Elemental Yoga Flows
meet your elemental body
I've shared an introduction to the elemental body in a previous blog post. In this post, I'd like to share a short lecture with more detail on your five bodies. Learning about the elemental body and building a relationship with the five elements can support your day-to-day life, and in developing a consistent and adaptable yoga practice.
This discussion took place at my retreat at the Circle Yoga Shala and some big news in my life is that starting this spring I will join the yoga teacher training team at 'the shala'. If you're interested in becoming a teacher you can get all the training details on the website. I would love to see you there!
This content is a small part of my foundations program that lays the groundwork for our time together. In my programs, you will learn the why behind the practices so you can understand how to adapt based on your changing needs.
If you're looking to get support in becoming more informed and intimate with not only your...
Earth + Water = Kapha
My hermit side loves winter, and this season has given us more reasons than ever to, as I put it lightly to my friends the other day, ‘stay the-fuck at home’.
As we move into year three of the pandemic I’m moving into ever deeper layers of nesting and homemaking. It is something new for me as this is the first house I’ve ever owned and the first time I’ve had so many legitimate excuses to stay at home for long stretches of time.
Although I’ve resisted it, this new at-home work-life rhythm suits me fine. I had really grown to love spending my days at my little yoga therapy studio space with my community but time at home has made space for a closer connection with fewer dedicated clients, more nourishment of my body, and different kinds of creativity.
One of the hobbies I’ve picked up over the pandemic is medicinal herbal oil infusions. The oils are for the face and nose or self-massage, all of which I highly recommend...
The Elemental Body
I teach from my life experiences in combination with a lot of techniques and methods. This ranges from performance training that I picked up in my college basketball days, to rehabilitation, injury prevention, and functional movement from a career as a strength coach, to meditating at ashrams in the Poconos and visiting shrines in India, to sitting in inquiry circles in the hills of Arkansas.
With there being such a variety of influences that you might even ask, what even makes this stuff yoga?
It is the vision of health and the promises of freedom and fulfillment that make it yoga. What I’m striving to teach is more than a random batch of movement or mindfulness practices. It is a detailed, personalized, and progressive course of yoga sadhana. That takes on a life of its own, through you.
“Sadhana is the discipline of skillfully applying mind and intelligence as a means of being liberated from ignorance.” - Matthew Krepps
Yoga is at the core of what I do...
Liminality & Retreat
Liminality speaks to the times of transition, the space between. It could be transitions of day, the season, a job, or the space between who we are now and who we are becoming.
I first fell in love with liminality in the early mornings at the retreat center that I worked for and lived at. In the mornings before dawn, many people gathered for meditation and prayer. Everyone respected the silence of those mornings and we would walk through shadowy halls to get our morning tea then head to the meditation hall to chant and ‘sit’. I got to know everyone’s profiles, their shadowy outlines. This represented to me the shadow self that we are learning to integrate through bringing the conscious attention of practice to the liminal spaces of our life.
This ritual of the liminal happened at the transition of the day, every day, and it became the stabilizing force in my life for a time and now my love affair with the liminal continues on. It takes the shape of simple...
Don't know what you want?
How you can know what you truly want vs your self-defeating tendencies from the past? It's so tricky and hard to know! This is why I'm so excited to share a practice that for me cut right to the heart of why we practice by asking me... What is it you actually want?
This practice is great to do as a way to connect with your deepest soul-level desire. Finding from the inside your own vision for what is possible for your life and the collective. Your connection to your own heart will deepen with this practice over time, stay with it for a bit.
Start this weekend and try to practice for 30 days to experience a deeper connection to your imagination, access to creative solutions, and a deeper sense of inner knowing.
Tune in with this practice as a midday rest or as your transition from work life to home life. Write a few words in your journal about your experience each time you practice. You can download it here for regular use or save my SoundCloud playlist.
ENJOY...
