My Approach
May what I do flow from me like a river-
No forcing, no holding back, the way it is with children.
Rainier Rilke
translated by Anita Barrows
That’s the key: balancing effort and ease.
My yoga foundation is Kripalu, with a large dose of Iyengar. I’m a stickler for alignment and safety, but not a yoga drill sergeant. I believe yoga should be fun.
I emphasize moving with the breath, stringing stretches and postures on the breath like a strand of pearls.
After a warm-up of the joints, I generally hold poses in the context of a slow flow, linking several postures in the format of long sun salutations.
I believe in putting the body through its paces, so I incorporate standing postures, balancing, forward bends, back bends, twists, and core work in each class, as well as inversions when appropriate.
Following the threads of my teachers and my own experiences, I believe in the body’s wisdom and desire to free itself from any negative pattern, physical or mental. Samskaras, which manifest as habitual patterns of behavior or blockages, can enter the body from any trauma, or from any unresolved emotion, however seemingly trivial. These “broken record” responses or “deposits” block circulation and impede energy flow, leading to stagnation and even dis-ease in the body, mind and spirit.
Yoga helps to identify the where, and even the why, of these blockages, and then methodically eliminates them. Elimination is usually a slow process over an extended period of time (yoga is not a magic bullet), but it can also be very sudden, like an epiphany.
The beauty of this is that you don’t have to struggle to fix anything: just do yoga and the process will follow naturally.