Elemental Yoga Flows

The above audio is an 8-minute guided breathwork practice from my Establish a Practice: Breathwork and Meditation Challenge. I recommend you lie down, make yourself comfortable, and do it before reading this article or going any further. You certainly won't regret it! 

I hope you enjoyed the pause.

Ok so, as I mentioned I call my month-long breathwork and meditation challenge Establish a Practice and I wanted to tell you why and what it means to be 'established'.

Currently, breathwork and meditation practices are becoming really popular (which I love) but much of the purpose behind these practices is missed or misunderstood. I wanted to create a challenge that helped you understand the deeper meanings of these practices that fuel consistency and give you an experience of my heart-centered and practical approach as a yoga therapist and strength coach.

I share lots of my personal experience in practice so that you might embark on this endeavor with an understanding of what the goals ...

In the main yoga text I learned from there are only two teachings about posture practice. 

The first teaching on posture says we should find a steady comfortable posture that is easeful. A way of holding ourselves with exactly the right amount of effort. My experience in embodying this particular type of action in daily practice is that it has helped me to cultivate a sense of inner stability that goes beyond external circumstances. 

When someone is hoping to utilize practices like breathwork and meditation to cope with anxiety and support healing and recovery it is best to take things in a step-by-step way. You could even say this methodology for programming is like yoga's built-in trauma-informed approach.

Each of my online programs takes this step-by-step approach (krama) so that you can embody and integrate at a pace that is right for you. If your yoga practice hasn't stuck before it could be because hopping in on random classes skips a lot of steps in the learning process. Many...

This is a one hour experiential and motivational session was specifically for nurse educators in Springfield MO. I customize each talk to be as relevant as possible for the audience!

You can learn more about my yoga therapy programs and workplace sessions at this link or book a call with me directly below. 

Read below for some musings on my new lens in lfie and see a video of my introduction at SYF or click play above to enjoy listening in to my full mini lecture and practice at the Sedona Yoga Festival June 2-5 2022. (Click here to learn about joining me in 2023!)

I’ve worn glasses since I was five. Pretty thick ones from the start that progressively got thicker as I got older. I got contact lenses in the third grade so that I could see my first true love, the basketball hoop, better. I hated the limited vision in the periphery. Having extremely blurry vision has always been something I struggled with and the same is true for seeing my life and actions clearly. From these experiences, I know how much can shift from a new lens both literally and metaphorically 

Just like getting that first pair of glasses at 5 and contacts at 8, yoga has been the lens that I’ve tried on that made things feel more clear to me. When I started to see the world through the lens of the five elements that yog...

We go into meditation so that we can train ourselves into the present. That means we are able to somehow escape the tyranny of our mind and meet this moment... but we can't do that if we're in pain!

This simple yoga flow is designed to become your regular meditation preparation and target specific areas of common pains in meditation. Combining vigorous breathwork with easeful but targeted developmental flow this practices will help you to 'find your center' and to focus the mind for a guided meditation setup and mantra offering before leaving you to your seated practice. 

I recommend you continue using the video guidance until you have a sense of competency with these techniques. After practicing along with the video guidance 3-5 times you will have the muscle memory to practice a few of these flows before each meditation session so that you're established in an ea...

Have you ever been to Sedona Arizona? One of my favorite parts about being there is the way the red rocks feel. I’d like to invite you to join me for a free practice that gives you a taste of what that’s like—even at a distance.  

The sequence we’ll do is super short and only includes a few poses: corpse pose, mountain pose, and a brief opportunity to try tree pose. Most of you are already pretty familiar with these postures, but we’ll approach them differently by focusing on the earth element and specific activations of the feet and legs to help you cultivate steadiness and stability. 

We’ll pay attention to thoughts and sensations and breathe as wide and deep as canyons. Maybe afterward you’ll see why I just can’t seem to stay away from this mysterious place. Or maybe you’ve already been and you also feel the call return. Speaking of which, I have a little story to share about my last visit . . .

In 2020, I was about to teach the largest class of my career at the Sedona Yoga Festi...

I've shared an introduction to the elemental body in a previous blog post. In this post, I'd like to share a short lecture with more detail on your five bodies. Learning about the elemental body and building a relationship with the five elements can support your day-to-day life, and in developing a consistent and adaptable yoga practice.

This discussion took place at my retreat at the Circle Yoga Shala and some big news in my life is that starting this spring I will join the yoga teacher training team at 'the shala'. If you're interested in becoming a teacher you can get all the training details on the website. I would love to see you there! 

This content is a small part of my foundations program that lays the groundwork for our time together. In my programs, you will learn the why behind the practices so you can understand how to adapt based on your changing needs. 

If you're looking to get support in becoming more informed and intimate with not only your physical body but all your...

This is a short and simple practice to support you to reconnect to your breath and your senses. Although this practice is simple, it can be a profound support in developing a pattern of presence. 

If you use it frequently to anchor you in the present moment you will find yourself less distracted, worried, and fearful. It is most supportive when practiced often as a way of training your attention, but you can also use it in a pinch to calm down. 

In the audio, I say to lay down flat but you could...

• use it in your office chair five minutes before an important meeting
• start your walk with it to get out of your head 
• take quick rest to reset if you're working late on a big project
• do a wall sit and listen to overcome being overwhelmed by worry or fear

Bookmark the page and use it anytime you need to be guided back to your breath and your senses. 

Enjoy!

Want to learn more about what we do in yoga therapy and how it would apply to you and your life? Schedule an Insight Call wi...

My hermit side loves winter, and this season has given us more reasons than ever to, as I put it lightly to my friends the other day, ‘stay the-fuck at home’. 

As we move into year three of the pandemic I’m moving into ever deeper layers of nesting and homemaking. It is something new for me as this is the first house I’ve ever owned and the first time I’ve had so many legitimate excuses to stay at home for long stretches of time. 

Although I’ve resisted it, this new at-home work-life rhythm suits me fine. I had really grown to love spending my days at my little yoga therapy studio space with my community but time at home has made space for a closer connection with fewer dedicated clients, more nourishment of my body, and different kinds of creativity. 

One of the hobbies I’ve picked up over the pandemic is medicinal herbal oil infusions. The oils are for the face and nose or self-massage, all of which I highly recommend utilizing. Every step of the process is really a beautiful sens...

I teach from my life experiences in combination with a lot of techniques and methods. This ranges from performance training that I picked up in my college basketball days, to rehabilitation, injury prevention, and functional movement from a career as a strength coach, to meditating at ashrams in the Poconos and visiting shrines in India, to sitting in inquiry circles in the hills of Arkansas.

With there being such a variety of influences that you might even ask, what even makes this stuff yoga?

It is the vision of health and the promises of freedom and fulfillment that make it yoga. What I’m striving to teach is more than a random batch of movement or mindfulness practices. It is a detailed, personalized, and progressive course of yoga sadhana. That takes on a life of its own, through you. 

“Sadhana is the discipline of skillfully applying mind and intelligence as a means of being liberated from ignorance.” - Matthew Krepps

Yoga is at the core of what I do because the model of heal...