In 1999, I had been practicing yoga for something like seven years. I was working a day job I didn't really like, and one day I saw a sign in the yoga studio where I was practicing (Om Yoga in Manhattan) that said "teacher training." I thought to myself, “That sounds interesting. What a nice way to deepen my practice.” So that's how I became a yoga teacher. It felt like a natural extension of my yoga practice—like I had to teach.

A few years before I was certified, I taught movement classes at a summer program at Northwestern University. I incorporated yoga into those classes, and it worked. Earlier, when I was in college at NYU, my movement teachers were incorporating yoga too, because they were all going to the same yoga studio, Jivamukti, on Second Avenue, where I was going. I followed their lead, and then I started teaching my friends. So I was teaching informally even before I got my certification.

My first real teaching job was in Forest Hills, Queens, in a continuing education program. There were about 30 people in the class; I traveled all the way there, I made nothing, nobody had the right props, but I taught. Then I taught at yoga studios in Manhattan and Brooklyn. I taught everywhere I could, as much as I could, sometimes as many as 20 classes a week. That was it. That's how you get good. Sometimes I feel like an idiot savant, born to teach yoga, but still you have to practice, practice, practice. Pattabhi Jois said, "Practice and all will come." Keep practicing and you will find out what you're doing, why you're doing it. 

But the more I practice and try to perfect a pose, the more I realize that the practice is not so much about the pose but about what comes up in my attempt to do it. My perfection may not be a physical perfection but a perfection of understanding how to act in an effortless way, to do an action without a need for the outcome to be a particular thing. The Bhagavad Gita says: “Perform without worrying about the outcome.”

What comes up for me in my practice are the same things I see in my students. I get frustrated, angry, doubtful, self-conscious, and competitive. I feel all of those things and that's helpful, because when I get on the New York City subway, all those emotions are going to come up in me. If I have really incorporated my practice on the mat into the whole of my life, it won't be so bad because I will have already dealt with it in the privacy of my microcosmic universe of yoga practice. So I can say, "Give me my frustration, give me my anger, give me everything that comes up with attempting to do something that is impossible." What happens when I try? Everything happens. So then, I learn what it's like to try and succeed, what it's like to try and not succeed—all of this with quotations around it. It's just like every other day. But when I try mindfully, it's an informed day, a more intentional day, I'm not just getting bashed around by advertising and the newspaper, I have a little bit more of a hold on the reins and I also know that eventually the reins are going to disappear. 

As you get older, you won't necessarily be able to do the same poses anymore. One of my friends, a beautiful yoga teacher, came to my class recently and said, "You know, I'm aging and I feel it. I can't do the poses that I used to do, and I need to be in a class where that's going to be okay." She was looking for a place where she could be with the group but be left alone when she needed to be left alone. It's the same situation we're all dealing with, which is that we're all getting older at the same rate. And this is not so dreadful. This is one of the recognitions that are probably going to set us free.

I think the practice gives you the route to how much effort is correct. And I believe that we all go through times of too much effort and times of too little effort. And we all have to go through that to find a place of balanced effort. I've had people tell me that they've taken two months off and they feel slothful, but maybe those two months will be the best of their life for their practice. Maybe it was too much, practicing for months or years, on the same schedule. You may learn so much from the two months off than you would have had if you just kept going. Every day is different. Some days we feel like a gazelle. Some days we're a bull in a china shop. With practices where the poses are always the same—such as Bikram or Ashtanga vinyasa yoga practice—maybe it's easier to tell what's going on with your body, what kind of day you're having. It may be a bit trickier for us who want to create new sequences from day to day.

But either way, it makes you feel alive. If you forget you're alive, do Warrior II for 10 minutes. If you start to fall asleep, metaphorically, yoga wakes you up. It sparks this life, helps us to see, “Wow, look at this body that I have.” And then, the practice is so deep that we say, “Wow, what about this yoga, and this philosophy and psychology?”

Starting yoga is like a baby tasting ice cream for the first time, we're so astonished—wow, that feeling, that taste. Doing yoga is like that. It brings out that innocent quality in us—even in the toughest cases, the most unhappy people, feel lighter. No matter what age you come into it, you understand that there's much to discover.

Adapted from an interview with the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education.

Find more about Carla at jayayogacenter.com or on Instagram.

Smile, breathe and go slowly.
~Thich Nhat Hanh

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh’s simple, direct guidance for meditation–for life, really–has shed light on the path from my introduction to yoga to the present.

That introduction came in 2000, a transitional year in my life for which I was seeking solace, peace, and meaning. In other words, I needed to breathe and go slowly. What began as a way to shift my energy and find solid ground has evolved into a holistic lifestyle.

I started practicing by watching Rodney Yee on VHS tapes in my living room. I moved through periods of Bikram and Iyengar practices in studios on both US coasts. Returning to Tucson, Arizona, where I grew up, I studied the Hatha yoga tradition in the lineage of Paramahansa Yogananda, earning my 200-hour certification to begin teaching in 2005, followed by a 100-hour mindfulness meditation training.

I found my yoga voice offering the Eight Limbs of Yoga at Mindful Yoga Studio in Tucson. I smiled, took a deep breath, and went slowly into entrepreneurship, opening Mindful Yoga just under 10 years ago as the only Latina-owned yoga refuge in Tucson.

Around the same time, I studied for and took the Buddhist precepts, adopting the Dharma name Shraddha, which in Sanskrit means deep trust and faith. Going from teaching at other studios to opening my own studio was, indeed, a leap of trust and faith.

The foundation of my yoga practice and teaching informs my studio and my teachers to offer a safe space for students to explore, heal, and transform their bodies and their lives. I guide students in a rhythm that allows them to move in harmony with their breath and to stay open to the moment. The focus is always on mindfully honoring the body and clearing the mind and heart for whatever comes along on the mat, and more important, off the mat.

As the Mindful Yoga Sangha grew over the years, so did my practice, my sense of confidence in my teaching ability, and a desire to expand into the larger realm of wellness. I undertook studying with teachers close to yoga’s origins, including Ganesh Mohan, a physician and Ayurvedic practitioner who directs Svastha Yoga Therapy and Teacher Training programs, and Saraswati Vasudevan, founder of YogaVahini training, therapy, and research center in Chennai, India. In 2016, I earned the 500-hour Healing Emphasis Yoga certification offered by Inner Vision Yoga in Phoenix, Arizona, and began specializing in yoga for cancer survivors, for first responders, for grieving, and for overall healing–physically, emotionally, and mentally.

As part of my goal of offering holistic health and wellness to the community, I earned certification with the Integrative Health & Lifestyle Program at the University of Arizona’s Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine and a certification in craniosacral therapy, both in 2019.

All the while, Mindful Yoga Studio grew, surpassing 1,000 yoga and wellness visits a month with more than 100 classes, workshops, and private sessions in 2019. We offered a yoga teacher training, attracting 12 yogis for the 200-hour certified program. My practice and my business were graced with great blessings.

Then came the pandemic…. Smile, breathe, and go slowly.

We closed Mindful Yoga’s physical space, and I found myself back where I started yoga–in my living room, this time offering classes live via Zoom. The generosity of friends offering first one vacant commercial space and then another allowed us to reopen for small classes of socially distanced yogis. At its peak, Mindful Yoga attracted up to two dozen students to a class. Now, we are limited to eight yogis in person while offering the classes live via Zoom for those who choose to practice at home.

The revelation is that smaller classes offer an intimacy that helps create a more individualized practice. By my observation, that has helped our students to deepen their practice in a time when they are grieving personal losses and an overall loss of normalcy in life. Yoga’s focus on transformation of inner self is at the root of processing grief, and my students and I are doing that processing one asana practice, one meditation, one moment at a time.

Smile, breathe, and go slowly.

Shraddha Hilda Oropeza founded Mindful Yoga Studio in 2012 to offer a safer space for students to explore, heal, and transform their bodies and their lives. She guides students in a rhythm that allows them to move in harmony with their breath and stay open to the moment. She has a 500-hour Healing Emphasis Yoga certification and is trained in Yoga for Cancer Survivors, Mindfulness Yoga & Meditation, Yin, Restorative, and Hatha Yoga. Shraddha has been teaching since 2005 and has more than 3,000 hours of teaching experience. She was born in Sonora, Mexico, and has lived most of her life in Tucson. She is bilingual and has a Bachelor’s degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Arizona and a Master’s degree in Organizational Management. Shraddha is currently enrolled in the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine Wellness Coaching program. She is a certified craniosacral therapist.

I hated my first yoga class.

Almost 30 years ago, in a small Upper West Side studio, I was one of three people attending class and the only one who was both new to the practice of yoga and who also didn’t know the others in the room. Not only did I feel like an outsider, I also felt like a stranger to my body and unsure of how to establish the relationship with it that the instructor was suggesting.

And yet, somehow, something inside encouraged me to give the practice of yoga another shot - elsewhere and with a friend, the next time.

And thus my yoga journey has continued onward from there. 

In the time since, my studies, practice and orientation to teaching have been informed by my takeaways from that first class. 

I continually reflect on what it means to be welcoming and to be as clear as I can when offering fellow students a path inward. Simultaneously, I have tried to remain aware that, in the end, what leads a person forward is something beyond me.

Though I have enhanced my body awareness over time, my early struggles with asana have felt like a gift that keeps on giving, as it continually allows me to relate to others who feel similarly challenged to embrace their structural norms and/or their still refining sensory-motor awareness.

Long ago, I let go of the need to “present” perfect form; I was quick to embrace instruction to feel the breath and the experience of moving from the inside out, without regard to how you looked. 

And yet, when I first began to orient my teaching towards encouraging people to move freely and confidently and to take whatever liberties they needed to do that, it was with the orientation to make things “better” or at least “not so bad.” Within that “fix-it” approach was a resistance to embrace what “now” was offering.

I hope that my current approach skews more towards inviting discovery and exploration.

The PostureTweak orientation that I bring to asana has its origins in the Viniyoga teachings (I completed my 500-hour training with Gary Kraftsow) and in the fellowship I completed in Applied Functional Science with Doctors Gary Gray and David Tiberio at the Gray Institute. Subsequent studies with senior faculty at the Himalayan Institute have refined this approach even further. 

Among the many powerful takeaways from my time at the Gray Institute was the encouragement to ask each joint/complex what it needed and what it liked to do in order to be successful.

On the one hand, taking up that joint-by-joint conversation has shifted my sensory motor awareness and facilitated greater stability and ease in how I experience my body, but more than that, it has refined my appreciation for the energy (prana) within those joint spaces and of the broader space which holds me. 

At the Gray Institute, I was surrounded by physical therapists, strength and conditioning coaches and athletic trainers whose bread and butter was working with professional and high performing college athletes. For these elites, refining their awareness of how the subtalar joint functioned (which is the space between the saddle-like bone called the talus and the horse it rides on, the heel bone, or the calcaneus) was the difference between their patient, client or athlete successfully refining their golf swing, their cut to the basket, their curve ball or how they lifted their grandchild… or not.  

And, of course, all of those are wonderful objectives. And yet, to this day, Gary still marvels that what drives my interest in his work isn’t its ability to stretch or workout my students in smarter ways, but rather, that I’ve found in it, a pathway to something both incredibly subtle and also deeply profound.

I am honored for the chance to share this approach with you. Our experience will consist of both a joint-by-joint exploration in which we ask our joints what they need and what they like and also a practice which integrates some takeaways from that investigation. There will be time for your reflections and questions, too. And naturally, we will begin with “hello… and welcome.”

Al Bingham founded Encourage in 2013. He has been teaching yoga since 1995. Al has co-authored two books published by Random House, has been featured on the Yoga Zone DVDs, and develops yoga classes and programs for yoga studios, clinical settings and corporate environments. Al received his yoga training though Alan Finger (Yoga Zone) and Gary Kraftsow (American Viniyoga Institute). Al is also a 2011 Fellow of Applied Functional Science via the Gray Institute and a 1992 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. Currently, Al studies with the senior faculty of the Himalayan Institute and is a Certified Vishoka Meditation® Teacher. Al and his family live in Berkshire County, Massachusetts.

“The human shape is a ghost made of distraction and pain.
Sometimes pure light, sometimes cruel, trying wildly to open, this image tightly held within itself.” ~ Rumi

My yoga journey got real the day I declared there was no purpose in life. It was sometime in December 2006, and I was at the lowest of the lowest. Depression wrapped its tentacles tightly around me and I couldn’t pull myself out. It was my dark night of the soul.  Earlier that year, I graduated from yoga teacher training at Kripalu and I thought being a yoga teacher would provide some financial stability to support myself as a performing artist but I was wrong. The glory and inspiration I felt at the end of the training did not survive the harshness and hopelessness I felt about my life in New York City. My marriage was failing, and so was my career as a performing artist.

One night I woke up from a nightmare and couldn’t go back to sleep. I sat in bed despondent. My will to keep my marriage and career going finally collapsed and dissolved. It was like a magic show; it went poof and disappeared.

In April 2007, I got an opportunity to move into Kripalu as an intern to become a yoga teacher trainer. I took the position not because that was my dream but because I just needed a ticket out of NYC. Little did I know living at Kripalu and throwing myself into selfless service would ultimately save my life and sanity. I experienced much mercy and grace from the Divine in those eight years I spent there. Swami Kripalu’s teachings were the balm that nurtured my broken Soul and brought my Spirit back to wholeness.

Life at the Kripalu Center was full of magic and wonder. I was very lucky to work with many incredible senior teachers and staff to deliver the Kripalu experience. We worked hard, studied hard, and laughed equally hard as we built conscious and loving relationships with each other. I think one of the most striking experiences during my time at Kripalu was being able to bear witness to how devotion to love, selfless service and sangha gradually lifted me out of my depression. It took years, but I was finally able to swim side by side with depression instead of drowning in it.

There are five teachings that drastically altered my life and consciousness.  

1.  The value of self-observation with compassion.
2.  The inquiry process.
3.  Building trust in relationships.
4.  Satya - Truthfulness.
5.  The path of love.

Over time, these teachings became my values and building blocks as I developed the skills to transform my own suffering into precious gems of wisdom. The path of love has a special place in my heart. I remember one afternoon while I was walking in Babuji’s Garden at the Kripalu Center, I felt an immense feeling of openness and an acute clarity in vision and mind. Suddenly time stopped and I was overcome with an overwhelming sense of unconditional love. I kneeled and cried.

Weeks later, I met Dr. Satya Narayana Dasia, a renowned yoga master, and sat in one of his dharma talks on the practice of love. He asked the class “Do you know how to love?” Hearing his question was a light bulb moment for me. I realized I didn’t really know how to love. And I finally understood that on the path of Self-Realization, it is important and necessary to keep asking questions. Asking questions got me out of Spiritual complacency and the mindless regurgitation of Spiritual teachings.

Over the years, my yoga journey has taken me to many depths and heights. I have grown so much, and I attribute much of my successful relationships to these values that I adopted from my days at Kripalu. Above all, the subject of love became a forefront inquiry for me. Learning about love and how to love have been so humbling. And after 14 years of inquiry, I am still just scratching the surface. Love is as vast as the sky and ocean, and as mysterious as the night and the moon. I strongly believe love is the answer to our divides. I invite you to deeply inquire into love and I shall leave you with this question from the book True Love by Thich Nhat Hanh:

“Do you have time to love?”

Jai Bhagwan,

Jovinna

www.jovinna.com
https://www.youtube.com/c/jovinnachan
https://vimeo.com/jovinna

My yoga journey began in a very unconventional way… as a punishment.

During the beginning of my senior year of high school I attended a party that served alcohol.  Clearly a representation of pre-prefrontal cortex maturity .  My dad found out and told me to go to bed and we’d talk in the morning.  I didn’t sleep very well that night, but then I also thought since my dad was a yoga teacher and meditation practitioner that he may just say, "Luke don’t do it again."  Boy was I wrong.  In the morning he told me I had to turn myself in to my coach because I broke the team rules of conduct and did not follow through with my agreement with my coach and fellow teammates.  It didn’t matter to him that a lot of my teammates were at the party and the parents of some of them bought the beer and collected keys from anyone who didn’t have a designated driver.  He and my mom were “new” to this rural Wisconsin culture and couldn’t possibly understand the parenting required in “these parts of the woods.” I pleaded and pleaded for him to change his mind, because playing high school sports was really important to me.  He wouldn’t budge.  So not knowing where this may go, I told him I would do anything to not have to turn myself in. “Ok. I have a proposal,” he said. “Every morning before school for the remainder of the season meditate with me for 20 minutes. If you miss a day you will have to turn yourself in.”  I took that deal as fast as I could, but little did I know what I was up against. 

The first few days to be honest were torture on all levels.  Physically sitting on the floor on a meditation cushion in a cross-legged position was extremely uncomfortable.  As an athlete back then they didn’t teach flexibility.  My hamstrings and quads were strong, but tight. My back hurt because all the strength I had developed from lifting weights and running sprints around the field or on the courts did not apparently do a great job of strengthening the deep muscles of my back that were required to sit in an erect position.  Hmm… it made me wonder how I could be so strong and so weak at the same time.  Mentally, 20 minutes seemed like an eternity.  My mind was ripping and running every which way.  Holding a train of thought or a focus on my breath as I was taught by my dad was laughable.  Could my mind be any busier, noisier, and more disorganized? Psychologically, I fidgeted from anxiety of some nonsensical FOMO (fear of missing out) and constantly checked the clock from a case of utter boredom because at that moment I was so uncomfortable, I’d rather escape than tap in.  

As the days turned into weeks and weeks turned into the middle of October—thank goodness football season is short—things got better, meaning less like torture.  I started to enjoy the quiet I was feeling after the practice was done and sitting still was becoming something I could actually do for short periods of time. I didn’t miss a day and didn’t have to turn myself in.  This was a total success because it was the only reason I took on this “punishment.”  However, the balancing, nurturing, and healing inherent in yoga practice had created some other grooves… 

Fast forward 1 year.  I was sitting in my dorm room at Marquette University and ruminating about how stressed I was about my upcoming midterm exams.  My anxiety was really messing with me.  Then out of nowhere (or so I thought then ) I remembered how I felt after the meditation I had done with my dad.  AND I remembered him sliding my meditation cushion under my bed.  “This is here just in case,” he said as he pushed it way in the back.  I grabbed it and sat down.  Those 20 minutes were some of the most enjoyable I experienced.  I saw my anxiety fall away and my mind catch the thread of peace and contentment that was somehow locked inside, waiting for a moment of quietude to come out and bless “my space” again.  

“Everything is held together with stories. That is all that is holding us together, stories and compassion.”

― Barry Lopez

I first began studying yoga back during my days in graduate school in the early 1990s, while I was training as a dance/movement therapist. I realized very quickly that my understanding and perception of the world were both expanding courtesy of my yoga practice. Seeing anything on a more profound level is similar to opening one’s eyes underneath the surface of a lake. Suddenly, the idea of what exists is extended. A whole other universe appeared, and a literal deeper understanding of what the world contains made itself known. Every area of yoga has allowed me entry into another place, whether it was the revelation of a well-executed pose or the world of meditation.

Similarly, deep diving into anatomy has given me a path into a different level of understanding and an ability to look at an entirely diverse and yet connected universe. I initially studied anatomy in the standard form of parts and pieces, learned the names of bones and muscles, and spent quite a lot of time memorizing from books, until I knew I had to learn directly from the body itself. While I was first wary of human dissection, I had to discover for myself some of the mysteries under our very thin layer of skin. I found the inner world was full of mountains, rivers, and valleys, just like our larger world outside. I initially planned to do only a few dissections as a means to enhance my knowledge, but I found I had some skill level and talent at dissection in showing a story. Since those early days, I have assisted and taught hundreds of dissections, and each body has been a gift of learning that I take back to the living.

Dissection is, after all, also taking a viewpoint on what structures to see and how to see them. The traditional words of anatomy become more interesting when one learns that many of the Latin and Greek origins used describe a picture, such as the coracoid process of the scapula--named for the crow’s beak shape--or that tuberosity described the shape of a bump that forms on a bone as an attachment point. As I dove further into myofascial anatomy, my interest shifted away from purely muscles and bones and toward fascia, a biological fabric of connection that traditionally has been ignored in many books, but is having a moment in the movement world. What I wanted to see reversed itself, and having additional names helped me see what I had missed previously, or simply hadn’t noticed due to a lack of awareness.

The choice I have made to be an anatomy dissector might seem an odd co-career for a yoga teacher, but I have always been interested in exploring the inner and outer world, which reflect each other in so many ways. I find that poets and anatomists alike ponder questions of form, beauty and perception.

The idea even of misperceptions and correct perception can be thought of in terms of the Sanskrit avidyā (“ignorance” or “incorrect understanding”) and vidya (“understanding”). Sometimes translated as “absence of correct knowledge,” avidyā is also categorized as a klesha, which causes human suffering. While we cannot avoid all suffering, we can learn to soften suffering through a shift in perspective.

In my own teachings, I often quote the Barry Lopez passage at the beginning of this article, because in dissection as well as in life, one can only ever know part of a story, of any reality. When I see someone on my table, I can guess at body patterns and surgeries that may or may not prove true as we dive deeper into the body form. However, I cannot know for sure if this was someone who was in pain or comfort, or what his or her own perception of his or her life was like. What is left behind is like a seashell--a beautiful remains of a life carved into shape, but not the actual existence itself.

Yoga and anatomy both have taught me compassion, and, above all, that we have to practice that compassion every single day. We all make daily mistakes in our perspective. The danger is clinging to avidyā, and professing to understand absolute ideas of knowledge. Science, like yoga, is questioning and curious and willing to be wrong. Taking time to focus on our perspective, and being able to change that in light of new ideas or knowledge, can help expand our ways of working in anatomy and in life.

I like to say where there is breath, there is blood. When you breathe, your lungs and your heart together propel blood through your circulatory system into every nook and cranny of your body. When bright red blood irrigates through all bodily tissues, there is longevity and radiant health. A yoga practice helps to animate the breath and distribute prana (oxygen-enriched blood) throughout the body. By breathing we “pranagize” all of our systems.

Anatomically, your lungs and heart are inseparable. An elaborate system of vessels span the two organs so that if your heart were lifted from your chest cavity, your lungs would be removed too.

In terms of feeling, your lungs and heart are also interwoven. They are the primary repository for sentiment. Thus your lungs do not simply draw and expel air like Scottish bagpipes, but, together with your heart, they are the center for sentiments of tenderness and love. In Sanskrit this is called bhava. In states of bhava, feelings of empathy, spiritual rejuvenation, and kindness flourish.

Your lungs are impressionable, sensitive to emotion and feeling. Feelings, especially grief and sadness, imprint onto lung tissue. The impressionable lung is most evident in a child who is disposed to strong feelings such as laughter, crying, or screaming. Emotion passes quickly through the motile lung.

Lungs are extremely delicate. Airborne particulates such as the coronavirus, pollens, pollutants, and toxic chemicals can blotch the tender, spongy lung tissue. Lung tissue is light and fragile because the capillary membranes at the outermost tips of the bronchioles (the alveoli and alveolar sacs) must be fine enough to permit gas exchange into the bloodstream.

In yoga, we not only practice to expand our lungs but also to feel into the moods, mind states, and psychological pressures that manifest inside our lungs. Through meditation, pranayama, postural movements, and sound resonance, we develop greater sensitivity for our prana and become connoisseurs of the air that flows in and out of our lungs 20,000 times per day.

Tias Little is author of Yoga of the Subtle Body and resides in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he lives with his wife, Surya; his 17-year-old, Eno, and his pooch, Haro. Join him for his YTA workshop, Lifting the Sails of the Lungs: Yoga, Pranayama, and the Art of Breathing, on September 11, 2021.

These past 16 months, although difficult and challenging, have also presented
opportunities leading to creative exploration of situations and of the self.

My time in lockdown pushed me to write and finish a book that loomed in my
consciousness for over 35 years, and helped me rethink and refresh the teaching techniques that I've been using for over 50 years. It seems that everything I ever studied (ideokinesis, polarity, continuum, bioenergetics, Reichian therapy) about refining the mobility and health of the mind/body began to emerge from the deep recesses of my consciousness.

With very few outside distractions, I went deeper into the inner attractions that
were life enhancing, physically, mentally, and emotionally, reconfirming
what I learned early on from the masters with whom I studied (Iyengar,
Muktananda, Vishnudevananda, and Amrit Desai).

Please join me on June 12 for Practice to Empower Personal Possibilities, where I will share my ongoing process of finding peace and reconciliation with the integrity of the body. Each person will have the opportunity to encounter his or her own truths and voice.

In the meantime, enjoy this excerpt from my book, Yoga and You for a Year: From the Beginning to the End.

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.

Hatha yoga is not merely physical activity. Because the physical is clearly so much more tangible when compared to the mental-emotional or the spiritual aspects of our being, it is the way to begin our journey. Working with our own body, as we do our asanas, helps us to open to those parts that will benefit from this attention. We tend to deny, diminish, or disown the parts of ourselves that are weak, resistant, or painful. Yoga helps us bring care, concern, and compassion for the self, helping us confront the blockages and traumas that interfere with our flow of energy and are so destructive to our well-being.

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.

One of the great attractions of a yoga practice is the promise of flexibility. We all know that being flexible helps us to live with physical ease, comfort, and freedom. We experience this well-being soon after we engage in a serious practice, evidence of the body’s need for stretching and movement. But as we get more proficient on the physical level, we are led to examine more closely the reasons why our bodies seem compromised at a certain point.

This is the perfect time to introduce my acronym of YOGA:

Y—why, O—oh, G—God, A—again?

When we start to pay attention to this question, we begin our work, the
journey within. Our bodies store and hide in vulnerable places what we can’t, don’t, or won’t process and resolve, creating damaging energetic blocks that constrict our life-force and healing capabilities. Here is where the true flexibility of our practice begins.

Are there moments when you feel your strength isn’t supporting you physically, emotionally, or spiritually? Or times that you had excess energy and wished you had softened to allow for more ease for yourself and others, allowing for your inner grace to shine through? Life has a way of providing opportunities to feel into the depths of self whether we are up for it or not. The ancient teachings of martial arts and yoga help to navigate energetic ups and downs and inform one’s response to them, supporting a life of vitality and ease.

Yoga postures, pranayama, and meditation infused with martial arts are a profound practice to connect with your inner yin (passive) and yang (active) energies. We all possess the qualities needed to balance these energies as they flow in and out of our daily living. Whether there is an excessive flow of energy or a feeling of depletion, these ancient teachings offer guidance and tools to balance these energies along the journey of life. Each one of us is unique, while at the same time there are universal laws of energy that determine and truly dictate our way of being in the world. The practices of yoga and kung fu together offer a unique pathway to balance the inner energy that helps us move with more clarity.

As the the tides of life rise and fall, ebb and flow, the practice on your mat offers a greater depth of wisdom that can inform your actions and decisions in day to day life. These practices teach the universal principles of energy efficiency, such as redirection of energy and balancing yin and yang, and are reflected in how we manage our inner and outer environment. As you step back on the mat each day, your life experiences offer a greater depth of receptivity to the teachings nourishing and taking root within each fiber of your being. As the waves of life approach, yoga and kung fu reset the motor system and enable one to rise above and relax into a flow. Guided by breath, one can conserve energy and move more efficiently.

In life there are times when it is helpful to muster up strength and energy to move through a challenge and also times when finding ways to yield and harmonize with life is the wiser choice. These practices empower us to have the ability to see and recognize situations as yin and yang and fortify us with the ability to respond accordingly. Being with sensation and fluctuations of energy on the mat teaches us how to integrate these principles off the mat in everyday circumstances. Moving between yin and yang, we are always sensing and flowing to allow for balance, homeostasis, and abundance in our life.

Life is the ongoing dance of managing energy. Regardless of gender, we learn when it is time to draw upon our feminine energy of receptivity and gentleness, nourishment, and affection and when to increase our masculine energy of direction, commitment, determination, and kindness. This awareness gives us insight into what our best looks like and feels like so we can walk in the world with more confidence, ease, power, and grace.

“Let what comes come, let what goes go, find out what remains.” —Ramana Maharshi

This quote embodies so much of what practice means to me. For as long as I can remember, I have lived a life of movement and contemplation. I started professional dance training at a young age and got swept up in the joys of learning to use my body to express emotion, the pure athletics of big, dynamic movement, and the precision and care that classical ballet demands. I discovered I had a natural talent, and I left my small town in Alaska to attend a prestigious arts boarding school in Southern California. It’s there at the age of 16 that I discovered yoga. My modern dance teacher would use it as a warm-up for her classes. It may be hard to believe, but initially, I didn’t enjoy yoga. However, something was compelling about the practice and I decided right there, I wanted to learn more, and I stuck with it.

I moved to New York City to attend the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, and, much like boarding school, yoga was a part of my daily training. I saw how much it helped me navigate the rigors of the professional dancing world, both mentally and physically. My teacher at Tisch offered me a spot in her first-ever yoga teacher training, and I accepted. It took me on a journey I could have never imagined.

I spent a decade dancing, performing, and teaching yoga. I taught anyone who would let me, in the tiniest studios in Brooklyn, to the biggest mega gyms of Manhattan. At one point, I had over 20 classes and clients a week, ranging from big-name celebrity students to a yoga therapy client in her 80s with advanced dementia. In 2012, I took my 500-hour yoga teacher training with esteemed teacher and yoga pioneer Cyndi Lee, and shortly after I began assisting her. We’ve had an incredible journey of teaching yoga all over the USA and filming for Yoga International, Yoga Journal, and Lion’s Roar Magazine.

In recent years, I’ve niched down into being a private practice specialist and yoga teacher trainer. I see between 10 and 15 private clients a week in NYC and have taught and directed both 200- and 300-hour yoga teacher trainings. I also coach and mentor young teachers on how to create a viable business as a yoga professional that is in line with their values.

I’m a certified meditation teacher and have spent a decade studying intensively inside the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. I’ve taken refuge vows, attended over 20 retreats, and Buddhist philosophy informs every aspect of how I teach yoga and interact with the world.

For more about Hunt, visit huntparryoga.com.

Please join us for Moving into Stillness: An Afternoon of Yoga and Meditation with Hunt on March 13, 2021.