Vanity and suffering (from anxiety, injury and an autoimmune diagnosis) brought me limping into my first Yoga class at a DC gym and I have been practicing with varying degrees of intensity for the last 25 years.

I began teaching enthusiastically and prematurely (!) 18 years ago.  I had to complete 4 years questing for vision on a blanket and have three children to be able to return with a sense of grounded connection, renewed faith and a deeper experiential understanding of the Teachings and how they organically unfold on the Prayer Rug (the mat). Teaching yoga is an extension of my own practice and studies; it is the offering I make to pay back the debt I gratefully owe to those who came before.

~Thank you to my Teachers~

I have been blessed with extraordinary teachers along the way, both yogic and indigenous and their energies continue to inform and steady me.   A tattered copy of BKS Iyengar’s Light on Yoga has been my longest companion and I am grateful for Guruji’s life and generosity; Gyandev and Diksha McCord at Expanding Light ashram were my first meditation teachers; Eileen Muir at Karuna, my closest and most steady; Rodney Yee and Patricia Walden left lasting impressions and Dedie King and the community at Listening Wellness who gave me space to teach.  Nana Mercedes of Guatemala gave me the most simple and profound tools of the Mayan Medicines; Mary Thunder, Sparky Shooting Star and Jetta Petrie walk(ed) between the worlds of red and white and created ceremonial containers to hold me in my most confused and shameful, to be witnessed and relieved in the process.

Among the greatest boons of this inner journey, I re-membered and re-connected with my innate artistic expression and became a self-taught stained glass artist and part-time elementary art teacher. Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a mentorship with Joan Hanley and inspiration from Candace Anderson and Jill Goldman-Callahan have offered invaluable guidance. All the art you see here is a result of this reclamation.

Loving books, my classes are rooted in the wisdom of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, the BhagavadGita and the Gospels (of Mary Magdalene and the Gnostics).  I have also found Teachers thru the Ethers to guide me along the way… the Work of psychoanalysts Marion Woodman, Carl Jung, Alexander Lowen and Maurice Nicoll; Eastern wisdom teachers Sri Aurobindo and the Mother, Krishnamurti, Anthony DeMello, Ravi Ravindra and the mystic poets from all religions and of all ages.  You will hear the echo of their voices woven into and inspiring my asana classes. 

And most importantly, gratitude to my parents who gave me life, to my beloved Heartside and the family of five we have created and to the Village School community who has held us along the way; for they have been the most powerful spiritual teaching container I could ask for.