Deniece O’Brien, an ERYT-500 — experienced registered yoga teacher with 500-hours of experience — demonstrates on-table yoga techniques used to eliminate chronic pain on Karen Shaw, another yoga instructor and owner of Rising Up Yoga in Elm Grove.

WHEELING — Rising Up Yoga in Elm Grove is offering a drug-free treatment that might help some people better rise up out of their chair.

Personal yoga sessions on a table similar to physical therapy exercises are being provided at the studio as a way of tackling chronic pain issues.

Owner Karen Shaw has trained with yoga master Lee Albert – the originator of Integrated Positional Therapy (IPT ) and the founder of the “Live Pain Free” movement. Shaw is certified as a Level 1 IPT instructor, and plans to obtain additional training and certification from Albert in Florida later this year.

A second instructor at the studio, Denise O’Brien, also has trained with Albert and is certified as a Level 3 assistant to Albert. She holds the certification of ERYT-500 – “experienced registered yoga teacher with 500-hours of experience.”

IPT is described as a “a gentle self-care approach that has been shown to be effective in addressing a wide range of common acute and chronic neuromuscular conditions and associative pain. The treatment delivers simple, therapeutic self-care techniques that help identify and correct muscular imbalances and hone in on many of the root causes of pain,” according to Albert’s “Kripalu” website.

Shaw has owned Rising Up Yoga for four years. She noted its logo is a Phoenix that represents “rising up from the ashes.”

“We do all kinds of yoga here like pilates, but we also do something special here – the integrated positional therapy,” she explained. “IPT addresses chronic pain. Think physical therapy, but this is non-medical. We help people stretch on a table.

“It is intended to relieve chronic pain, and it does.”

Shaw was initially trained as a yoga instructor at West Virginia University, and she noted she is the only collegiate-trained yoga instructor in the Ohio Valley.

“I loved every minute of it,” she said. “It totally changed my life.

“I thought I was just doing yoga. But I learned the ability to focus and be more efficient all day long. That’s what I get out of yoga.”

Shaw is originally from Cleveland – which she calls, “a cement city.” She also lived and worked in Pittsburgh for a time.

But Shaw found herself attracted to the Ohio Valley, its “green mountains” and its people.

“I felt the yoga connection to the community,” she explained. “That’s what yoga is – being connected to the community. That’s what ‘rising up’ means.”

Shaw noted her neighbors were quick to rise up and help her after the flooding on June 14, 2026 along National Road in Elm Grove came into her yoga studio.

“People showed up – members of the community, people at large, people I didn’t know,” she continued. “They came and helped because I was a flood victim. That says a lot about the community we are in.”