I took my first yoga class for gym credit in 2000 while I was a student at the University of Vermont. I remember knowing immediately that I had found my way to something that would stay with me for the rest of my life. After 16 years of practice, in 2016, I felt ready to embark on the path of becoming a teacher. I did so with a tremendous amount of sincerity, humility, and responsibility. I remain first and foremost a student-continuing to study, listen, share and deepen my own practice with immense gratitude for the trust placed in me to guide others along their own path.

Over the past three decades my practice has changed as I have changed. It supported me through different stages and circumstances of life-through moments of intense growth & strength, various injuries, grief & loss, motherhood, and currently the woes of midlife-continually asking me to pay attention, to listen, and to meet myself in the here and now. Over time, I came to understand yoga not as something to master, but as a lifelong practice—one that offers us a way to be in relationship with ourselves, with others, and with the inevitable challenges of being human.

I was never particularly interested in yoga as a pursuit of perfection or performance. Rather, I experienced the practices themselves as opportunities for self-study and self-acceptance- a way to develop a more nuanced relationship with my body and mind, and to discover new ways of responding to life with greater steadiness, authenticity, and ease.

This understanding eventually led me to Yoga Therapy. I came to see the practices of yoga as tools for navigating life—not as ways to escape difficulty or bolster the ego, but as a way to develop the capacity to be with what is present and to accept the inevitability of change. Yoga has taught me that with time, study and dedication to our practice we can become more skillful at living, and perhaps equally important, more capable of being with suffering.

This perspective continues to inform my work as both a Yoga Teacher and a Yoga Therapist: that practice is not about becoming someone different, but instead is a way of cultivating the awareness, compassion, and resilience to more fully inhabit the life we are already living.