Why I Teach Yoga — lettucespoon

Yoga provides so many tools for joy and levity of the mind, body, and spirit. Teaching yoga is a service. I serve my students with my knowledge and understanding of yoga in hopes to reduce suffering.

My teacher once explained that you don’t practice yoga to get good at yoga. You practice yoga to get good at living life. It’s all about how you transfer your practice “off the mat.” I hope to share that yoga is so much more expansive than a physical practice. It’s a way of life. Yoga is a practice of non-violence, truth, attention, devotion, ritual, and awareness. It’s one path to self realization that I find approachable and accessible in this modern world.

Physical asana is dominant in my yoga practice, but I find that expanding pliancy in my mind allows me to explore pliancy in my form. In realizing that my body is designed to fit itself, I am able to play with so much buoyancy and spaciousness, which is both empowering and liberating. I share these inherited recipes for magic every time I teach in hopes to help my students cultivate self-compassion.

I often get asked how long I have been practicing yoga for. My yoga journey began in college. Hot yoga was having its moment in New York City, and that’s where it all began. Do I still practice hot yoga? Definitely not. But I am very grateful that I started with a practice that demanded absolute discipline and concentration to maintain my cool while achieving the repetitive sequence of poses in an intense climate.

Living and working in New Orleans was when yoga started becoming a regular practice in my life. I loved the high ceilinged (albeit heated) vinyasa yoga studio with brick walls in the quiet Warehouse District, down the block from my local farmers market. I moved into a spacious studio with bright lighting, where I started free flowing on my own, whatever that felt right in the moment. And I started creating sequences for my close friends whenever they came over to visit. Little did I know that this would only be the beginning.

I moved to Los Angeles thinking it would be more conducive to my career in nutrition. No surprises, it also happens to be the place for yoga in the United States. When work started to burn me out, I reorganized my schedule to dedicate more time to practicing yoga and trying out new studios and schools. I did intro packages at so many yoga studios in the greater LA area and was exposed to yin, restorative, hatha, chill, gentle, Kundalini, Reiki, sound baths, breathwork, Katonah and so much more.

Upon moving back to New York, I jumped into a 30 hr Katonah Yoga training at The Studio in downtown Manhattan. I was blown away by the depth and precision of the material being taught, and I was hooked. Katonah Yoga provided me with a body of theory filled with practical metaphors and poetic language. I related with its Taoist inspirations and was intrigued with its use of numerology and application of sacred geometry.

When I realized working in the medical field was not aligned with my personal philosophy on health, I decided that becoming a yoga teacher was a necessary next step for a career shift. I looked for an immersive program abroad, and luckily came across Luminous Heart Institute in Santa Teresa, Costa Rica. Participating in Luminous Heart’s 200 hr yoga teacher training was transformative in many ways. I was seduced by the Tantra vinyasa practice and the Hindu narratives my teacher weaved into her sequences. The layering of history, philosophy, and spirituality with physical movement, breathwork, and meditation was mind opening and FUN. Absorbing all this knowledge from my teachers while immersed in the jungles was humbling and life altering.

I started teaching yoga with my close friends. I was so grateful for their trust and in allowing me to guide their bodies. The first time I taught a group was to 100 kids at Dharma summer camp during morning exercise. I was not formerly trained then, but had a fire kindling within me to share this ancient art.