January/February Newsletter

New Year, New Offerings:

Shining your unique light into 2025

I hope you are doing well. Like SO well. Like filled to the brim with love and hope, spending intentional time with family and friends, finding joy in the mundane, and hopefully attending lots of good juicy yoga classes.

Admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve sent out a newsletter, and I hope you’re liking my new layout! If it’s been that long, here’s a little refresher on how we may have met: through Ahimsa Yoga & Wellness, the Harmonist Sanctuary, the Karma House Kava Bar, Regis University, Instagram, or one of the other spots I’ve been fortunate enough to teach yoga.

After over a year, I’m bursting back into the online space with a few exciting things that I would love for you to be aware of:

1.) First, I finally launched a website, here where you can read all about my upcoming public offerings, schedule private or group yoga classes, meditations, or sound healings, and learn more about me. I am so excited to finally have a hub for you to keep up to date with my whereabouts and schedule private classes for yourself or a group.

2.) I’m dedicating myself to sending out newsletters like this about every two months. Towards the end of the year, you may get a bonus or two!

With these newsletters, I’m hoping to keep you informed of my upcoming offerings and events, offer some of what I’ve been learning, and overall to stay connected with you. I’m currently moving into my final year of my masters in  mental health counseling program, and all that I’ve been learning has been so applicable to my yogic studies as well.

Speaking of which, before I wrap up, I would like to offer you a little bit of what’s been on my mind. As I’ve continued to home in on who I am as a teacher, moving out of the sort of a “sink-or-swim” mentality that I held for the first ~year of being a teacher, there’s really one thing I keep coming back to and that is this: we don’t practice yoga to be healed or made whole. And if we do, we’re going to be pretty severely disappointed.

Throughout my 10+ years practicing, I’ve come across quite a few teachings from others that claim that this practice will make you “whole again,” as if we enter into the asana space deeply wounded and needing mending. Not only that, but there’s the idea that as yoga teachers, it is our responsibility to do the mending.

While it is true that the word yoga in Sanskrit does translate to ‘union’ or the ‘yolking,’ this doesn’t mean that the practice or the teachers will be putting you back together. Honestly, it’s quite the contrary. I hate to break it to you, but you come to yoga whole. You come to yoga as SO good and SO special, and I hope that my classes provide you with enough of a reminder that you are SO valued in the space, just as you are. The world needs your unique light, exactly how it shines. It doesn’t matter how bright it shines, what color it is, if it’s strobe-y or pointed or soft or ever-changing. The world needs your exact light.

Now, you might be able to see how similar this lens is when we think about therapy. A similarly common misconception in the therapeutic field is that therapists are the ones doing the healing. From my studies and experience so far, I would like to think that it’s eerily similar to yoga: the clients are the ones who rediscover their wholeness and goodness. The therapists and teachers are just there to host the space.

All this to say, as I’ve been diving deeper into my studies, both relating to mental health counseling and yoga, I’m reminded that therapy and yoga alike are not meant to change us into something we’re not, or show us an unattainable path towards “healing.” Really, I believe it helps us to rediscover the value of our own light through uniting our minds, bodies, and spirits.

I’ll leave you with a quote from one of my favorite yogis who certainly broke the mold, shone his own unique light, and made a massive impact:

“Yoga allows you to rediscover a sense of wholeness in your life, where you do not feel like you are constantly trying to fit broken pieces together.”

- B.K.S Iyengar