I teach what works for me. I teach an alignment-based vinyasa flow. What does that mean? Well I like to think that it means that I move enough to get you warm, get your joints lubricated and your breath going so that you have the opportunity to meditate through movement; but its not so fast that you get lost, not so fast that you lose good form and as importantly, offers a slow enough pace that you can engage muscular strength to support your movement and your flexibility.
I tell prospective students to come and try a class with me. I believe whole-heartedly that yoga is for everyone, though everyone’s yoga will look a little different. I always offer modifications and accelerations and I encourage my students to choose the options that best fit where they are in that moment. You aren’t choosing one posture for the rest of your life, you are choosing what your body, your mind and perhaps your heart are asking for, needing and wanting in that moment. That’s at the core of what I believe your yoga can offer you: the opportunity to create a practice that gives you what you need and that changes with you as you move through life. As I say to my classes, if you want to bind, great; if you want to float into headstand or crow or handstand or hover in mid-air great; if you want to nurture with bolsters and blankets and blocks and hang out in child’s pose or savasana the entire time, great. As long as you breathe and honor yourself and genuinely look to your inner guru, your inner teacher, your true self (not the ego!) for what it is that will make you feel the best? I’m happy. And if you aren’t at the point in your practice where you know how to do that yet?! Well, no worries, that’s why I’m there! So come try a class, see what you like and do that. Simple. Not always easy, but simple. If it feels good, do it. If it doesn’t feel good, don’t do it.
A dear student once said to me that she feels as though my teaching is about inviting the universe into the studio, that I bring stories from my personal life and from life in general as opportunities to broadening the ways in which we think of yoga. We are whole people and most of our lives are lived off of our mats, so our yoga, I believe, should keep that in mind. My practice has been invaluable to me as a way of processing my life, myself and my future.
A recurring student favorite is the ongoing saga of my two bunnies. I have two adorable bunnies (I’m not biased, they are objectively awww-worthy!) who make repeated appearances in my yoga stories. They teach me constantly about our abilities to venture into the seemingly scary unknown, paw by paw, sniff by sniff; to cultivate and return to comfortable, well-established cozy corners where we can lie long, nurtured by our security, our safety in the calm of well-loved nooks (and the occasional magazine rack that serves as a particularly popular nap spot.)
I am an E-ryt yoga teacher, a yoga student, a certified reiki practitioner, a hands-on healer, a classical pianist, a reader, a writer, a mathematician, a historian, a nerd, a cook, a sister, a daughter, a lover of cacti. I am a whole person and I want for my practice to be a whole practice that incorporates all of who I am and how I come to my mat; without blinders. We begin with acknowledging who we are and how we arrive and then from there we can move forward.
As I always end, the love and the light within me bow to the beautiful and the sacred love and light within you.
