Still & Moving Meditation Fellowship

A non-denominational 501(c)(3) nonprofit 

History of the original Still & Moving Center

In 2011, Renée Tillotson opened Still & Moving Center in Honolulu, Hawai’i, with the mission to “to provide a sacred space for moving meditation.” As a hub in the middle of the Pacific for learning and practicing mindful movement traditions from cultures around the world, we have offered Hula from Hawai’i, Yoga from India, Tai Chi from China, Nia from USA, and so on. In addition to weekly classes, we’ve hosted workshops, teacher trainings, as well as performances with dance, aerial, and music. 

15 years after its founding, Renée realized that a true, interconnected community had grown up. Our students, teachers and staff members have interwoven their lives inside and outside the studio. Together, we have created a living, breathing, laughing, loveable community center! We’ve participated in and contributed to hundreds of benefit events and drives – from distributing food to the homeless in Chinatown, to helping to build Pearl Haven for restoring the lives of trafficked youths, to supporting the tiny house village Hui Mahi’ai Aina, to donating to dozens of nonprofits across the island.

In addition to Renée Tillotson, two substantially younger people have stepped strongly and graciously into leadership roles. Over all 15 years, our kumu hula Mālia Helelā has stood steadfastly at Renée’s side in all of Still & Moving Center’s many efforts and activities. In more recent years, our general manager Dustin Hara has brought his business management skills, his deep foundation in Christianity, and his enormous musical performance and teaching talent to Still & Moving. Both Mālia and Dustin’s huge hearts and deliberateness as mature human beings have created safe spaces for everyone involved at Still & Moving Center.

Kumu Mālia’s and Dustin’s leadership skills enormously buoyed Renée's confidence in the long-term future of Still & Moving.

Long Term Sustainability

On her 70th birthday in 2025, Renée looked to her legacy. Although she started it as a business, Still & Moving Center was not yet self-sustaining, remaining quite dependent on Renée and her family for financial support. She asked herself how Still & Moving might stay open long past her tenure.

The answer: by creating a nonprofit structure!

She recognized that the wonderful ‘ohana (extended family) of people around her at Still & Moving Center deserve to have a gathering space evolve into a nonprofit they can all support and sustain long into the future. Through a nonprofit, she reasoned, we as a collective could continue to provide a “sacred space for moving meditation” as well as for still meditation, coming together to weave a secure organizational and financial structure. With donations and grants, even more people will be able to participate in a nonprofit. That means more community, more fellowship! 

So, Renée invited a number of people, as dear and dedicated friends and supporters of Still & Moving, to serve on a founding board of trustees. They enthusiastically accepted the invitation.

Meditation, the Mind, Stillness and the Sacred

The new Board reflected on the fact that the mission of the original Still & Moving Center was “to provide sacred space for moving meditation”.  Our motto has been: “Move your body. Still your mind. Find center. Find Joy.”

Meditation, the mind, and the sacred have been at the heart of Still & Moving Center since the beginning. The sacred side of the Center has shown itself in all the beautiful statues and artwork filling the space: Buddha, St. Francis, Shiva-Nataraj, Kwan-Yin, and on and on. All the inspirational quotes in the yearly Still & Moving Center almanacs shared wisdom from women and men of different religions, philosophies and philanthropies through the ages. We have been contemplating, talking about, and mindfully moving to these concepts in classes for 15 years.

The Still & Moving Center has published a yearly almanac of sacred and inspiring quotes holding deep weekly conversations on the almanac’s themes. And we’ve celebrated sacred holy days, such as Easter from the Christian tradition, Diwali festival of lights from the Hindu tradition, and hi’uwai ocean cleansing ceremonies on the solstices and equinoxes from the Hawaiian tradition. We create space for the sacred in our lives.

The new Board acknowledged the sacred purpose of these meditations - not just while moving, but also in stillness. Both alone and in fellowship. We seek to evolve into the wise, courageous, compassionate and self-directing human beings that we are capable of becoming! For that, we need to develop our meditative skills of full presence in the moment and continuity of consciousness over time.

Creation of Still & Moving Meditation Fellowship

So, to develop that sacred, meditative side of ourselves in fellowship, the Board called upon Renée Tillotson, Mālia Helelā and Dustin Hara to found the non-denominational 501(c)(3) nonprofit Still & Moving Meditation Fellowship. 

The Fellowship registered as a non-profit on February 18, 2026 in Hawai’i, and the Board officially inaugurated it on Buddha Purnima, at a Hawaiian sunrise hiu’wai ceremony on a full moon, May 1, 2026.

The Still & Moving Meditation Fellowship will offer regular meditation, conversation circles on sacred themes, ceremonies, and study groups. We will continue and also expand the rites of passage that we have previously provided, such as weddings, vow renewals, and end of life celebrations. Our fellowship extends from pre-birth to the end of our days. We will continue to honor all of the sacred holidays that we have previously celebrated at Still & Moving Center.

Moving Meditation

The Board also considered the mission of the original Still & Moving Center “to provide sacred space for moving meditation”. To that end, Renée created the Academy of Mindful Movement in 2020 to train teachers to lead their classes mindfully, and eventually as moving meditations. Most of the Still & Moving Center teachers have become certified as Academy of Mindful Movement Level 1 Instructors. As they move through the Academy’s courses, they will eventually become Moving Meditation Teachers. 

We are each a whole Self, with a mind, heart, and conscience that needs care, and for that we need to move our bodies - mindfully. We determined that a community center under the auspices of the Fellowship would represent the movement-oriented, bodily health side of the original organization’s sacred intent. 

Creation of Still & Moving Community Center

The Board therefore called upon the Fellowship to create a subsidiary organization: Still & Moving Community Center. Also registered here in Hawai’i, Still & Moving Community Center will serve as a community gathering space for movement classes, workshops, dance series, mindful bodywork, and movement-oriented events, such as our semi-annual SuperClasses.

Additionally, our kumu Mālia Helelā is creating a brand new school called Puana Lomilomi Academy with its first foundational principles being Deep Presence and Prayer. This academy will provide full training for License Massage Therapy (LMT) certification, with a special emphasis on the sacred art of traditional Hawaiian lomilomi massage. Mālia considers the fundamental practice of lomilomi to be a sacred meditation. She intends to also incorporate the lomi academy under the Still & Moving Meditation Fellowship’s 501(c)(3) nonprofit.

Our Forever Home

The Board next turned its attention to long-term sustainability. Considering the high lease costs each month in our Kaka’ako location, the board took up as their first task finding a “forever home” for Still & Moving Meditation Fellowship and Still & Moving Community Center. 

The board considered what kind of property we wanted for our “forever home”. Especially for the Hawaiian practices that we conduct, we’ll need something with green grounds for hula, for growing la’au lapa’au healing herbs as well as lei-making plants. We of course need building space, something with a large parking lot where many folks will be coming and going frequently. Additionally our associated Academy of Mindful Movement will hold its week-long teacher trainings there. After extensive research, we determined that we are most likely to find these features on a church or temple property, if not a small school. We want it on high ground, fairly close to the city center.

Our non-denominational 501(c)(3) nonprofit, with its subsidiaries Still & Moving Community Center and Puana Lomilomi Academy will be perfectly at home on such a property.