Teach To Learn; From Love, For Love, With Love

Towards the end of 2014, my husband Matthew and I bought Yoga Center Amherst from Patty Townsend. While I was 100% sure that yoga was my life’s aspiration, I wasn’t sure that I wanted to own a yoga studio because of the commercialism and cultural appropriation inherent to Western yoga studio culture. But when I prayed about it, I received a clear message from the Divine Mother to say yes to taking this on.

As we were moving through the purchase agreements, it became clear that owning/directing the studio also meant that I would take on the lead teacher role of the teacher training that Patty had been previously doing and I had been assisting. I witnessed myself shrinking back, feeling the energies that try to keep me small, and I thought “these are very big shoes to fill, how could I possibly fill them”

Over time I realized it wasn’t about filling in anyone else’s shoes. It was about filling out my own shoes. It was about trusting my heart, inner guidance and my profound reverence and love for the practices, teachings and path of yoga. All I needed to do was wear my shoes as I was meant to wear them. This embodied realization became a torch that would continue to light the path forward.

In finding my voice and the light that guides me as a student, teacher and teacher trainer, I have found ways to support others in finding their voice and unique paths as students and teachers. I have learned to practice, learn, share, and teach yoga from love - for love - out of love - with love - for the sake of love. To step away from dogmatic rules and truly honor yoga from the inside, out.

Over two decades of teaching has shown me that everything we are traversing in life can be placed on the altar of divine love and taken on as a living yoga sadhana. Approaching life as a living yoga sadhana helps us to dismantle what we think we know, to realize that most of our thoughts don’t represent truth and that deep within us, we have endless courage to keep seeking deeper expressions of Truth. Each of us is a unique and beautiful expression of the whole universe. When we allow ourselves to bathe in the teachings of yoga and express them through us in unique ways, be it in an āsāna, a prānāyāma or the way life calls us into our unique dharma, we each become the puzzle piece that completes the whole. Actually knowing and feeling that we are a part of the whole joins us with unity consciousness, which is yoga. We can look for this experience of unity even while in an āsāna as we push hands to tail and feet to head, supported by breath, bandhas and navel yield.

Spring of 2015 was my first courageous leap into lead teaching the YTT and I inherited a beautiful curriculum to shape, mold and paint as my heart felt called to. Patty trusted me with what she had created over the decades and that helped me trust myself and to find my authentic offering. Each year new ideas, inspirations and important aspects come to me to weave into the curriculum. Every training year I experience what I call the great reveal - the unfoldment of what needs to be taught, how it should be taught and when it should be offered. I’m always in awe of the great reveal and how I experience it as a divine stream moving through me as inner guidance so that I may be of service to others on the path towards union, freedom, love and truth.

I love the depths we traverse within ourselves, the teachings of yoga and sharing as a community. I love embodiment practices as a way to process energetic sensitivity, deepen awareness and connect with Self and Divinity. I love the way the teachings of the texts merge with practices through concentration, meditation, breath control, our bodies and everyday life. I love taking a philosophical teaching and exploring the ways it intersects with an embodiment practice on the mat or cushion and in our everyday lives as we navigate relating, learning, and loving. I love how the container of the training gives us time and space to really dive into a living yoga, seeking a Life Divine in community. Each year new elements are added and returning ones are deepened in whatever way the great reveal offers.

These training programs are alive. They are rooted in deep, authentic teachings and practices of Indic wisdom and they keep evolving with time and awareness that widens, expands and deepens.

I teach to learn. I teach to share what I know and love. I teach to see you, witness you and serve you in becoming your true self. I teach to create a space for us all to be brave and allow for devotion, awe, reverence and worship to flow through in whatever ways are unique to each of you.

May our every breath be a prayer towards cultivating peace, unity and love within ourselves and our hurting world. May we practice and teach to wake up and support others along the path towards awakening and unity consciousness.