Shakti Rising Yoga

THE YOGA STORY

Yoga has been in my life since I can remember. My parents began studying yoga in the mid-seventies and began teaching in the mid-eighties, so it has been a strong presence throughout most of my life. After being diagnosed with functional scoliosis at the age of 10 my parents began to give me more instruction and encourage my practice even more. Both also being therapeutic bodyworkers, they helped keep my curvature from becoming worse through bodywork and continuing to offer me an education in the therapeutic benefits of yoga.

In 2001 after sustaining many climbing and snowboarding injuries, I realized that I wanted to go deeper with my yoga practice in order to slow down my adrenaline driven lifestyle and learn more about the therapeutics of yoga. I began taking classes at an Anusara studio and fell in love with the practice of Anusara Yoga. As a novice anatomy geek, I was captivated by the elegant alignment principles and as a seeker of my own truth and light I was delighted by the Tantric philosophy, re-affirming my own Divine nature.

I am an Anusara Inspired teacher dedicated to the Anusara Principles and Non-Dualistic Philosophy which celebrates the beauty and Divinity of the human experience. My passion is to share this experience and my love for yoga with those I have the opportunity to serve.

YOGA TRAINING

In 2003 I began my Anusara training through a Teacher Training with Senior Anusara Instructor Anthony Bogart. I continued studying with Anthony, participating in a 2 month apprenticeship, more teacher training, therapy training and began to see therapeutic clients under his supervision in addition to continuing public classes. Between these trainings and other workshops I have over 250 hours of Anusara Yoga training as well as being registered with Yoga Alliance. I continue my Anusara studies as I work toward certification.

I offer deep gratitude to my teachers: Chris and Carol Moore, John Friend, Anthony Bogart, Douglas Brooks, Hillary Rubin, Elsie Escobar and every single breath I have taken in the Wilderness.

In addition I would like to offer thanks for the opportunities to study with Sianna Sherman, Mitchell Bleir, Barbara Benagh, Noah Maze, Lynn Albers, Cindy Lusk, and Peter Francyk.

THE EXTENDED STORY

My parents are not Southern, but I was raised in the South. With the perspective of time on my side, I can say that I love the dichotomy of the way I was raised. My parents raised me on yoga, eastern philosophies, a homegrown organic vegetarian diet, sustainable living and a strong sense of independence. The South raised me on, well, everything that is Southern: I played in tall pine forests, tobacco fields, and abandoned moonshine stills. I ate (not from my parents doing) fried okra, pulled pork BBQ (with coleslaw on top) and moonpies. I went to countless fiddlers conventions and listened to bluegrass most Sundays. Although it has been almost a decade since I lived in the South, if you ask me where I’m from, the answer is North Carolina.

My upbringing gave me the ability to have equal appreciation for both the devotional chanting of kirtan and stepping into a big truck with big tires for an afternoon of “Muddin” (I just wish the latter could be done without the use of fossil fuels.) My college education (a BS in Anthropology with a focus on both physical and cultural anthropology) gifted me with the ability to see the world through many cultures and taught me how to appreciate a multitude of cultural viewpoints. However, by the time I finished school I had also become completely enchanted with the creation of food and began to study (through work apprenticeships) the culinary arts and decided to work professionally as a pastry chef in fine dining for many years.

In 1999, driven by dreams of big mountains, fluffy snow, and endless desert hand cracks I moved to Salt Lake City, an epicenter for everything outdoors and road trips to even more fabulous outdoor destinations. In 2002 I became restless and wanted to live life on the road in pursuit of all the activities that brought me such a deep sense of fullfillment that I know, in those moments of floating deep powder, curling into cobra on a flat rock by a mountain stream, or stepping into a rhythm where all I can hear is my breath as I climb higher sinking my hands deeper into a gorgeous hand crack, I was closer to God. So for $600 I bought a 15 foot, 1970 Aristocrat Landcommander travel trailer from a sweet young Mormon couple and in the Spring of 2003 moved into my trailer with my handsome hounddog and our orange tabby cat and set off for the Eastern Sierra of California. I had spent the previous winter there luxuriating in the climbers campground outside of Bishop in my Landcommander and now wanted to explore the High Sierra.

I worked at Tioga Pass in the summers, basking in the quick relief between the High Sierra and the utterly alien views provided by Mono Lake. To this day I have yet to see colors in the sky like those that delicately hover over this ancient salty lake. I had the incredible privilege of teaching yoga in the Lee Vining Community Center with big glass windows overlooking Mono Lake and this still remains one of my hugest inspirations in teaching. In the fall, winter and spring, I would spend time in the Utah desert and Colorado climbing and studying Anusara yoga with Anthony whenever I could. After almost 3 years of this carefree lifestyle, I decided I wanted to teach yoga full time and moved to Grand Junction, Colorado so I could be close to my teacher, my love, Ryan, and a more settled life.

Grand Junction has been a well of opportunity for growth: spiritually, emotionally and professionally. I am now a full time yoga teacher/therapist and am constantly humbled by this art/profession each day realizing that I am an eternal student. Before moving to Grand Junction I had begun to learn the arts of hoop dance and fire spinning. Desiring to have a community of fire performance artists, my partner and I dreamed up the Burning Desert Fire Collective and with the collaboration of other fire artists in the community have created a performance troupe which seeks to inspire our community to fuel their own passions through the art we offer them. I also desire an active community of hoopers after experiencing the power of the hoop in my own life and have begun to offer HoopDance classes in hopes of catalyzing the growth of a hooping tribe. This community has also given me the opportunity to explore the cultivation of women’s culture through ritual and movement known as Red Tent Gatherings. I have stepped into the facilitation of these gatherings and offer them to the public in an effort to raise awareness of the feminine principle of Shakti that dwells in each of us and connects us to our natural world.

Each of these pursuits are forms of consciousness becoming human expressions of beauty, each having the power to remind us in each moment, with each breath, of our Divinity, our perfection, goodness and the gift of embodiment. It is my deepest desire to contribute to the conscious evolvution of this planet one sacred movement at a time.

Om Namah Shivaya!