I'm a generally positive person. I really believe that everything happens for a reason. Most of the time, when negative or disappointing things happen I'm the first to try to put a positive spin on those events. I do the same for my friends too, encouraging them to turn their “lemons into lemonade” and to “find the silver lining.” But I also hold the space for them to feel bad, too. Not ... View Post
World Mental Health Day
Today is World Mental Health Day, and the hashtag is blowing up on Twitter. I find this so encouraging, because mental health, even in the year 2017, is not something that we talk about honestly and openly. I find that the conversation is particularly restrained for women, and even more so for women of color. The “fairer sex” has been shouldering the brunt of the emotional trauma experienced by ... View Post
How Do I Stop Queefing in Yoga Class?
I love shoulder stand. I really do, I swear. But if I'm going to do shoulder stand in class, I better be feeling really confident, because I know I'm going to queef all over the freaking place as soon as I try to come out of it. Yup, I admitted it. I'm a yoga queefer. In fact, I'm an RYQ—a Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga Queefer. Okay, all joking aside, this has to be one of the most mortifying ... View Post
Self Care In Color Virtual Retreat
Today is National Women’s Health Day! I feel that this is a tremendously important topic, because women are like Maseratis. We are high-output, high-performance machines, and we need to take care of ourselves if we’re going to continue to run at capacity. For that reason, I wanted to take the opportunity to feature Graeme Seabrook’s Self Care In Color, a virtual online retreat created for ... View Post
How Do I Start Doing Advanced Yoga?
I teach a lot of beginners. Like many yoga instructors, I found that studio jobs were really competitive and hard to get as a freshly minted RYT, so I found myself in gyms a lot. Many of my students had never set foot on a mat before, and were unimpressed by my Sanskrit or my sutras. I had been embarrassed that as a teacher I couldn't do what I thought was "advanced yoga," like handstands and ... View Post
What I Learned When I Started Practicing Yoga
I was one of those lucky girls that could eat whatever they wanted to eat and never gain an ounce. I wasn’t particularly thrilled about that, but other people seemed to think it was an enviable trait. I’ve always been fairly active, so I wasn’t really looking to become more fit or healthy either. I began practicing yoga in 2009 mostly because someone told me that I should and that I would probably ... View Post