Thanks for visiting my new website! I'm so excited to have a central place where people can find my teaching schedule and where I can share information that I've learned through my own practice and through research.
As we begin a new year, I want to encourage you to take a few moments to sit and consider one positive attribute that you'd like to incorporate into who you are. This is a technique that I learned from one of my teachers, Tiffany Cruikshank, and it has served me well over the years.
What one attribute would you like to possess? It could be confidence, a can-do attitude, fearlessness, optimism, an adventurous spirit, etc. Take a moment to think of this attribute, and then close your eyes and bring to mind an image of yourself as you would look if you possessed this quality. Get very clear on this image. Notice your face, your body language, and anything else the image contains.
Now open your eyes and imagine that you already possess this quality. Go forward through your day as if you have incorporated it into who you are. Sit with this image for a couple minutes each day this week and notice that you slowly begin to embody that attribute.
We get to decide who we are. We get to create change and decide which attributes we will nurture and which pitfalls we will avoid and let fade.
You are more powerful than you think you are. Become who you want to be. Envision it, and then let it be so. Happy, happy New Year, my friends.
Recently I spent a day pondering my vision for teaching. My hope for my students in 2015:
I hope that people learn that their bodies are strong and powerful and graceful. I hope they learn to be at home in their bodies. I hope they learn that their body is their ally, not their enemy. I hope they discover that they are powerful - the kind of power that equips them to do the hard things in life with love and kindness - power that is filled with hope. I hope they feel their feet on the earth, grounded down, and their heart opening up, up, up. I hope their hearts open more to love, to this messy life, to joy. I hope they remember who they are at their core - the physical asanas are a pathway to help them to remember.
And I hope that when they discover this authentic self, the yoga has brought them to a place where they feel powerful enough to live from that place, to show it to the world regardless of what the world might think. I believe that when we all choose to live authentically, when we choose to be exactly who we were made to be and choose to love from that place, we can change the world. I also hope that they find yoga to be a tool they can use when they are in pain, when they are lonely, when they are afraid or sad, when they are stressed or tired. I hope they find that it is a tool that can and will bring them back to themselves every single time.