
Yoga


Yoga is life in harmony. Yoga means "union", and is being in sync with, and aware of one's Self and the rhythms of one’s surroundings. I try to bring my practice of yoga into Life in all of it’s aspects. How aware of my breath, the somatic rhythms and energetic flow of my body, and my Being in space, can I remain? And when I lose touch with myself and the world, I get to practice coming back to what already Is, again and again.In my Presence and in my teaching, I hope to share ways of becoming aware of ‘proper’ alignment and how it allows prana to flow in the body, and regardless of that, there is an ‘already home’ place in oneself to return to. Whether it is moving on the mat, sitting on a cushion, scaling mountains, making love, or walking down the sidewalk, there is an element of being alive that is ‘already whole’, connected, and a-part-of/in-union-with, all of Creation. I started taking a few yoga classes when I was in college. My body was bound-up from life as a soccer player and athlete and I couldn’t touch my toes. A couple years after that, I ended up at free Buddhist ‘university’ out in the SE corner of the Arizona desert. For the five week semester, there was a two hour yoga class taught every morning by a world class instructor. At the end of that five weeks, my body had been changed irreversibly. Simply knowing what an ‘open body’ felt like, made slipping back into compression, that much more apparent and uncomfortable.
I followed up that five week term with another, and ended up taking a teacher training with some of the teachers there. Their backgrounds were based in the teachings of Anusara and Jivamukti, and the training also wove in the practices of ‘Tibetan Heart Yoga’, a blend of Indian Hatha yoga with the mind practices and meditations of Tibetan Buddhism.
Since then, I’ve continued my practice and study of yoga on and off the mat with a number of teachers, including five years of close study with international teacher, Reema Datta.
