My philosophy
Everything I need to know about life I learned in movement….
When I was in grade school there was this poster I would see in various classrooms that was titled: “All I really need to know I learned in Kindergarten”. It extolled the simple wisdom of childhood that adults tend to lose sight of as we move through this world. Over the course of my own life, I’ve seen that learning and wisdom arrive on all kinds of avenues for people.
For me, movement has been that path. In the last 23 years I’ve spent practicing, exploring, refining movement and learning about human anatomy, I’ve come to believe that everything I really need to know about in life, I learned in movement. This is the bedrock of my work.
What I know to be true: the human body is a learning vessel by design. Its very nature is built on growth, change and an unending capacity to learn. With each choice we make and especially the ones we repeat, we are teaching it how to live. WE are showing ourselves how we want to live and if we want to live differently, that is up to us. Choice and taking action are powerful antidotes to stagnancy and despair.
In experience, the goal of exercise is not about making yourself look a different way outside. Our outward appearance is temporary and if we are going to attach to something that will carry us forward, let it be who we are on the inside. Let it be learning who you are and what you are truly capable of. Movement is an awakening to the greatest gift you were given, your life. This is true for all bodies. No exceptions.
I hope to meet you soon!
Why should you include yoga in your life?
Because every human body needs balance, coordination, and stability training. If life moves in moments, then asana moves in millimeters. One of the trappings of modern technology is that it keeps us constantly distracted and elsewhere. We exist in a perpetual state of forward or backward or multiple thoughts/screens. Yoga brings us home. By tethering the mind to the body with your breath, you learn to be in this moment. You learn what here with a quiet mind feels like. I know that’s a lofty promise, but the practice brings you to your feet on the ground. Here and now.
Many classes ago, I met a student who was a native of India. After class, she expressed her disdain for what Americans had done to the practice of yoga. Mind you this was 14 years ago and I had just started teaching so I chose to be curious instead of defensive and asked her what it was like where she was from. She said that yoga was for everyone there, young, old, all body sizes and backgrounds. They wore whatever they wanted, no spandex. They practiced on white sheets in parks in large groups. Then she said something that I have carried with me all these years. She said, “And it always began with laughter.”
I believe we are here to help each other through this life and people appear in our periphery to offer us their stories that can shape us if we let them. I took that conversation to heart and it changed my path forward. I left teaching indoors behind for the most part and began teaching outdoors in 2020 and have never looked back.