FAQ

But all those poses look so difficult, and I’m just too stiff / injured / old / out of shape to do yoga.

Are dishes ever too dirty to be washed?  Of course not, and yoga is the same way. It is a wide-ranging practice meant for everybody. I will fully admit the difficult poses are fun to play with when I practice, but they are completely unnecessary.  

The only requirement for embarking on your yoga journey is the willingness to listen inward. Yoga is firstly a diagnostic tool to learn your strengths and weaknesses.  I will almost guarantee we will find something you are good at. I can also guarantee we can find something that needs work.  To celebrate the former and improve the latter - that is the yoga experience.

So what style do you teach?  My friend says she likes the _____ style of yoga.

I don’t have a style, and for a few reasons. I’ve been fortunate to work with several yoga systems, but I’ve never been able to fully commit to one. Each style can give and teach so much and I love that. Philosophically, I believe all expressions of yoga are valid and I try to glean the best aspects from them all. I’d feel like I have horse blinders on if I ignored teachings because they were from a different style.

Practically, if I were to label myself an ashtanga teacher, or get accredited as a bikram or iyengar teacher, there would be beneficial practices I love that I would not be allowed to teach in a class. A wonderful teacher Erich Schiffmann said of this subject he would “have felt sort of hemmed in”.  

So my style of teaching is always evolving. But be assured of this: every time you practice under my guidance, I will be teaching the latest manifestation of the best yoga I can possibly teach. You deserve that from any teacher.

Do you teach just a physical yoga?

I do give many physical cues, but my aim is awareness training. It’s taking the yoga practice “off the mat”, a phrase yoga teachers use often.

Let’s say we’re doing a warrior pose, in which one thigh muscle is supporting a bunch of weight. That’s strength training, right? But we would also investigate your reactions. Is your jaw clenching? Maybe your fingers are wiggling erratically in the air? You may have even resorted to holding your breath.  You become aware of stress reactions, and can start relaxing those.  You’ll develop ease within the strength, fluidity within the stability. The whole pose begins to come alive.

You’ll start to notice your patterns of tension when confronted with other stressful situations. The next time you’ll know what you’re likely to do, and RESPOND instead of REACT. You are more aware and in control.

You can easily take this skill and apply it to your thoughts. You’ll start to catch yourself thinking in ways that are not helpful. Once you relax your unproductive thoughts, your actions will come  from a much more intelligent place. We wind up being pretty far from our physical practice while still learning from it.