In the times of my greatest struggles yoga has been my dearest friend, intertwining its warm and gentle hands as I have breathed and hiked, foot by foot, along the rocky, uphill path back to myself and life’s purpose for my soul.

I did watch Richard Hittelman on TV when I was five, and later Lilias Folan, but my first real class was at Integral Yoga in NYC in 1978. I could only afford to go several times but the book I acquired at their center was my constant buddy for the next four years. Then I discovered Swami Shantanand at Wainwright House in Rye, NY, where I was a devoted student for a couple of years just prior to beginning my four decades-long adventure of study at Kripalu.

The inner exploration of yoga I began back then was an island shelter of balanced power for me and started with the Hatha postures encouraging my body to express a sense of wholeness and wholesomeness that was largely absent from my dysfunctional family of origin. I could feel connected to a strength of purity and goodness, a power greater than myself as I embodied Mountain, Tree, Eagle, Dancer, Boat, Bow, Bridge, Wheel, and bowed my head to my heart in Yoga Mudra and Head to Knee. The Shavasana, or Corpse, pose and deep relaxation I often experienced at the end of practice allowed me to have a few anxiety-free moments before returning to my battle with the aftermaths of childhood abuse. There was a much-needed first chakra (energy center at the pelvic base) healing beginning in my early practice, including grounding, security, and reclaiming the sacredness of my body.  

Every time I practiced yoga some energy shifted in the direction of health and wellness. Even way back then I was bringing the spirit of these magnificent archetypes such as the steadiness and perceptual expanse of Mountain to the overwhelming chaos of my fear, left over from my childhood and evoked by my precarious financial life as a young massage therapist beginning my practice. I wouldn’t have been able to describe it as such back then, but the Spirit in each posture offered up a particular strength or virtue. I could receive the grace of this when I held the posture and let the energy resonate, immersing in sensation. When I released the posture, they were still with me somehow, somewhere inside, a Mountain (stability), Tree (balance), Warrior (courage), etc. 

When I came to understand, through therapy and the women’s movement, that I had survived sexual abuse and my nervous system symptoms were related to that and not some harshly judged inherent flaw or genetic mental illness, I had a period of flooding with tremendous grief. 

For the first time at age 23, I was compelled to begin every day with an hour-long practice so I could hold this strong wave of emotion that I awakened with each morning. Mats weren’t common yet so I would lie on my towel, engage with my beloved postures and cry. There were also deep emotions of shame that emerged that I had to process, realizing that perhaps the shame was not mine, as it was also becoming known that the culture most frequently blamed the victims in these situations. The shame might rather belong to the people that had violated me. Nevertheless, it had to be felt and released from my being and the postures supported me greatly in holding the process of discharging it. During this time, I developed acne on my face, perhaps my body releasing this shame and the toxins that were dumped on me. I engaged in healing practices including psychotherapy, massage, chiropractic, support groups, shamanic work, etc. My skin healed over time. The postures also became preparation for meditation. Swami taught me that I am the Shining Star of Awareness and Compassion, that dwells between my eyebrows, Ajna Chakra, and this truth allowed me an identity beyond the me who was traumatized. This was a great sixth chakra healing. There were moments in these meditations that I felt a part of Mother Earth and the Heavens, in bliss. 

Another time I went very deeply into my practice was 10 years later, to prepare for childbirth. There were very few prenatal classes in 1994 and none that were local to me or at a doable time. I embraced the Goddess as an archetype to hold my pregnancy and childbirth. This posture and my growing relationship to the Goddess were healing for my second (pelvic bowl/emotion/reproduction), third (solar plexus/power) and fourth (heart/love) chakras, which had been wounded by abuse. I developed my own daily prenatal practice based upon encouraging comfort in my ever-changing body and to address what I knew would need support in happening during birth. I focused on breathing techniques to release tension so my worrying mind could get out of the way and let my body do what it had the natural wisdom to do. I focused on stretching around my pelvis which had been tight since I was a child. Open-hearted Warrior postures helped me build strength while allowing my pelvic floor to relax for the passage of my baby. I was able to have a beautiful natural birth, very healing for a woman with my history. 

In the 30 years of my daughter’s life, I have taken many deep dives into my practice, including during my divorce from her dad when I embraced Vinyasa and the power of flowing from one posture to the next, to move through life and express (5^th chakra) flexibility in the archetypes I embodied with my changing roles as I breathe. Through health issues and battles for accommodations for my daughter’s different abilities I have had to be a strong Warrior at times, a Triangle of strength, the Tree she returns to, and the Eagle that supports the young bird in leaving the nest when she is ready.  

In this workshop I hope to share my love of this ancient art and science and how we may all be supported by our Inner Guru, the dispeller of ignorance, as we embrace our multifaceted, archetypal, balanced magnificence through the power of our creative movements and multisensory imaginations, on our sacred journey. 

Beginnings 

I first started studying with an Iyengar teacher (Mary Dunn) in New York City in 1985. At that time I was a struggling musician drawn to yoga mainly by its philosophical roots. I had been going to classes where a very different style of yoga was taught and no concrete instructions were given. Everyone just followed the teacher as best they could and no one was  corrected.  

When I began studying with Mary Dunn I had also begun conducting  yoga classes of my own. I was thirty-four years old and those who attended my classes were very similar to me—athletic women in their twenties and  thirties. My classes had no older people, no people with injuries, no “couch  potatoes,” and very few men. They were young, female, physically fit, and full of energy. 

Right away I noticed that my Iyengar teacher’s classes were filled with a much wider range of students. Seventy-year-old women who had never done much in the way of exercise were practicing right alongside professional dancers! Office workers who sat at desks all day, weight lifters, marathon runners, retired seniors, people of varying ages and lifestyles  from all walks of life—all attended the same class. There were people with knee injuries and various hip, shoulder, neck, and chronic back problems. Under Mary’s guidance they practiced side by side and returned week after week, month after month, each improving at their own pace. Over time I witnessed their, and my own, transformation. We changed! Stiff people  became more flexible. Flexible people gained strength. Older women learned to stand on their heads for five to ten minutes at a time. 

I realized that my own teaching was missing something. My classes for some reason attracted only a small segment of the general population—as if they were all clones of me! The majority were excluded.  

How do we make yoga accessible to everyone?  

Forty years later, to this very day and in spite of its popularity, when the subject of yoga comes up in general conversation, “I can’t do yoga” remains a common remark. The idea that you must be young, female, and flexible to “do” yoga has taken a firm hold in the mind of the public, aided and abetted by advertising and the media in general. A multimillion dollar branch of the clothing industry has arisen which exploits this notion as the central premise of their advertising. “Normal” people do not show up in their ads. Instead we have slender fashion models advertising “yoga clothes” to convince a young, female public that they actually need these garments to practice yoga. 

Given this reality, when so many are afraid to even attempt a yoga class, is it enough to say “Beginners welcome!”? When the actual teaching  addresses the real needs of everyday people, then yes, it becomes a perfectly true thing to say.  

How do we teach the general population? Older people? Stiff people? Flexible people? What is the difference between teaching a flexible student and a stiff one? What does each student have to learn in order to transform? How do we teach all of these different people in the same class and at the same time?  

Yoga should heal, not harm—Ahimsa 

Is it enough to tell a student with an injury to “be gentle,” “don’t work too hard,” or even “don’t do this pose”? Should we tell them to come back when their injury has gone away? Or can we give them a way of working on an asana so that they may practice it safely, without pain, allowing the injury to heal and the student to keep up with the class?  

And what about the student who says they were injured by practicing yoga in the first place? No teacher wants to hear that! No matter how much we exhort our students to be gentle and no matter how gently we speak to  them, if they are repeatedly practicing with a misalignment they may invite injury where there was none to begin with.  

Is it possible for a student with an injury to practice safely and deeply at the same time? 

B.K.S. Iyengar passionately believed that yoga should be for everyone. He believed that the practice of asana should be safe and transformative and he made it his life’s work to bequeath us a system that would do just that. 

His method, developed over 70 years of practice and teaching, focuses on precise anatomical alignment of the musculoskeletal system and he invented props to allow people to achieve that precision when it is  otherwise unattainable. This attention to detail helps the practitioner to work  safely and allows the body to gradually transform. Everyone improves at  their own pace, individual help is given as needed, and all start right from where they are. No one is excluded.  

The four foundations of teaching 

There are four main cornerstones of teaching the Iyengar method to beginners (including yoga practitioners/teachers from other traditions):  

1. Demonstration: The teacher names the pose and demonstrates it to the class.  
2. Instruction: The teacher gives step-by-step instructions to the class as they do the pose. 
3. Observation: As the teacher instructs, she/he watches the students perform the pose.  
4. Correction: Based upon his/her observation of the students performance, the teacher gives corrections and has the students repeat the pose. 

The above applies to teaching just about anything that is method based, from learning to drive a car to learning to play a musical instrument.  

I am grateful for the honor of teaching this upcoming workshop! I have raised many questions in this article which I will address in class. I hope to give students a taste of Iyengar yoga that will make them want to  delve more deeply into the subject.  

Sarveṣāṁ Svāgatam. Everyone welcome!

Our breath is a necessity for survival, yet most people hardly ever think about their breathing in their daily life. What if I told you your breath is the key to healing stress, trauma, insomnia, relationship, and work issues and even chronic physical pain that is caused by tension. 

Trauma is really the root cause, and no trauma is too big or too small to address. The definition of trauma is something that occurred that was too much, too fast, too soon for our nervous system to process in the moment. 

I found my way to breathwork during the most challenging time of my life, losing my husband of 20 years and the father of my three daughters, suddenly, unexpectedly, traumatically. My world as I knew it fell apart. After a few months there was a moment where I knew I had to take healing into my own hands or as I was about to discover, my own breath. 

Conscious connected breathwork became the tool to clear a lot of the debilitating grief and trauma from my nervous system and actually begin to enjoy life again. Somatic breathwork is another name often used as this healing modality recognizes that our past lives in our body (Soma) and needs to be cleared from that place. 

Though I adored my talk therapist and benefited greatly from the support initially, what I realized was you cannot think your way out of a trauma response. Cognitive approaches alone don’t work for triggers that activate your amygdala and brain stem—the survival part of the brain. Triggers can show up as fight, flight (avoidance),  freeze (dissociation), or fawn (people pleasing), and many people feel unable to change any of these deeply ingrained patterns. Triggers are experiences that activate the past, that which was never resolved. 

In cases of PTSD, the nervous system is so activated that it’s impossible to down-regulate and feel safe; the person is essentially frozen or looping in the past. This happens when we’re carrying unprocessed stress, tension, and emotions—when we’ve been unable to fully digest past experiences. The energy and emotion that was meant to move through us gets frozen creating density, stagnation, and disconnection. We get disconnected from the free authentic, expressive version of ourselves. This is where our breath becomes the medicine we so desperately need. 

Our breath is the bridge between our conscious and subconscious mind. During breathwork we get access to the subconscious to clear out these old energies and emotions and can begin to rewrite the story. We can start to feel safe in our body again.

Part of the healing occurs in the coregulation of nervous systems because most trauma (if not all) is created between humans beings— what was done or at times what wasn’t provided for someone to feel safe and seen. 

Good facilitation is about witnessing and listening and giving up the need to control or fix the outcome. Holding space is allowing somebody else to take up space and to allow for the energetic release to be completed and essentially close the trauma loop. We say the session begins when the session ends, during the breathwork session we oftentimes experience insights and revelations that we need to integrate after. It can bring clarity to how we want to move forward in our lives and live in a more aligned way.

Over time as we integrate these breathwork experiences our lives can shift in a new, more fulfilling direction, and we can see ourselves as creators and no longer victims of our circumstances. We become liberated through our own breath. 

When healed, our greatest challenges can be what propel us forward and into our purpose, if we get access to the right modality to heal our core wounds. I’m so incredibly grateful to have found the healing power of conscious connected breath and to share it with others. This is why I recently created Somawave breathwork school, a heart centered, somatic breathwork method for modern healers, coaches, therapists, and wellness practitioners, to help support facilitators who want to learn to guide other humans back to themselves. 

Healing happens in the presence of an empathetic witness.

—Bessel Van Der Kolk

Learn more at breathewithjulia.com.

 “My destiny is in my own hands.” — Mary Burmeister

Jin Shin Jyutsu (JSJ) is an ancient Japanese hands-on healing art that translates as “The Art of the Creator through the Compassionate Person.” Passed down through generations, JSJ harmonizes the body’s life force energy and is believed to be the precursor to Chinese acupuncture, sharing a similar physiophilosophy of wellness and energetic balance.

Just as yoga works with prana, chakras, and nadis, JSJ works with 26 Safety Energy Locks (SELs)—energetic vortexes along energetic pathways in the body that help regulate flow and harmony. Both traditions invite awareness of breath, energy, and alignment to connect body, mind, and spirit with Source.

• JSJ balances energy through gentle touch on specific areas.
• Yoga balances energy through breath and mindful movement. 
• Both bring us into harmony with life itself.

How JSJ Works

In JSJ self-help practice, we place our hands on combinations of SELs in response to our body’s needs. This simple “jumper-cabling” of energy pathways can help release blockages caused by stress, illness, injury, or emotional strain—restoring ease and vitality. For example, to ease general arthritis or stiffness:

• Place your left fingertips in the outside crook of your inner right elbow. 
• Bend your elbow and rest your right fingertips on your right shoulder. 
• Drop your shoulders, relax, and breathe for two–five minutes.  
• As you begin to feel a gentle pulsing or streaming sensation under both hands, your body’s life force — prana — is moving into harmony.

JSJ can support a wide range of concerns including anxiety, depression, grief, pain, insomnia, migraines, mobility issues, nausea, tinnitus, and recovery from injury. It is also used in hospital and clinical settings to ease anxiety, pain, and nausea for pre- and post-surgical patients.

Experience It for Yourself

Join me to explore and experience The Art of Jin Shin Jyutsu and how it can be beautifully integrated into a yoga practice. Learn simple, powerful self-help tools to enhance your own well-being and that of your students — a true meeting of two ancient healing paths with one shared Source.

Learn more at www.juliannedow.com.

There’s a lot of talk about the vagus nerve, but what is the vagus nerve exactly? How do you influence it to help your vagus nerve work better? 

What is the vagus nerve? 

The word vagus means vagabond —travels all around. 

The vagus nerve is the primary nerve of your parasympathetic nervous system, the part of your nervous system responsible for relaxation. It originates in the center of your brain and travels to every organ in your body sending information back and forth between your brain and organs.  

When you are stressed and anxious, your organs are affected. But the vagus nerve cannot take action to calm your system, it can only transmit information between your organs and your brain and back to your organs. 

This is where you as a yoga practitioner comes in! Because it is what you do, or do not do that activates the vagus nerve and calms your entire system. 

You know that you can be quite stressed and practice yoga and teach yoga, and feel your entire system shift. Breathing and moving are two of the things that activate the vagus nerve. 

Things that activate the vagus nerve: 

• Deep breathing 
• Stretching combined with breathing 
• Singing 

All things you do in your own yoga practice! Yoga is already helping your vagus nerve! 

In my Vagus Nerve Embodiment workshop, you will get a picture of the vagus nerve and learn three simple embodiment exercises to activate it. You’ll leave the workshop empowered with a clearer understanding of what the vagus nerve is, how it works, how to feel and identify the effects of your vagus nerve, how to activate your vagus nerve, as well as a relaxed and happy feeling. 

Would you like to start your vagus nerve experience early? Your vagus nerve connects to your stomach. One of my favorite practices that calms my stomach and activates a sense of calm and fulfillment while eating is breathing while eating! I take a bite of food and consciously breathe while chewing the food. I recently started practicing with drinking—I hold the liquid in my mouth and breathe before swallowing. 

Breathing while eating and drinking calms my stomach so I feel the food when it arrives to my stomach instead of later when I often feel a bit too full. As a result, I have lost weight without trying! The hardest part of breathing while eating is remembering! 

I look forward to exploring and experiencing the vagus nerve with you on December 13.

If you’ve ever heard someone say, “Yoga is the best thing for back pain,” you’ve also probably met someone who ended up feeling worse from it.

Here’s the truth: yoga is a powerful practice, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all cure for back pain. And yet, that myth keeps circulating, leaving both yoga teachers and yoga students confused about what’s actually safe, effective, and sustainable for various back issues.

If you’re a yoga teacher, you’ve almost certainly had that moment when a student whispers, “My back hurts… what should I do?” 

The question hangs in the air like a test. 

Do you tell them to skip forward folds? Avoid twists? 

Or do you cross your fingers, cue the pose anyway, and hope it helps instead of harms?

If you’ve ever felt uncertain in those moments, you’re not alone. This is exactly why the Yoga Teachers Association of Hudson Valley is hosting Retrain Back Pain for Yoga on October 11th.

This workshop is about retraining how we can better manage back pain in the yoga space, so that teachers can lead with more confidence, and practitioners can move with less fear.

Why Yoga Isn’t Always the Answer (and Sometimes the Problem)

Let’s bust the myth head-on: yoga, by itself, doesn’t automatically heal back pain.

Yoga can build strength, improve flexibility, and reduce stress, all of which are important pieces of the back-pain puzzle. But if you’ve ever pushed yourself into a deep twist, a long yin hold, or an Instagram-worthy backbend only to feel your pain flare later, you already know: yoga done the wrong way can backfire.

The truth is, not all yoga poses (or breathing techniques) are back-friendly. Some can be downright provocative to an irritated spine or an already stressed nervous system. 

The “deeper is better” mindset that often sneaks into yoga culture? It’s actually the exact opposite of what back-pained bodies need.

That’s where retraining comes in.

What You’ll Learn in This Workshop

In Retrain Back Pain for Yoga, we’ll cut through the myths and focus on what actually works for both teachers and practitioners alike. Here’s a taste of what’s on the mat:

• Breathing that soothes instead of triggers. Not every pranayama technique is spine-friendly. You’ll learn which breathing methods regulate the nervous system and support healing instead of cranking up pain.
• Safer strategies for common poses. Backbends, binds, deep twists, yin, all can feel amazing or aggravating, depending on how they’re taught. You’ll learn how to adapt and cue these postures so they’re safe for every back in the room.
• The missing pieces yoga alone doesn’t cover. We’ll explore what yoga doesn’t always address—like how pain actually works in the body, why “stretching more” isn’t always the answer, and how strength, balance, nutrition, age, sex, bone health, and nervous system regulation all come into play.
• How pain really works. Pain isn’t just in your muscles, it also involves your brain and nervous system. Understanding this makes you a better teacher and a smarter practitioner.

Who This Workshop Is For

This isn’t just a workshop for “people with back pain” (although if that’s you, you’ll get a ton out of it).

Whether you’re a yoga teacher who wants to confidently support students with back pain or a yoga practitioner looking for ways to move without flaring your symptoms, this workshop will give you practical tools you can use immediately.

Yoga can be part of the solution for back pain, but only when it’s taught and practiced with nuance, safety, and rooted in a smart, anatomical context of movement and injury prevention.

Why This Matters Now

Back pain isn’t rare. It’s the #1 musculoskeletal complaint in the world, and it shows up in yoga studios everywhere. 

Which means if you’re teaching yoga, you’re already teaching back-pained populations even if your students don’t say anything.

The more we can grow beyond persistent myths in favor of smarter, safer practices, the more accessible and effective yoga becomes.

In today’s overstimulated and fast-paced world, nervous system health is more important than ever. Chronic stress, constant digital connectivity, and an unrelenting pace of life push our bodies and minds beyond their natural rhythms. Many of us are living in a state of chronic sympathetic overdrive—often referred to as “fight or flight”—without enough time or space to engage the body’s restorative systems. Fortunately, yoga offers a time-tested, scientifically supported path to rebalance the nervous system, promoting resilience, vitality, and overall well-being.

Understanding the Nervous System

The nervous system is our internal communication network. It has two main branches: the central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and the peripheral nervous system, which includes the autonomic nervous system (ANS). The ANS regulates involuntary functions such as heart rate, digestion, respiratory rate, and hormonal secretions. It consists of two primary branches:

• The sympathetic nervous system (SNS), which mobilizes the body for action (“fight, flight, or freeze”)
• The parasympathetic nervous system (PNS), which supports rest, digestion, and recovery (“rest, digest, integrate, and heal”).

Health depends on a dynamic balance between these two systems. Yoga supports this balance by promoting parasympathetic activation and increasing nervous system flexibility—our ability to shift between these states smoothly and appropriately.

Yoga as Nervous System Medicine

Yoga is more than stretching or exercise; it is a holistic system that integrates movement (asana), breath regulation (pranayama), relaxation and sense withdrawal  (pratyahara), and meditation (dhyana). Each of these components plays a powerful role in calming the nervous system and enhancing self-regulation.

1. Asana
   Physical movement helps discharge excess energy, release muscular tension, and stimulate vagal tone—a key marker of parasympathetic activity. Gentle, mindful movement also re-establishes a felt sense of safety in the body, crucial for those recovering from chronic stress or trauma and helping to reduce anxiety and depression.
   
   
2. Pranayama
   Breath is one of the most accessible and immediate tools we have to influence the nervous system. Slowing and lengthening the exhale, for instance, directly stimulates the vagus nerve, shifting us toward parasympathetic dominance. Techniques such as nadi shodhana (alternate nostril breathing) and ujjayi (aspirated breath) have been shown to lower blood pressure, heart rate, and cortisol levels.
   
   
3. Pratyahara
   Guided relaxation and the process of sense withdrawal brings a deep state of restfulness so we can heal. It is the combination of resting the body fully, relaxed diaphragmatic breathing, and training the mind to focus awareness in the body. Consequently, this practice can induce a hypnagogic state between wakefulness and sleep. The balance this practice has on the nervous system positively affects every organ and organ system.
   
   
4. Meditation and Mindfulness
   Meditation enhances the awareness of internal body states and as a consequence allows us to recognize signs of stress and unhealthy habits. Regular mindfulness practice has been shown to increase gray matter density in the prefrontal cortex and decrease activity in the amygdala—the brain’s alarm center. This translates to greater emotional regulation and a more responsive, less reactive nervous system.

The Role of the Vagus Nerve

A central player in nervous system health is the vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve in the body. It connects the brainstem to the heart, lungs, and digestive tract. A well-toned vagus nerve improves digestion, reduces inflammation, and supports emotional regulation. Practices that stimulate vagal tone include humming, chanting, slow breathing, social engagement, and cold exposure—all of which are naturally woven into the yogic tradition.

Polyvagal Theory and Yoga

Contemporary neuroscience, particularly Polyvagal Theory developed by Dr. Stephen Porges, provides a framework to understand how yoga affects the nervous system. According to this theory, safety, connection, and coregulation are essential to healing. Yoga fosters this through the use of community (sangha), attuned instruction, and embodied presence. Group classes, even when done in silence, generate a shared field of safety and regulation.

Conclusion: From Survival to Thriving

In a culture dominated by performance and productivity, the invitation of yoga is radical: to slow down, breathe deeply, and listen within. As we practice yoga with an understanding of the nervous system, we move from mere stress management to nervous system literacy—developing the capacity to notice, respond, and restore balance from the inside out.

A healthy nervous system doesn’t mean we’re always calm or peaceful—it means we’re adaptable, resilient, and present. With regular practice, yoga becomes a daily act of rewiring our inner circuitry for connection, vitality, and wholeness. 

I look forward to sharing space and practicing with all of you!

For more info, go to LukeKetterhagen.com.

As soon as I struck a large Tibetan singing bowl that was sitting on my chest, I thought, “I had died and gone to heaven.” It was so relaxing, strangely comforting, and magical. That was my initiation into sound healing with bronze bowls. I was hooked. From that moment on all I wanted to do was invite everyone I met to experience that feeling of a vibrating metal bowl on their chest. It’s why I do sound baths and teach anyone interested how to play the sound bowls.

My path to Tibetan/Himalayan singing bowls is a long and winding road.

It all started when my childhood bouts of eczema became worse in my adolescent years. I was given cortisone cream by my dermatologist when both my hands became very broken out. Miraculously that did the trick. The rashes were tamed as long as I used the cream regularly. Many years later, as I was battling persistent bronchitis, a friend said, “You have been getting worse and worse cases of bronchitis each year. I suspect the cortisone cream is having a harmful effect on your immune system.” I realized that since first using the cream I had become allergic to cats as well as tree and grass pollen. I felt like I was always on the verge of getting sick. I also began having breathing difficulties and was diagnosed with asthma. So the next day I totally stopped using cortisone cream. 

What happened next was a total surprise. My whole body broke out in rashes, from my head to my toes. Every morning when I awoke I had to take off my sheets, shake all the dry skin out of them, and wash them. I kept my entire body covered and wore hats so no one would see my rashes. I was a nervous wreck, itching and scratching constantly. My daily Iyengar yoga practice was the first thing that relieved my nervous system enough to allow me to get through the day. I gave up eating sugar and white flour products. I was introduced to energy medicine. Reiki helped calm my body. I continued on my healing path becoming a certified Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioner, licensed massage therapist, craniosacral therapist, and auric field healer among many other things.

One day a fellow therapist said, “I’m going to study sound healing. Does anyone want to do it with me?’ I had no idea what sound healing was but I said, “I’ll do it.” And that’s how it all started. Sage Center’s first year-long sound healing class was created for our group of eight Jin Shin Jyutsu practitioners. During the class a fellow student said she was studying with a man from India who taught Tibetan singing bowls and thought I would like it. I signed up for his next certification class and, as I put that first metal bowl on my body and played it, I was smitten. I now play sound baths on a regular basis and have been certifying students as a teacher/trainer for the International Academy of Sound Healing since 2015.

Besides learning a variety of techniques and healing protocols, I learned that in order for the body to heal the subconscious mind has to be onboard with the healing to restore health. One is able to access the subconscious mind (delta and theta brainwaves) in deep meditation and deep sleep. Delta waves are linked to deep, dreamless sleep and restorative healing. Theta waves are related to deeper relaxation and inward focus. 

Playing my Tibetan singing bowls brings me to the most relaxed and healing place. This practice has calmed my nervous system and helped alleviate my eczema symptoms. These bowls were able to make sounds that restored healthy vibratory frequencies to my body, bringing body, mind, and spirit back into balance. This healing effect happens when our brain waves synchronize with the tones of the bowls. This is called entrainment. As this occurs, the parasympathetic nervous system is activated. The heart slows down, blood pressure lowers, the eye’s pupil size decreases, blood vessels dilate, digestive juices increase, muscles in the gastrointestinal tract relax, and the whole body begins to go into deep relaxation. 

Michelle’s Sound Healing World workshop will introduce you to Sound Healing with Tibetan singing bowls. 

Learn more about Michelle at sonicbowls.com.

When putting together my workshop, I, of course, had to limit what its context would be because of the time constraint. However, so many thoughts and feelings inspired by my yoga practice came through.

Looking back, my earliest connection to yoga was all about improving my physical expertise for performing in dance. It proved to be a physical resource, but it subtly became so much more. The path of my thinking and feeling also shifted without my awareness. As I matured, along with familial and work obligations and responsibilities, I noticed a difference in the way I functioned. A beloved yoga teacher’s advice was, “If you don’t know what to do, do an opposite and you’ll get a different response and directive.” 

Even though I was satisfied with this growth and consciousness, I also studied the latest western body–mind modalities: ideokinesis, polarity, bioenergetics, and continuum, to validate my deep love and respect for yoga and its benefits.

Yoga is! It cannot be categorized. It is an art, a science, a way of life, and an extensive comprehensive system able to lead one to the source of their own inner light and joy. The state of being happy is an innate part of life that is elusive most of the time because of the difficulties and challenges that this life presents. The practice of yoga offers us the way and means to connect with our own light and joy, and its philosophies show us how unhappiness is optional. Human frailties can be strengthened when we face our fears, make our own choices and decisions, and, with conscious awareness, practice appreciation and self-acceptance and recognize the importance of autonomy for our maturation. We learn from our experiences, whether they are good or bad ones, how we must adapt and adjust.

Yoga has been in existence for thousands of years, developed and refined by the practice of those who were aware of—and closely devoted to—the source of pure cosmic conscious energy. It was very long ago when the intrusions and distractions of life were minimal, and these cosmic connections led them to the direct experience of the energy of pure presence. This was their tutelage and instruction, and today we are able to employ the phenomenon of those teachings through our practice of yoga.

The age old questions “Why am I here? and “Where am I going?” often provoke deep thought when on the path to the higher energies. As a long-term teacher of dance, movement arts, and yoga, my curiosity about these questions is continually arising, leading to awareness on many levels that come from the knowledge contained within the moving body. These are but minute segments of many different aspects in the various depths within that open us to the answers we seek, even as we learn the body’s language, when the technique of communicating is in the form of sensation (pain) or unease (dis-ease). I hope to lead the practice to the deepest places within to discover the highest sources of consciousness and the rich wisdom we possess, enabling us to grow and reach for the light with trusted support from our very own being.

Doing an ongoing practice and increasing my connection to the principles and philosophies that arose as a result of this immersion has been a true blessing for me. I trust myself more, I am less fearful and I am more courageous, knowing that the tried and true wisdom is always available if you trust and seek it with your heart and soul—no ego! 

Open yourself to the delight and joy that is always present within. These experiences also added a richness to my teaching abilities, that is still evolving.

My workshop carries this intention and hopefully it will be a gift of inspiration for all.

I suppose that my path to yoga begins with my mother, before I even knew that yoga existed. As a kid, I remember sneaking into her room to look through her colorfully illustrated book about a beautiful blue man that was often depicted playing the flute. I later came to learn that the book was the Bhagavad Gita, and that the blue man was Krishna. My mother was a hippie-child in the 60s, and in addition to her revolutionary spirit she also shared lots of stories, wisdom, and insight with me from her explorations of Eastern spirituality. But it wasn’t until I moved to New York City in the mid-90s that I discovered the physical practice of yoga. 

After graduating from Gonzaga University in 1994 with a degree in theater, I spent about six months in London working as an office temp and auditioning and acting in various fringe productions. In 1995, I made the big decision to move to New York to pursue acting. While on the one hand it was amazing to be following my heart, it was also very stressful! Acting classes and headshots were expensive, and no sooner then I’d find a decent job to pay the bills I’d have to quit that job in order to take a part in a show. So it seemed as if I was always looking for work and often in fear of how I was going to pay the rent. Looking for an antidote to the stress, I started spending time in the self-help section at Barnes & Noble, where I’d sit on the floor and read the books right there because I couldn’t afford to buy them. One day, I ventured a little beyond the self-help section and discovered a super small section of books under the category of “Yoga and Tai Chi.” There were only a handful of books there at the time, but one of them changed the course of my life completely.

Yoga: The Spirit and Practice of Moving into Stillness, by Erich Schiffmann, was the first book that I ever read about yoga. The words on those pages spoke to a long dormant aspect of my inner being. I resonated with everything Erich said, and knew that I’d just discovered my new path. I started asking everyone I knew if they’d heard about yoga. Remember, this was before the age of the Internet so I couldn’t just do a simple Google search. But eventually I found someone that practiced yoga, and she recommended the Integral Yoga Institute (IYI) on West 13th Street. I started taking classes there regularly and fell in love with the practice. I became a vegetarian, gave up smoking and drinking, and did my best to live a yogic lifestyle. I attended teacher training at the IYI in the Fall of 1998, and started teaching at the IYI in January of 1999. 

After graduating from IYI’s teacher training, I was hungry to learn more about yoga from different teachers so I started exploring other practices. I took classes at the Sivananda Institute, Jivamukti, the Iyengar Institute, and at OM Yoga Studio. I really resonated with the alignment-informed, slow-paced vinyasa style at OM Yoga (Cyndi Lee), and found myself practicing there more and more. I eventually enrolled in The Road to OM teacher training with Cyndi Lee and began teaching at OM Yoga in 2000. Shortly after that I traveled to the West Coast to attend a 2-week teacher training intensive with Erich Schiffmann, and it felt amazing to finally study with the teacher whose book so radically changed my life. 

In 2002, I enrolled in the Swedish Institute of Massage Therapy. While I was initially only interested in learning more about the body in order to become a better yoga teacher, I ended up completing the entire curriculum and become a licensed massage therapist in early 2006. It was during my massage studies at the Swedish Institute that I discovered a passion for the study of functional anatomy. Believing that you teach what you want to learn, I started offering a series of anatomy courses for my yoga teacher colleagues that eventually became known as “Anatomy Studies for Yoga Teachers (ASFYT).” I taught the series using a couple of fantastic books by Joseph Muscolino, entitled Kinesiology: The Skeletal System and Muscle Function and The Muscular System Manual. Both of these books went far beyond what I’d learned at the Swedish Institute, and teaching from them took my own knowledge of human movement to new heights. 

In 2008, I trademarked my own style of yoga called Zenyasa, which is essentially a slow-flow yoga practice that incorporates elements of Zen Buddhism, functional strength and conditioning, Tai Chi, and moderately paced vinyasa yoga. I opened the Zenyasa Yoga & Wellness Studio in 2010, where I and others offered Zenyasa classes, the ASFYT Series, Zenyasa teaching training programs, and therapeutic massage services. Sadly, we recently lost the lease on our little yoga haven, but I have plans to continue offering the ASFYT Series and Zenyasa programs in the months and years to come. In the meantime, I continue to offer private yoga and therapeutic massage services in upper Manhattan, Yonkers, lower Westchester, and at my home in Riverdale. The journey continues 

Learn more at jasonraybrown.com.