we expected to work simply didn't.

We don't lock ourselves into a protocol because somebody gave it a name.

Pay Attention

Your body gets a vote. We give options, but part of the practice is learning to notice what makes sense for you today.

Use What Helps

Strength, stretching, balance, Qigong, yoga, Pilates, breathwork. Different tools for different people and different days.

Keep Learning

We're still testing things and changing our minds when experience teaches us something better. It'll never be done. That's okay.

The People You'll Meet

Dave, Peggy & Kim.

RiversZen isn't a faceless fitness platform. These are the people teaching the classes, answering questions and working with students every week.

Dave Stevens

Dave Stevens

Co-Founder & Instructor

Dave started this work after his own body forced him to rethink how he was living. Now 72, he's still teaching, experimenting and occasionally changing the class five minutes before it starts because he thought of something better.

Peggy Stevens

Peggy Stevens

Co-Founder & Lead Instructor

Peggy brings decades of movement study and hands-on experience to classes and private sessions. She has a remarkable ability to watch a person move, notice what's happening and help them find another way.

Kim Gibbs

Kim Gibbs

Instructor

Kim has been teaching at RiversZen for years and brings her own energy to the mix. Her classes can be challenging, but like every RiversZen class, students adapt the practice to their own bodies.

RiversZen Today.

You can join us in our studios in Astoria, Oregon and Ilwaco, Washington. You can join the same real classes live online. Or you can use our on-demand library whenever it fits your life.

Different doors into the same place.

A place where you can show up as you are, keep learning about your own body, and work on staying capable for whatever you want your life to include.

In the Studio

Real classes and real community in Astoria and Ilwaco.

View the schedule →

RiversZen Online

Join our live classes from home, with the complete on-demand library included.

Explore RiversZen Online →

Private Sessions

Individualized hands-on work with Peggy when you want more personal attention.

Learn about private sessions →

Come See What Your Body Can Still Do.

You don't need to be in shape first. That's rather the point.

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