What brings us to yoga? What still needs healing?

My journey with yoga and healing began in the fall of 1991. A beautiful red-haired woman in a white turban captured my eye. Soon, I was wearing white organic cotton yoga pants and learning the art of yoga on a purple mat.

My first passion was African Dance, which I discovered after leaving a disappointing aerobics class at the local gym in 1989. Leaving the gym, I heard the sound of drumming. Without a thought, my heart led me across the street to a small movement studio, AGAPE, where the very charismatic teacher Maurice Haltom was leading a circle of drummers in Manjani, a traditional celebratory West African rhythm and dance.

When the heart gets touched, we know it. My heart found a home that day in 1989 and again in 1991.
 

I never stopped dancing and I never stopped practicing yoga.

Fast forward to 2005 and a class with my first Anusara yoga teacher. I had taken all sorts of yoga: Vinyasa, Bikram, Iyengar, Kripalu, Svaroopa. You name it. I’d tried it. But the day Anusara and I met, I never turned back. My first teacher brought intention and the alignment principles to every class. Soon, I was able to practice on my own and feel safe in my body. For each asana, I knew just where to spiral, loop, draw in and extend.

A brush with mold in my classroom in 2013, then again in 2016 left me sick. Too sick to keep teaching French in the public school system where I had been teaching for over 20 years. How hard it was to leave my beloved students and the classroom! But it was clear. I needed to turn my energy toward healing what blossomed into a hypersensitivity to mold and chemical offgassing present in most buildings.

Ah, yoga…

I can’t overstate the benefits my daily yoga practice has brought to my life. I am healing. Slowly, but surely, I am healing. And it’s not just on the physical plane. Yoga is first and foremost a spiritual practice. As we move more and more deeply towards our truest alignment, magic gets invoked. Stuck patterns begin to move. New energy emerges. Even new purpose!

Now, in addition to my yoga and meditation practice and teaching, and one-on-one healing work, I have written a book about my healing journey: Naked.

Most days you will find me taking long walks with Mother Earth in the woods, studying and writing, writing and studying, oh, and practicing. After all, we are what we practice. And what do I practice?

I practice by constantly asking myself these basic questions:

• Am I present?
• Can I allow what is present in me?
• What needs tending to?

But most importantly…

What is the state of my heart right now? What does it need to give and receive love more deeply?

I stumble. I fall. I get back up, brush myself off, lick and tend to my wounds and keep on practicing. What else is there really to do?

I bring myself to my practice. My practice brings itself to me.

The best students make the best teachers, and that is the journey I am on. Being the best student of Yoga and Life I can possibly be. In Sanskrit, we call this Adikara, and I bring my Adikara to everything I do. Especially to my students, the yoga classes I teach, and the clients I seek to help heal.

Come join me on the mat. Come heal with me.