Fess Up and Get Real

Ask yourself: Am I afraid of living or am I afraid dying? Most people would say they’re afraid of dying, but live their lives in fear. Fear of failure, fear of what others think, fear of others, fear of illness, fear of being fat/thin/short/tall, fear of not fitting in, fear of heights, fear of water, […]

Dealbreaker

In recent asana and iRest® Yoga Nidra classes I have been very focused on the role that our core beliefs play in the paths our lives travel down and how we show up in our own lives and the world around us. In my quest to awaken students to their greatest potential through the examination […]

Giving Up The Ghost

It’s been a while since my last post. 2013 has been a year of incredible highs and shockingly raw lows, and we’re only halfway through March, but with that said, I have a very strong feeling that this year will be a watershed one for me. I’ve felt a low rumbling in my gut over […]

Full Disclosure

I’ve been thinking a lot about how many of the causes of suffering in my life and in the life of those around me are rooted in communication…what we communicate, how we do it, and where we direct it. It seems that so much of what we convey to others passes through a complex system of filters before it pours out into the space we reserve for comunication, but many times, it doesn’t even make it that far. That filtering of information happens when we analyze what we have to share, who we’re sharing it with, and a) what our feelings toward that person are, and b) what that person is dealing with in their daily life. When we have incredibly joyous news to share, we often suppress the degree of that joy if we’re dealing with someone who tends to be pessimistic or sarcastic, and conversely, when we have news that isn’t happy, we tend to keep it to ourselves for fear of imposing on others, afraid that we’ll “bring them down” once the news or information has been shared.

The Yoga of Letting Go

I have spoken in many of my classes about the body’s tendency to react to the events that we encounter in our daily lives…the seizing up of the shoulders towards the ears in moments of stress, the habit of rounding the shoulders to unconsciously protect the heart center when feeling like we’re the target of […]

From Behind Our Own Shadows

We are surrounded by doubt and fear, from all directions, all around us. We are bombarded by images of who we should be, what we should wear, eat, and drive, and how our bodies should look. All these “standards” that we inevitably hold ourselves up to (in spite of ourselves and our better, innate judgement) succeed in driving, and sometimes even creating, that fear. Fear of not fitting in, of not belonging, of being outcast…and all the while, the only thing we are accomplishing is the complete and utter suppression of our true selves…of our innate light, of our inspiring individuality that stems from the source of all energy which we all come from and to which we all return.