I have completed a 200 hour yoga teacher training program and registered as a teacher with the Yoga Alliance. As part of the training process I developed an hour-long vinyasa flow yoga class as a vehicle to share yoga. With a background studying Ashtanga Vinyasa Yoga and Nonduality, my teachings reflect a mix of slow flow yoga and breathwork with nondual pointers. I am especially interested in welcoming anyone to find mental health and wellness through yoga and meditation without exclusion due to diagnosis or other social political constructs. You can face and accept yourself as you are. There are many variations in yoga to help bring you home to rest in your true nature. If you would like to explore these with a private lesson in the Portland, Maine area or via Skype, leave a message on my contact page.
Preparing To Teach Yoga
Under a Hawaiian mango tree in 1994, initial experimentation with spinning in circles until falling down, inverting my head below my feet in a rain gulley, and holding my breath while asking the question “who am I” lead to an expansion of my sense of self to the infinite.
Seven years of extensive street drug and pharmaceutical use could only temporarily hide the new awareness that conflicted with my scientific materialistic public school upbringing. Then I was drawn to read the Yoga Sutras of Patañjali, and was relieved to know someone else sometime else shared similar experience and understanding.
In 2001 I began to study for many years with preeminent teachers of yoga and meditation both in India and the U.S. I salted these studies with talks, meditation, and tantra instruction by Buddhist Rinpoches and peppered the mixture with exposure to shamans.
Though not for lack of trying, I have not been able to shake the expanded sense of self but have learned to live with the experience of it, be it infinite bliss, or unending aloneness. I learned to re-engage the boundaries of the individual sense of self that I had been socialized into as a child in order to navigate the world of relationship with others.
I am currently enrolled in a 200-hour yoga teacher training course learning the practicalities of how to share yoga with others. Check back late this summer for updates on yoga offerings.