Seated in a circle, eyes closed and breaths slow and deep, seven women and one man followed the soothing directions of Maura Nolan as she guided them in a meditative pursuit of freedom from physical and emotional burdens. “Sending them,” as she put it, “out into the universe.”

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“I want you to feel yourself take in this lovely healing energy and let it move around the body to the places where it is needed,” she told her students one recent Thursday afternoon in a small community room in Tribeca’s Independence Plaza.

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For this group of seniors, many in their 80s, that healing is needed for aching backs, poor balance, painful knees and hips, and limbs still hurting from falls. Each Thursday, in a 10-week class that ends on Thursday, June 29, they come together for gentle movement and yoga-infused mind-body exercises as part of a program offered by the Independence Plaza Senior Center.

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