Why I teach Yoga

Focus

Personal Experience

I am a Yoga Wellness Educator with advanced training in Yoga for Healthy Aging. I specialize in Yoga for Mental Wellness and Brain Longevity. I am also trained in Kundalini Yoga, Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction and iRest Yoga Nidra forms of meditation.

I help people who are getting older and aging, in their forties and beyond, use yoga to prevent illness and disability. I tell people that I am in the business of saving lives and I really mean it. The focus of my work is helping people feel happier about doing a practice that is going to prolong their life span.

I also help people who have mental health challenges in recovery. I want people to be able to sink into a deeper core of physical, mental and emotional experience. After working in acute psychiatric hospitals for many years I see yoga and meditation as a powerful healing modality.

I know how to help students develop greater body awareness to make their practice rich and motivate them to continue.

My classes are live online and I see individuals and couples in my home studio.

Personal Experience

In my personal experience I worked under a lot of stress to be successful in academia and my various demanding professions, along with coming to terms with trauma I had experienced as a child and adolescent.

Yoga brought a higher awareness and sensitivity that gave me true happiness and a sense of purpose. It eased feelings of despair and calmed anxieties I had about my past. Moving my body with my breath was key to feeling stronger and more secure about any emotional difficulty I was having. It also reduced my physical pain from a serious head on car collision.

This is why I know I can help others who struggle with serious illnesses or difficult life situations using the many teachings of yoga and meditation.

I bring my heart and soul into this practice as a teacher and as a practitioner. It is a matter of witnessing our inner truth and real purpose for being alive.

Goals

Personal Experience

Goals

My goal is to share the precious experience of being present that yoga offers those of us who go out on a limb to witness its healing potential.

Yoga is a vital force for the expression of love, joy and happiness. It distracts one from self absorption and teaches the core of being in the service of others. You are the guide both present and absent from yourself.

I love bringing the joy of yoga to people who have never experienced it and to bring laughter and relaxation into challenging environments.

I am humbled by the honor of being part of this new frontier on the ground making a difference, to not only help people with serious mental and physical suffering, but to be a character creating new possibilities for human experience.

In my classes I celebrate this gift of life we are given, present and alive, to the calling of our own hearts.

how yoga can save lives

HEART ATTACKS, CANCER, PREMATURE AGING, AND THE BRAIN

What gets me even more excited about yoga is that I am literally in the business of saving lives. As you know, the benefits of yoga and meditation are huge. According to the CDC every 36 seconds someone will have a heart attack. Yoga is scientifically proven to reduce blood pressure and thin the blood. And high blood pressure is a main cause of heart attacks.

According to data gathered from 2015-2017 almost 40% of people will get cancer at some point in their lifetime. Yoga prevents cancer by increasing the strength of the immune system and by detoxing the body through the lymphatic system which moves as a result of muscle contractions. The lymphatic system is responsible for fighting bacteria and destroying abnormal cells. According to the Anderson Cancer Center in Texas stress promotes the growth and spread of cancer. Yoga decreases stress.

Yoga can also prevent people from aging prematurely and ending up in a nursing home due to becoming unbalanced and breaking a hip or other bone. Yoga strengthens bones and many of the yoga postures help improve balance.

Yoga helps people’s brains. Brain studies show that yoga blocks the areas of the brain responsible for fear and aggressiveness. Yoga stimulates the reward pleasure centers of the brain. Yoga practice increases serotonin levels and even improves memory.

history and principles of yoga

Patanjali and the Eight Limbs of Yoga

Yoga is over 5,000 years old. Archeologists have found seals dating back over 5,000 years ago in the area of what is now Syria in the Indus Valley where civilization first began. There is also evidence of yoga in ancient Egypt. So yoga has been around for a long time. Yoga was an oral tradition passed down from teacher to student.

The word yoga literally means “Union”. It comes from the Sanskrit word “Yuj” which means yoke. So yoga means to join, to bring together. In yoga we bring together the body, the mind and the spirit equally. We are ultimately united as one and not fragmented or separate from the whole. By doing yoga we become integrated into the world. I know that we think of yoga as exercise, but yoga is basically a mental practice that has a physical form. Yoga is the first psychology. It is the first therapeutic tool to heal mental affliction.

The first person to put these teachings into writing was a man named Patanjali who wrote something called the Yoga Sutras. They are basically short aphorisms that briefly define yoga, the nature of its practices and the results of the practices. The first definition and thread of thought in the Yoga Sutras describes yoga as a practice to calm the fluctuations of the mind. So the foundation of yoga is not the body, but the mind.

In the Yoga Sutras Patanjali writes that there are 8 limbs of yoga. Which means that there are eight branches of yoga. The first two are called the Yamas and Niyamas. These are personal and social ethics and values that you follow. Ethics such as non-violence, being truthful, cleanliness, and the value of self study. The third limb is Asana. The physical postures that everyone is familiar with today.

The fourth limb is Pranayama. The breathing practices that stimulate the life force in the body and mind. The next three limbs have to do with meditation. These are moving the focus inward which is called Pratyahara, Dharana or mental concentration, and Dhyana which is emptying the mind.

The eighth limb is something called Samahdi, feeling oneness with your essential nature, or being one with God. The ultimate goal of yoga is getting beyond the self as separate from existence. We are all One, undivided from Universal Consciousness, God, and our Essential Nature.

poetry

WHAT IS YOGA?

FOR A NEW BEGINNING

Yoga is about finding that

power within your mind and body

to heal itself and not be

a victim of circumstances

beyond your control.

Yoga is what allows you to be in

control of your body and to

free it from the delusions of

unhappiness and grief.

They are not your true reality.

Yoga is that truth and happiness

within your heart for more love.

Yoga is that mental and physical control

channeling energy throughout your body

to heal itself from suffering.

Yoga is your compass to more freedom.

FOR A NEW BEGINNING

In out of the way places of the heart, where your thoughts never think to wander, this beginning has been quietly forming, waiting until you were ready emerge.

For a long me it has watched your desire, feeling the emptiness growing inside of you, noticing how you willed your way on, unable leave what you had outgrown.

It watched you play with the seduction of safety, and the gray promises that sameness whispered,

Heard the turmoil rise and relent, wondered would you always live like this. Then delight, when your courage kindled, and out you stepped onto new ground, your eyes young again with energy and dream, a path of plentitude open before you.

Though your destination is not yet clear, you can trust the promise of this opening; unfurl yourself with the grace of beginning that is one with your life’s desire.

Awaken your spirit of adventure; hold nothing back, learn find ease in risk; soon you will be home in a new rhythm, for your soul senses the world that awaits you.

- John O’Donahue To Bless the Space Between Us:

A Book of Blessings

TO A POETIC PLACE OF RECOVERY

I am going to a place I have

never been to before.

A calm serene vision of my true

self has arisen.

A calling to where I want to be.

A flash of light in my consciousness.

A true measure of my mind.

A necessary awakening of my soul.

I am in cool clear water,

And I feel the cleansing of the

spirit now mine.

I am going to a place I trust within me,

A knowing of myself I had

not known before,

A growing and nurturing space,

A time of arrival.

The sad gloomy places do

not harm me anymore.

I feel a strength and a purpose

that is mine.

I have worked for it.

It will not leave me easily now.

I have lifted myself up.

I will not be taken down again.

The hospitals are still not far away.

But I am not in them now.

I have happily relinquished my

patient status.

I am free.

I am going to a place I've never

been to before.

I feel myself open.

I am not hard now, but soft.

A yielding has happened.

I am submitting to my own Truth.

WELCOME TO MIND HEALTH YOGA WELLNESS STUDIO

Donation yoga

Why I teach Yoga

Focus

Personal Experience

Personal Experience

Personal Experience

Personal Experience

Personal Experience

Goals

Personal Experience

Goals

MOVE YOUR BODY

HEAL YOUR MIND

FREE YOUR SPIRIT

how yoga can save lives

HEART ATTACKS, CANCER, PREMATURE AGING, AND THE BRAIN

history and principles of yoga

Patanjali and the Eight Limbs of Yoga

poetry

WHAT IS YOGA?

FOR A NEW BEGINNING

FOR A NEW BEGINNING

FOR A NEW BEGINNING

TO A POETIC PLACE OF RECOVERY

TO A POETIC PLACE OF RECOVERY

WELCOME TO MIND HEALTH YOGA WELLNESS STUDIO

Donation yoga

Why I teach Yoga

Focus

Personal Experience

Personal Experience

Personal Experience

Personal Experience

Personal Experience

Goals

Personal Experience

Goals

MOVE YOUR BODY

HEAL YOUR MIND

FREE YOUR SPIRIT

how yoga can save lives

HEART ATTACKS, CANCER, PREMATURE AGING, AND THE BRAIN

history and principles of yoga

Patanjali and the Eight Limbs of Yoga

poetry

WHAT IS YOGA?

FOR A NEW BEGINNING

FOR A NEW BEGINNING

FOR A NEW BEGINNING

TO A POETIC PLACE OF RECOVERY

TO A POETIC PLACE OF RECOVERY

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