I’ve always been a mover.

Starting at the age of 4, I played soccer, I was on the swim team, I was on the track team ,and I played tennis and volleyball. In high school, I got involved in musical theater. I was always physically active, but I didn’t get to know movement as a healing modality until I was in my twenties. 

I started taking Yoga classes when I was 23 and living in New York City. During that stage of my life, I needed a place where I could work through my emotions - to literally move through them and detangle. I found deep, transformational healing inside a dark, hot room, where I was able to freely embody what I was feeling. Simply being guided through fluid, music-driven sequencing had a profound effect on my life. I found space where I could release what I was holding on to, but I also experienced greater confidence, expanded self-awareness, and a sense of self-trust that was so unfamiliar to me.

After the first few classes I took, I was sure I wanted to teach. A couple of years later, it felt like the right time to enroll in a 200-hour teacher training. Right after completing YTT with Y7, I signed up for their 50-hour Mentorship Empowerment course and quit my corporate job so I could start teaching full-time. My passion for the practice has only grown since and continues to inspire me every day.

What I’ve learned is that Yoga is not about poses. 

It’s what happens during the exploration through transitions, the playful interaction with balance, the weaving of intentional music choices, and the impact of a teacher who is completely committed to each moment of a class. It’s allowing ourselves to be in process as we excavate through our internal landscape and integrate our experiences as human beings on a unique life journey.

That’s what I have received from my teachers and my hope is to bring my students that same thing.

Inherently, Yoga is a trauma-informed practice.

Everyone arrives carrying different things, with a different nervous system, so it’s important to me that my teaching is trauma-informed. What’s locked in our body moves when we move. Compassion and support have to be present. When my energy is grounded in those two things, my students are more likely to feel centered, and the openings for personal expression might become a little more available.

I recognize that Yoga isn’t what every person needs.

The practice of honoring ourselves is listening to the intuition of our body and what it needs, and allowing ourselves to have it. Some days, that might look like stretching + breathing. On others, it might look like a non-Yoga movement sequence. Maybe what we need is a 20-minute guided meditation and zero physical movement. I think mindfulness can be a framework that we continuously design as we shift.

If any part of this resonates with you, come see me in a studio, or let’s talk about a private offering.