In 2016 I completed a 200-hour yoga teacher training, and through this experience decided to switch career paths in pursuit of massage and bodywork. A year later I completed a 700-hour program at the Cayce/Reilly School of Massage in Virginia Beach, VA and ultimately a 7 month program at the Dr. Ida Rolf Institute in Boulder, CO where I became a certified Rolfer. 

My inspiration for doing yoga came from a dance background.  I did ballet for eight years as a child but when I finished high school, like most people, I gave it up and didn’t think about replacing it with anything else.  After a few years, driving and sitting more often while commuting to college and pursuing an English Literature degree, I found myself feeling stagnant.  I stumbled into a Jivamukti yoga class one day and felt great, physically but also emotionally.  At that point I realized how much I had missed movement.  I was a shy child, and in my 20’s I struggled a lot with self confidence.  Movement, whether through dance or yoga, was one of the few places I felt comfortable in my skin, where I felt that I could express myself.  The difference between dance and yoga though was that it was just for me.  I didn’t have to perform in order to feel that connection and confidence within myself.  

I didn’t jump all in with yoga at first.  I just kept going back every now and then, in order to find that ease of body and mind.  I started teaching creative writing to kids in an after school program and one day I realized they just didn’t have it in them to sit anymore that day.  I led them through a small yoga practice: we shot imaginary arrows in warrior pose and jumped like frogs in yogi squat.  They loved it, and to my surprise after only about 20 minutes of movement, they then sat happily and wrote more genuinely.  That was the day I decided I wanted to teach yoga.  I feel strongly that yoga is needed in community, and if that’s true then yoga teachers are needed.  At first I wasn’t sure if I could be a yoga teacher, but yogis like T.Q. Sims, Nathalie Croix, and Meghan Currie instilled in their classes a sense of curiosity and joy, which encouraged me to keep going.   Like any yoga pose, at first it feels impossible, but you just keep trying, visualizing it as possible, practicing, and one day what seemed impossible becomes something you can breathe comfortably in, something you enjoy.  Like my yoga practice, my teaching practice is still evolving, and one of the things I love most about yoga is that there is always more to learn.  

Alongside yoga, I’m also a Rolfer.  Rolfing is a type of bodywork but also a movement therapy.  My Rolfing informs my yoga, but the reverse is also true.  Yoga helps me bring into practice what I teach clients as a Rolfer.  Without yoga I never would have pursued bodywork and I am forever grateful to the practice of yoga for pointing me down this path that I’m on.