The Slap

The Slap by K Richardson

Sitting in yoga class yesterday I heard something profound.  It was simple, straightforward and it stuck.

Butch, our 70-something year old very hip yoga instructor and cancer survivor, was talking about life and how we tend to drudge through, dragging ourselves around without much thought and just putting one foot in front of the other day after day.  It’s a miserable way to go through life and yet we all seem to do it at times. Some blame their circumstances (Life dealt me a bad hand) while others blame those around them (It’s not my fault I’m so unhappy) and some people just accept the misery (It is what it is).  We carry on like soldiers walking into battle, worn and tired, holding tightly to our emotions stuffed into the invisible backpacks we hoist onto our shoulders every morning when we rise from our beds. We remind ourselves how many more days until the weekend or our next vacation or some random time in the future where we think we will find contentment, peace or happiness.  We go through life, through the days, and through the moments.  And then sadly, one day,  we die.

I am guilty of handing the wheel over to Auto-Kelly.  She gets up every morning, does her hair and puts her make-up on, takes her daughter to school, goes to work, stops at the grocery store, comes home to cook dinner, reads her emails, pays bills, blah blah blah.  On a good day I hit the gym or take a yoga class or walk my dog. It’s too easy and it allows me to just get through the day, coasting with my head down and eyes half closed.  I am guilty of being a passenger in my own life.

What Butch said struck home: what if we didn’t just go THROUGH life but we actually went TO something?  What if we looked at our purpose, our passion and our potential and we changed our thought process, followed our heart or set a goal for ourselves?  What would happen if we turned off auto-pilot and started driving our own bus in the direction we wanted to go? What if we decided what we wanted and we set out to achieve it, regardless of how old or weathered we think we are?

Butch woke me up. In the class he even said “Hellllo McFly”. No joke.

All day I asked myself: What do I want to go TO? Where am I headed? The question bothered me because I didn’t know the answer.  Wait, aren’t I supposed to have an answer for everything– I am a therapist.  We help people find their answers, their truths and their direction.  And yet, I blanked on what it is I want to go towards in my life that would wake me up and set me straight.

I woke up in the middle of the night and it hit me. Another “Hellllo McFly” moment.  The Slap.

I didn’t have a big epiphany of a career change or taking my family on a year long trek across different continents exploring the world or selling all my belongings and moving into one of those tiny houses you see on TV that people say will allow them the freedom to explore or live life the way they want. (Side note: Tiny houses scare me and personally, I like my space and need a big spacious bathroom in order to have peace and happiness.)  It wasn’t a profound goal or unanswered prayer that changed the direction of my life or made me do some drastic u-turn from where I was headed – instead it was simple. It put me back in the drivers seat, straightened the wheel and reminded me to shed the backpack. I realized I wanted to go TO a place of gratitude, appreciation for where I AM and enjoyment in the day to day things I get to do.

Gratitude is a very cliche thing these days.  I blame Oprah. Everyone talks about it like it’s some holy sacred temple you get to visit.  People speak it, live it for a brief time and then go back on auto-pilot. In all honesty,  it’s an overused and underappreciated word.  It is so much more than just an attitude, it is a complete change in thought process . It requires you to stop, slow down and find the good. Some days, this is hard, especially when you question your meaning and value to this world. But it is possible to go to a place of gratitude,  even on dark days when nothing seems to be going right. Finding gratitude means showing up and being accountable to see what you have instead of what you want. It means finding value in those around you instead of seeking new people to fill old wounds.  It means hitting the reset button and taking the blinders off. It means to stop comparing ourselves, our lives and our flaws to others.  It means less under the microscope and more wide lens.

I am grateful I’m lucky to do a job I love and going to work is not a chore, but a privilege.  I have an imperfect family but they are mine to love and they love me unconditionally, mask off.  My kids drive me crazy, stress me out and cause me question my parenting skills but I am grateful they also have good moral compasses, love their grandparents and hug me nightly before they go to bed.  I am reminded that my husband, who puts his dishes in the sink instead of the dishwasher or doesn’t pick up his clothes off the bedroom floor, is also the man who tells me I am beautiful when I feel fat and ugly, writes me poems every Christmas and encourages me to have wine night with the girls because he knows how much I need and treasure women friendships.  I am genuinely grateful for him because I know he is genuinely grateful for me. We aren’t perfect but we make it work and for that, I am grateful.  I don’t have a vacation house but I have a cozy home that my kids like to be at and while I don’t travel as much as I would like, I have saved for my kids college and my credit score is pretty darn good.  I realized that while I could be skinnier, have less wrinkles or a flatter tummy, I am grateful I am healthy and my body does a pretty amazing job every day carrying me around. I realized that gratitude isn’t a place I am going to but rather a place I am already at.

I don’t want to just go through the days and forget the moments because I had my head down and my backpack on.  I want to open my eyes, trust my skills, throw the backpack out the window and take the wheel. There is always something to be grateful for.  There is always something to appreciate about my life.  It is not happy people who are grateful. It is grateful people who are happy.

 

Leap is with Yoga Support.

 Leap Proud to Partner with Yoga Support.

 

You will sometimes see that some of our events are specifically tailored to Yoga Support.  We have one coming up on October 29th with Hanna at 12.30 to 2.00pm.  We also have teachers donate class proceeds to this fine cause.

In this regard we thought it appropriate to post a little from their website explaining the very fine work they do to help brain injury patients recover through the use of Yoga.

They help brain surgery patients get their lives back through tailored yoga curriculums designed specifically for them, providing the connection of specially educated teachers and teachings at an affordable cost.

The goal is to have a community of brain surgery patients which are back to work full time, anxiety, depression, and PTSD free, not dependent on disability or pharmaceutical drugs.

They have a specialized team that help patients across the United States who have had brain surgery to rehab and get their lives back through the use of restorative yoga, meditation, breath work and vinyasa yoga.

Hospitals and physical therapists across the US refer patients to their program after surgery and they connect each patient with a partner teacher at a local studio or online through Skype.  This is where Leap Yoga comes in. Each patient receives three partially subsidized sessions weekly for three months, working through a specialized yoga curriculum designed to reduce stress, anxiety and PTSD, relearn balance, gain stamina and take a new path to their new lives.

This is such a fine cause, led by wonderful, caring people.  We are happy and eager to help and encourage you to attend Hanna’s class on the 29th of October at 12.30pm.

Should you wish to find out more about Yoga support, visit their website: www.yogasupport.org

Senate Awards Leap as Best Yoga Studio

We are delighted to continue our quest to become the true bastion of Yoga, Love and Family within our community. It is always a pleasure, if somewhat humbling, to receive recognition for our endeavors, and from the California Senate no less. Thank you to all our students, members, teachers, staff and friends. We could never have done it without you. Namaste.

Papa Yoga

So here’s my “yoga story”.

In my mid 20’s I found myself living on a futon in San Francisco.  It was one of the darkest points in my life.  I was drudging through the aftermath of a horrendous heartbreak, which seemed to mercilessly insist that I also wrestle with all other unexplored struggles I had experienced up until that point.

I searched for anything to bring me clarity, understanding… but mostly I was on the hunt for HOPE.  Hope that life would get better.

I read books, listened to lectures, talked with others (when I wasn’t isolating) and penned my way thorough countess journals.

Eventually I found yoga in a cold, crowded and smelly gym in the Mission District.  The vibe was more “standard group exercise class” than “yoga boutique” which made it hard to differentiate the yoga from other physical endeavors I’d experienced previously.

Yet, I was immediately clear that there was something to this yoga thing.  It was unique.  Different.  Good.  It seemed to crack a door open.  I couldn’t explain how, but it made me feel like it might just lead me somewhere that I was curious enough to follow.

I began to practice.  I went back to the gym, but classes were limited there.  Then I explored a few sleepy studios.  I mostly practiced via VHS tapes provided by Yoga Journal.  For years I’d plop down on my carpeted floor to repeat the same recorded practice with Rodney Yee and Patricia Walden.

I wasn’t used to giving myself time to slow down in this way.  Many days it felt pointless but the desire to connect to this newfound hope kept encouraging me to show up on my mat.  The breathing was doing something.  It seemed so intuitive and natural and yet so foreign at the same time.  This was pretty much my life for the next 4 years.

Each time I practiced I found myself feeling a wee bit better.  Life began to appear in color again.

In and around this time of my life I met my husband who graciously mended my broken heart and was game to help me with the rest of my unraveled-ness.  In love, I moved to Arizona (to be with him) where there was NO yoga at the time and so I continued with the tapes.  We soon moved to Encinitas, California.  Greg was active in the United States Marine Corps at the time and was sent to deploy to Okinawa, Japan, for 8 months.

I was alone, in a beautiful area with endless unstructured time.  I had quit my job at Intel to move to him so I wasn’t working.  It was time to figure some MORE stuff out.  Daily I began at Swami’s beach and walked our yellow lab Mike along the shore.  We’d be out for hours and hours.  I’d end my day with a Bikram yoga class.

A previous San Francisco roommate had mentioned Bikram to me before.  I saw a studio in Lucadia.  I gave it a try.  This type of yoga felt so healing to me.  The room was humid and heated to over 108 degrees.  I loved the sweat.  I was releasing everything that no longer served me.  For almost 250 days in a row, I got on my mat.  I savored the people around me.  I hadn’t yet recognized them as “my people” but I got something different while practicing with the salty surfers fresh off the beach.  We all seemed to have something in common.  We didn’t speak about it, it just was.

Greg returned from Japan and we moved to Corpus Christi, Texas.  I bought space heaters and would attempt to heat our spare bedroom, desperately trying to recreate the studio setting.  I purchased a cassette tape that had audio for the 26 poses of the Bikram series.  I looked into being trained in this method but things didn’t line up.  I could then recognize that I missed the community of the practice.

I met a friend in Texas who also liked yoga.  This was a rare find in the early 2000’s, especially in Corpus Christi.  She exposed me to Ashtanga yoga and to a man named David Swenson.  She also mentioned a woman named Gurmukh who did Kundalini Yoga.  I bought one of her books but she seemed less relatable to me at the time.  Soon after these introductions I found myself in Ashville, North Carolina being trained at a small studio by David Swenson.  I trained in ashtanga (that’s hard yoga!) and in pre-natal yoga at that point too because I was sure kids would be in my future, and well, why not?

I immediately began teaching yoga at local gyms.  For the next many years I taught between 10-14 classes a week.  Most of the classes I’d have to actually DO the yoga.  One, because that’s how you taught back then (at least in Corpus Christi) and two, no one knew what to do, so demonstration was necessary.  I learned a lot with every single class.  Eventually I opened my own small studio. I knew I needed to share it even more.  I was also burning out.

In my early 30’s and two kids later we moved back to Northern California.  There wasn’t yet a major yoga studio in the area.  I practiced again at home with those same old VHS tapes and then studios began popping up.  I stopped teaching and practiced hungrily in the Folsom and surrounding community for the next 5 or 6 years, most often daily.  I had one more baby and knew intuitively that it was my time to receive on the mat.

Then eventually, a few years later, I found myself beginning to get the itch to teach again.  I was patient with it.  The local studios introduced more of the flow or Vinyasa yoga.  I liked that too.  So, I went through Level One Vinyasa training with Baron Baptiste in Tulum, Mexico.  A couple years later I was officially ready to teach again and so I went through Level Two in Catskills, New York.

The past 10 years I have attended every, and any yoga related lecture, workshop, class, retreat, festival and training I can possibly get to.  I consider my teachers to be many.

Almost 8 years ago I went back for a masters degree and established a career in Marriage and Family Therapy.  I currently run a private practice and specialize in couples work, and in individual and relational trauma.  I understand how the body stores stuck energy, trauma and negative emotions and cognitions.  I know the value of bringing the nervous system down, regulating hormones and allowing a resourced and calm state in the body so it can begin to heal naturally.  I can totally geek out on this stuff!  I love my job!  And I love yoga.

Then, last fall via a valuable girls trip to Bhakti Fest at Joshua Tree, I was reintroduced to Kundalini Yoga.  I took one Kia Miller Kundalini class and knew I had to do the training.  My body felt more relaxed and reset after that single class than I had experienced in any yoga scenario previously.  It was to me the EMDR or Brainspotting of yoga.  My worlds matched up!

Additionally, I knew enough to know that the technology of Kundalini was addressing the deeper energetic layers of the body, the subtle body, and was utilizing the breath to bring authentic balance and restoration.  I circled back to Gurmukh.  She was offering a teacher training at Golden Bridge Yoga Studio in Santa Monica.  I had a gut instinct that I needed to do the training asap as I didn’t trust how much longer Gurmukh would be available as a teacher.

Over the course of the past 8 months I have been honored to study Kundaini yoga.  I’ve traveled down to LA on a monthly basis for an average of 5 days at a time to participate in training days from 5am to 530pm.  The days begin with a morning Sadhana practice (morning ritual/practice).  These early hours have come to be one of my most revered and looked forward to times of the day.  There is indeed a magical energy in the space before the day starts or the sun rises.  For this reason I am honored and blessed to be able to offer what I have learned in my Kundalini training to all of you at 5.45am on Friday mornings.

Weeks before our final graduation weekend from the 200hr program it was announced that Gurmukh was closing her studio, confirmation that I was exactly where I needed to be at the time.

I have learned the deep healing Kundalini offers emotionally, physically, and energetically.   I am beyond excited to share it with this community and with anyone who is willing to give it a try.  It is very much experiential and must be tried to understand.  I invite you with my deepest sincerity to come give it a whirl!

I look forward to seeing you bright and early (yes, 5:45am) on a Friday soon!

Hannah leads Vinyasa class on Mondays 12-1pm, and Kundalini class Fridays 5:45am at Leap Yoga

Finding Joy Through Meditation

Joy is Truth.

Sat Nam.

Within you is a fountain of joy, within you is an ocean of bliss! 

— Swami Sivananda

When I think of the word Joy I think of deeply genuine smiles, gut barreling belly laughter, music that sends chills up my spine and words that elicit tears of happiness.

I feel joy when my kids tell me they love me out of the blue or reach for my hand for no reason at all.  I feel joy when I catch my husband looking at me with that look I’ve known since we first met or watching my dog chase wild turkeys and rabbits through the weeds and shrubs that engulf her, ears flapping in the wind.  I feel joy just thinking of dark chocolate cake, with coffee, rich and creamy.

However, there is a deeper layer of joy that I am beginning to understand.  I find this joy when I meditate; when I close my eyes and go deep inside my body.  I arrive here mostly during yoga, but sometimes I find joy while journaling.  I find it alone, in nature, or lying on my bed and listening to the rain fall outside my open window.

This type of joy is inward out joy.  It comes from some place so deep inside of me that it arises in a way that shows me it’s always there.  It’s not situational available.  It’s always there, but it does require me to be present, grounded and still.  It finds me. I don’t look for it.  If I open myself to it and see that it was waiting for me I am joyful that I have found it.  There is no looking.  There is no struggle to find it.

This inner experience of joy makes me grateful and fills me with feelings of contentment and gratitude.  In a state of joy I can fully embrace my favorite mantra…”I have all I need for all I need right now.”   Doubt is erased.  I trust. I feel blessed and alive.

I recognize my true self is joyful.  My true self is also kind, loving, patient, accepting, passionate, calm, and super fun to hang out with.  Joy makes me beautiful, not in a vain or superficial way.  It makes me beautiful in the way that my presence alone brings vibrancy.  In the same way you are beautiful too.  It is simply amazing.

We know that meditation stimulates the parts of our brain that expand our loving compassion for ourselves and for others.  We know it helps us to pause before we react and use more conscious choice in our decision-making.  It slows our reaction time in times of struggle.  A consistent meditation practice lowers the flood of cortisol and down regulates our nervous system.  It does much, much more and is full of amazing things!   All of this reassures me that meditation is a good thing, but the most compelling validation is that my day is better when I meditate and my life improves with my practice.

Come join me at my upcoming meditation workshop learn how you too can arrive in sweet meditational bliss.  Please check the website for details on my November workshop.  I hope to see you there!

Hannah

Divine Relationships

Divine Relationships

A beautiful, divine relationship with our soulmate is something we all deeply long for, and essentially need. Many of us, however, seem to struggle with our  relationships in one way or another.

We find that daily life eats away from the romantic energy that was there when we first began our relationship and dampens the fire of the attraction from the first blissed out weeks.

The little things that were cute in the beginning become a major disturbance.

We stop talking to each other about what is really important to us and deep and  meaningful communication becomes something we just have with our best friend.

Even though our spouse may be the person we love the most, it is this person we hurt the most, or vice versa.

We may want so badly for our partner to change this one bad habit, but they just don’t.

Or, we get angry at each other for minuscule reasons.

The list could be continued…right?

Why is it so difficult?

While there are many good therapists, books, and strategies that offer great relationship advice and practical help, one missing aspect of why we find maintaining a harmonious relationship so complicated is understanding and cultivating the spiritual and energetic part of our relationship.

Energy influences your life on many different levels, and spills into all our relationships. Energies from our past, our karmas, that are stored on the soul level, keep playing out until they are finally resolved.

Then, there is the energy from all the past relationships we had, that stays with us until we can remove it on a deep energetic level.

The relationship we have with our parents, especially our mother, is the deepest, most energetic bond we have in our lives, and it has a great impact on how we live our present relationships.

Everyday we deal with the energy that stays with us from the interactions we have with other people throughout the day. This can create imbalances in us that we inevitably bring home to our family.

The energy from the full and new moon impacts our relationship tremendously, especially if we choose the wrong timings to be intimate.

A lack of unconditional love and mutual understanding can cause constant friction and leads to dissatisfaction and frustration.

The energy of a broken heart caused by an earlier partner, or other traumatic events in our life, can lead to ending a relationship, or never beginning a new one.

We tend to have a deep misunderstanding and unrealistic expectations of the concept of soulmates.

And on top of that, the media tells us every day what a happy relationship looks like, how we should behave to make our partner happy, how often we need to have sex, and how big of a house or car we have to have in order for our relationship to be successful and happy.

All these influences can create disturbances that can make our living together complicated, painful, and sometimes impossible.

How to create Divine Relationships…

In order to take care of these challenges we need to have awareness and acceptance of what is going on for us, and for our partner.

One way to create more awareness and acceptance is to bring more divine energy into our relationship, through intention and meditation. Intention is important for creating the space, the environment for cultivating conscious relationships. Meditation helps us to be more present and makes it easier for us to be aware and observe what is going on in the moment, and directs the energy towards fulfilling our intentions. And besides making us more present, meditation, especially mantra meditation, can be a powerful aid for removing the blocks we carry with us from our past.

Using mantra meditation can greatly support you to successfully deal with the ups and downs of life together as an individual, couple, or family.

  • It aids in healing heartbreak
  • It can rekindle the romantic fire
  • It helps to disconnect old relationships
  • It deals with the pain and heartbreak that comes from infidelity
  • It protects and heals sexual harassment
  • And it decharges energies that we collect over the day through our work and interactions with others

And there is also the practice of forgiveness, which plays a very big role, especially in the relationship we have with our mother, and father and in turn how we parent our children.

Begin with this short practice

If you want to start right away to bring more peace and happiness in your relationship with yourself and others, try to incorporate this short meditation practice into your daily routine. For best results this should be done by both partners, but if only one of you is open to, it it can help as well.

Set aside 10 min of your day for this meditation.

Sit down alone, or together and be comfortable. Set your  intention for the meditation to help you gain clarity and to remove any obstacles that prevent you from living a happy and fulfilled relationship.

The meditation is simply watching your breath, how it flows in and out of your nostrils. When thoughts arise as you are watching your breath, just let them pass by, like clouds, and bring your awareness back to your in and out breath. If the thoughts come back (they most likely will ;-)), let them pass again, and come back to your breath.

Do this practice daily and observe how your interactions change, and how much more awareness and presence comes into your life, and into your relationship.

To take this practice to the next level you can use the Gayatri Mantra in your meditation. You can chant it aloud or silently in your mind. You can download a beautiful recording of it chanted by Nina Ketscher here.

Listen to the recording to support your meditation while you learn how to pronounce it. Again, set your intention to gain clarity and to remove any obstacle that prevents you from having a happy and fulfilled relationship.

More knowledge and more practices

This sharing is a tiny bit of the knowledge and energetic practices for healing your relationship and making it happy.

If you want to know more check out the workshop Divine Relationships, coming on 08.21.2016 at Leap Yoga.

Have happy and fulfilled Divine relationships.

 

Steve Ketscher

Sharing Yoga with Children

“If every eight year old is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.” –Dalai Lama

by Teya Johnson

Just think about that for a moment. My first yoga teacher training was for children. It was an extensive year-long program with almost three hundred hours in credit. Time invested in our youth is something worth giving. Yoga provides an outlet for children to practice mindfulness, peace education and look deeper within ones’ self.

Mindfulness practices allow the child to be alert and aware. Benefits of mindfulness include decreased depression and anxiety and increased happiness. Peace education helps the child become an advocate in an environment where there is also hate and misunderstanding. And as a stronger, confident individual at a young age, this develops with maturity and redefines the future. Being thoughtful and mindful of ones’ self and others brings well-being and worldly acceptance into the picture.

Being able to share all of this with children through yoga is such a blessing. In my yoga classes for children, I incorporate these topics in a variety of ways. We touch on the basics of anatomy and meditation. Meditation permits the child to calm their mind and body. It helps them to be okay with turning inward to discover their own answers and acceptance. Yoga coming alive through reading allows the body to move to interpret stories being read aloud. Visual vignettes help children feel the rhythm and flow of music and use different parts of their bodies to create art. Active yoga-inspired games let the children forget who is watching and just be themselves.

There is something to be said of the yin and yang of life in general. I truly believe that yoga and the skills it provides can be the yin to the yang of children’s lifestyles. So many children are overly stimulated with not only all sorts of electronics but so many extracurricular activities including an assortment of different sports as well. Yoga helps children listen with a caring heart. As a lifelong learner, I enjoy sharing my passion of yoga with others because it can bring smiles and a new sense of consciousness to ones’ life. With yoga, children can stretch, relax and breathe in a way they’re not normally accustomed. Yoga is such a great compliment to everyday life.

 

How Far is Too Far?

There is a common question among most students; how far is too far? People are uncertain about how to find their edge in a yoga practice and when to back off. There is a simple answer to this question. The answer is your breath. Breath is one of the best ways to gauge and moderate how far you can challenge yourself and when you should pull the reins to slow down and pause.

Yoga is a practice of breath, observation, and discernment. We learn to become a witness to our breath within a state of controlled stress to discern the things we can change from the things we cannot change. Breath is your best teacher because it encapsulates the essence of yoga; the union of duality and oneness. Your breath can be a voluntary or involuntary action, and yet this process comes from a single place: you! By better understanding the process of breathing, you can learn to identify how much tension you can release without obstructing the integrity of your body.

Follow your breath wherever you go. The quality of your breath represents the quality of your living. The next time you get confused if you should challenge yourself or step back, just tell yourself one thing….BREATHE!

Take care and keep breathing!

Michael Fong

Teaching yoga can be tricky

by: Emily Robinson

Teaching yoga can be tricky at times. Something we don’t often talk about. One of my teachers told me years ago if you start teaching solely for the money it can become toxic. And yet after the hours and years of training getting a paycheck is an honor as well. I’m still surprised and grateful when I get my monthly check for teaching. Almost as grateful as I am I get to wear hippie yoga pants to teach in.

When I first started teaching years ago it was always for free. Eager to teach but not confident enough to charge for a class. Something beautiful happened with this though. Once I started teaching I was asked todo host workshops or events. I had a hard time charging and honestly asking for others to pay more than currently paying with a studio membership.  Or that is what I told myself. When in truth I was afraid to charge or ask for the exchange of payment for my time. I’m still working on that. The value of my time. So leading events for donation only or another cause became part of me. Part of my yoga journey. I am devoted to this.

From my beginnings as a teacher the beautiful thing that came from this is I had no issue in charging for classes or workshops that were for a greater cause. A cause that needed recognition or support. Financially and energetically.

The feeling for me coming together in a large group of yogis is like nothing else. Giggles. Tears. Sweats. Community groans or laughter through a pose. We find there we all belong. We are all the same in so many ways and we find we can celebrate and honor our differences at the highest level.

St. John’s is an amazing organization for women and children. Perhaps it is just by grace that I have  not needed their support in this life. However, they need ours. Please show up this Sunday at Leap for a very special workshop. Vinyasa and Yin. 1-3pm. Sign up now. All proceeds go to St John’s. If you need a sliding scale talk to me. If at this time you can just donate your energy, love and presence reach out to me.

Love to each of you. I am so very grateful for our community at Leap.

yogaemmy@me.com

Stacy’s Story

Hi yogis! Hope this week finds you all well. Im excited about this weeks post, as this week we’ll get to know Stacy and her story a little more.

For those of you who have taken Stacy Whittingham’s classes, you know that there is something about this woman that shines so bright it fills the room. She moves with grace and has so much
love and passion for people; she genuinely cares about supporting others in their personal journeys to health and wholeness.

Last year I had the privilege of going through Stacy and Gena’s teacher training and got to know Stacy on a deeper level. With her permission, I’m honored to share with you part of her story!

Living the American dream and working in corporate America, Stacy found herself run down and in a yoga class. After a series of divine interruptions (don’t you love those?!) she was lead to her teacher Rusty Wells, in San Francisco. Soon she completed first teacher training. It was clear at that point that this was her path, and with that, She dove all in and has never looked back.

Stacy’s journey to embracing the yogic lifestyle lead her to Mahendra Briksha  who quickly became one of her teachers. As she studied under Briksha they eventually became friends and collaborated co-creating a yogic catering and conscious eating education venture in San Francisco called Bhakti Kitchen.

During this time Stacy’s sister was diagnosed with cancer. Stacy took this diagnosis as an opportunity to grab hold of her passion and convictions and dive in deeper, learning more about how to heal the body with food. As she supported her sister through this battle she saw the fruits of the yogic diet manifest in her sisters healing. The valley of pain and struggle became a gateway for hope as Stacy’s sister went into remission and has been cancer free for the past five years. Stacy experienced first hand and in a powerful way the potential food has to heal the body, if we allow it.

Stacy lives Yoga. If you know her to any extent, you know this. She believes yoga is not just something we practice on the mat, but that as we step off the mat we are to step into the world and “walk like a yogi.” Every January she herself goes to San Francisco to join a community of between 100-200 yogis who practice an annual detox flow with her teacher Stephanie Snyder .

Stacy has been leading cleanse workshops at Leap for the past four years. She also Leads workshops and has clients in San Francisco as well and around the Sacramento area. Though she works with individual clients, what she loves is walking through the experience of cleansing in community. There is strength and support in that.

When I asked her what she loves the most about watching people go through her detox/cleanse workshops, she had a hard time sharing just one thing. What she did say is that “It changes their lives” and having gone through her teacher training, I can attest to the gift Stacy has to influence and change lives!

It’s a new year Yogis! Its time to breakup with the craving cycle, the unhealthy habits and rise up to a new level of wholeness, to take yoga off our mats and into our kitchens. To really experience the power of yoga, the power of loving ourselves, even with the food we eat. I know I personally have struggle in this area for most of my life. I’ve struggle with body shaming myself, and putting limitations on myself and I know how good and freeing it feels when we let go of what’s no longer serving us emotionally, spiritually, relationally and physically. I know I’m going to make the most of this gift we have in our community found in Stacy and glean from her all she has to offer. I invite you to join me, I hope you will! It’s time my friends to choose the best for our lives.

Stacy is starting off her workshop with a DETOX FLOW on Jan 16th and you do not want to miss this vital part to the process. This is the space where we pair movement and breath to prepare the body to release and receive everything else that’s coming in the 7 DAY CLEANSE. You know how its wise to build a house on a solid foundation, consider this detox flow your foundation for the cleanse workshop. Starting on the 17th, the week to follow we will be educated, equipped, inspired and supported by Stacy (and each other) as she walks us through what she has shared with so many others and little by little, step by step, we will become the healthiest versions of ourselves! Lets do this friends!!

I’m excited! Are you?! Hope to see you there!

namaste!

Tanya