Happy summer everyone!! I hope you are all having adventures and enjoying each day as much as possible. 

I took some time off from teaching yoga for a bit, sometimes I need the space and time to digest what i have learned and, also, to decide what I am going to do next. I do love teaching, and for me, part of it is following the ebb and flow of my own ability for give and take, for growth, and for creativity. I really get into it.

I’ve recently begun teaching at Truly Fit, and I have to come up with a teacher bio. Searching my computer to piece together a little something, I came across this essay about yoga and this blog. I think I was going to post it on my “bio” or “about” page. I’m not sure when I wrote it, but I never posted it (it’s a little ambivalent). However, in keeping with social media’s “throw back Thursday” – I am posting it today. 

Here goes . . . 

For the longest time I’ve had my Yoga Bio up on this page – and for the longest time I feel like it doesn’t say who I am. Really, how could it?

Yeah, I teach yoga.  It’s totally hip.

Nowadays, being a yoga teacher could mean I am a bored housewife who decided what fun it would be to stay in shape while I teach my other bored housewife friends yoga. We could dish about the latest articles and outfits in Yoga Journal over chai lattes after class.

Or maybe I am a middle-aged divorcee who started taking yoga to keep myself grounded after my horrible break-up.

Maybe I am a tree-hugging granola-type who likes to spend time all day spacing out.

Maybe I like to wear spandex.

Yoga is hip. Maybe that’s good, maybe it isn’t. Some people will try yoga. Cool.

I really can’t stand yoga clichés.

The truth of the matter is, I do yoga because it feels good. I like being around other people who are feeling good, too.

When I trained to be a yoga teacher back in 1996, most people thought I was crazy. Live on an ashram for a month? Is a yoga farm like that Spinal Tap song Sex Farm? Chant? Meditate? What’s a sutra? Why do you wanna be a freak and bend like a pretzel?

Yoga training was hardcore. One week into it, even I feared (for a moment) I was being sucked into a cult. But, I stuck with it. I weakly held on to the fact in the back of my mind that I was in a band, and without a lead singer they couldn’t play gigs, so one of my band mates for certain would rescue me if I needed it. Mostly, though, I let go and allowed myself to be and to learn and to change.

I remember the night before yoga teacher graduation. I was in a group hug with four of my classmates. We declared that our time on the ashram was “the eternity that never was”.  That cosmic blip in the space of my life experience softened me (and still continues to soften me).

Since then, yoga has become very popular in the U.S.—and far more westernized than how I learned it at Sivananda. But then again, perhaps the whole world is a bit more westernized.

My life has shifted since I began practicing yoga, too. Sometimes I am not as steady with my practice as I’d like to be, but I do the best I can. Perhaps yoga helps me to settle my experiences in my body and consciousness.

My yoga bio is only a small part of the story. I put it on the site because I teach yoga.

But what is Sacred Folly blog about?

It’s about what I’m into—and I’m into a lot of things. I’ll post stuff about (and not limited to): yoga, spirituality, music (my own and other musicians), visual art (painting, photography, etching, artists), crafts, writing (essays, poetry, short-fiction, book reviews, other writers) sub-culture, counter-culture, perma-culture, DIY-culture, bicycling, Beauty (with a capital B), nutrition, medicinal herbs, magic, astrology, tarot, alternative healing, sustainability, mother earth, shards of memory, and dreams—stuff that makes me marvel at being alive.

Maybe I made this site to help myself navigate through what it means to be human.

Om shanti, shanti om.

Thanks for reading!