What do you love about yoga?
Before yoga ever became my job, it taught me how to accept and love my body, be present for my life, and gave me the resiliency to survive my hardest moments. I've been practicing since I was 15, and over 25 years when I've needed yoga, it was there: through heartache, catastrophe, triumph, my kids births, my darkest days and the most beautiful meaningful moments of my life. Yoga got me through them all, and on the way it made me strong AF: in my brain and in my body. Where else can you learn to sit with your thoughts, hold a squat, and stand on your hands? I'm also the least graceful human imaginable: but I live for the moment where the music, the lights, the sequence and the energy all come together - it's indescribable! I get to walk out feeling at home in my self, and that's invaluable.
What should students expect in your classes?
Depends on the class! My signature is intelligent movement that's sweaty, strength building, and prioritizes smart movement over fancy yoga poses (but we still play too!). My movement-based classes are always to a soundtrack that's all killer no filler, and a practice that's gonna show you what you're capable of. Whether it's movement, meditation or the meaning woven into practice, it's all to show you how take your focus, power, and confidence off the mat and into your real life where it actually means something.
What are the MOST important things you want your students to walk out of your class having experienced?
That within these 4 walls, you're supported and you have your own permission to get what you need. No matter what you're going through, if you show up feeling like you have 10% today or 110%, you still showed up. And I always want my students to walk out of my classes knowing they are never permanently knocked down, they can do hard things, and that we are NOT surrendering to frailty in old age! We are gonna be weird little badass grannies who carry their own groceries and stay independent.
When you're not practicing yoga, what do you like to do?
Definitely reading a book (feel free to send your book recs), plotting a DIY, drinking coffee barefoot outside, planting a rare heirloom tomato variety and eating sourdough bread. I'm also Mama to two VERY energetic humans who are probably playing baseball literally right now as you read this.
What challenges you in yoga?
The list is always long! These days it's probably accepting my own pace and not comparing my life-timeline to anyone else's... and still trying to land baby bakasana from forearm stand (look it up, it's crazy hard!).
What/who inspires you?
Anyone making art without apologies. Liberators. Ecologists. Neighbors being neighbors. My humble and hardworking students.