Viparita karani: You probably know it as Legs Up the Wall pose and, chances are, you’ve enjoyed this relaxing pose at the end of a gentle or hatha yoga class. This posture may look simple – and even feel simple; however, there is much more to it than meets the eye.
Read MoreCasey discovered yoga in 2009 while searching for a path towards healing. After feeling disconnected for years, yoga provided the space and tools needed to befriend her own body and release past trauma. As her practice deepened, she experienced how the power of breath, movement, and present moment awareness can lead to a more embodied life. With a background in victim advocacy, she wanted to learn more and be able to share this healing practice with others. She completed her RYT 200 training through Core Power Yoga in 2013 and has been teaching in various settings since. Casey has additional training in Yin yoga, trauma-informed yoga, and Reiki. She strives to create a safe and welcoming space for all students to explore movement and reconnect with their body and breath. Casey lives with her family near Northfield and in her spare time enjoys reading, cooking, paddleboarding, and puzzles.
Isabel fell in love with yoga in high school and has been coming back to the practice ever since. She completed her RYT-200 teacher training at Green Lotus in 2019 and has done continuing education in trauma-informed and addiction-recovery approaches to yoga practice. Isabel has a strong background in dance and the arts and loves to bring movement and creativity into all aspects of life. Isabel's yoga and meditation practice has taught her how to navigate difficult times with grace and courage. Her mission is to help others deepen their inner connection and find more balance and joy in life.
Jennifer became dedicated to her practice in 2012. She was looking for a way to manage stress and anxiety, deepen her spirituality with meditation, and help heal from a past knee injury. Through yoga, she also found that her practice taught self-love, gratitude, forgiveness, and kindness for all beings. Jennifer has a decade of experience in the Human Services field helping clients with basic human needs. Combining her passion for yoga and humanities led her to get certified as a RYT 200 through the Green Lotus Teacher Training program in 2022. She is currently studying to be a RYT 500 (advanced) SomaYoga Teacher at Yoga North’s International SomaYoga Institute. This experience will help deepen her therapeutic approach to teaching yoga. Helping others create balance through different styles of breathwork, asana, and loving self-talk is a way for Jennifer to give back to the community. She has a passion for wellness, and believes that love is a basic human need. Finding freedom in movement, showing yourself and others love, and mantra are some of experiences you may find in Jennifer’s class. Off the mat, she enjoys spending time with her family, hiking trails, cooking, and making jewelry.
Kaitlen began practicing yoga more than 20 years ago when pregnant with her daughter. Yoga and meditation had a profound effect on her (and her labor!), and it has “ held her hand” ever since. She has studied many styles of yoga and meditation throughout the years and continues to be guided to share the teachings with her students.
Her classes emphasis alignment and body awareness, pranayama, and intentional movements with a graceful presence. Weaving together rich teachings of Hatha, Vinyasa, Yin, and Chinese Medicine opens space to discover, to release, and to connect inward. Kaitlen particularly enjoys exploring the intersection of the sister science of Ayurveda and yoga with Chinese Medicine and uniting these two medicines in both acupuncture sessions and classes.
She believes yoga is a synergy, an exploration of breath, body, and mind, and that at its core, reveals your spirit and your truest self.
Kaitlen graduated from the 200-hour program at the Devanadi School of Yoga and is continuing her studies in its 300-hour program. She is a 50-hour-certified Yin instructor and carries a master's degree in Chinese Medicine; she is certified in massage and bodywork. Kaitlen is inquisitive and curious, always learning and exploring holistic therapy and wellness that can create vitality and longevity and elevate our vibration in the world.
Kaitlen lives in St. Paul with her husband and two dogs and has two adult children. In her free time, she enjoys seasonal cooking, hiking, and exploring nature, travel, and creative gardening.
Yogi, seeress, star child, and lover of beauty….
Victoria Blackbird completed her RYT 200 yoga teacher certification from Devanadi School of Yoga and Wellness, where she also received her Reiki Master attunement. She has been practicing as a Shamanic Energy Medicine Practitioner and Holistic Health and Wellness Coach since receiving her rights and initiations with The Four Winds Society in 2018. Victoria blends her traditional training and intuitive energetic gifts with plant medicine and modern-day tools. Her intention is to guide others in their practice toward true authenticity, cultivating personal power and inner peace along the way.
Rian’s story begins with the growing true awareness of her physical body at the age of 12 through health concerns, loss of faith, physical weaknesses, and emotional struggles. Not knowing where to turn, she threw herself into fitness and ultimately found yoga at 15. She dabbled in it for a number of years, practicing even through pregnancy with her first child in 2012. Yoga evolved into a major tool in her growth process. Following her heart, in 2015 she completed the Green Lotus’s 200-hour teacher-training program. She later completed the 500-hour teacher-training certification at Green Lotus, become a mother of three, is a wife to a magnificent man, and stays home to raise her family and manage the home. Without her foundation, she would not have faced life’s lessons with the grace she found through the lens of yoga. She now works to share that lens with others on and off the mat. She is a guide, honored to walk alongside you in community with others.
As summer turns to fall in our midwestern clime, we observe the earth and plant life beginning to dry. We may feel this same sense of dryness or brittleness in our physical bodies or our emotional states. The near-constant motion of the autumn breezes and the sense of change permeating the air may manifest in our energies as feelings of anxiety or restlessness.
Read MoreThis is a song of life. Like most songs, and all stories of life, it contains both joy and sadness, and it begins like this.
Read MoreWe settled around the blue farm table in Deborah’s kitchen. Its worn wooden surface carried many layers of aqua-colored paint, applied seasonally by Deborah, a five-foot tall sprite with bright eyes, vibrant wit, and a flare for bringing people together….
Read MoreAnyone who has flown commercially has heard the phrase, “Put on your own oxygen mask before assisting others.” This same idea can be applied to our everyday lives; to serve others in a meaningful way, you must first serve yourself. How often do we recognize the need to put ourselves first?
Read MoreSetting goals is an important step on your path to well-being. Understanding and learning to manage the obstacles we will confront along that path prevents them from becoming barriers and allows us to work through them to achieve our goals.
Read MoreBook Review: When Women Were Dragons by Kelly Barnhill
When you read the words lush, rollicking, and imaginative to describe a new novel, it’s difficult to not read it. And when several people you admire as readers recommend it, then it turns into an impossibility, especially when the plot turns on the ability of women in the 1950s being able to turn themselves into dragons.
Read MoreThe yoga Vedic teaching to speak the sweet truth – Satyaṃ brūyāt priyaṃ brūyāt in Sanskrit – invites us to use exquisite subtlety in communicating the truth which virtually demands that we pause before speaking. The teaching goes on:
Read MoreI love galette as a vehicle for pears because their subtle flavor can get lost in a more complicated dessert. An added bonus — this pastry is so simple to make, especially if you use a premade crust….
Read MoreFloating when depleted proves to be a strong Rx, a natural one, too. You don’t need to be on an ocean- or river-bound ship to do it, either. Floating, I’ve come to realize, comes in many versions and leads to a more- restive state of mind…
Read MoreOur world is constantly evolving, and part of that evolution is that now, more humans are expressing their true nature. New words are coming into use to describe the beautiful varieties of humans and human relationships like cis, cisgender, trans, gender binary, poly, genderfluid, ENM (ethical non-monogamy), to name a few. For some, these new words are a source of discomfort, confusion, or even prejudice. All of these words, however, simply describe our fellow humans. And every human is worthy of ahimsa - acknowledgment, respect, compassion, and love.
Read MoreWe entered Leo season on July 22 and will remain there until August 22. Leo is the astrological sign that often leaves us scratching our heads and feeling unsure of others’ intentions. Traditionally known for drama and demanding behavior, this sign is far more than meets the eye.
Read MoreI’m depleted. Out of juice. Stopped dead in my tracks. I know I’m not alone. Just saying the words, “I’m depleted” somewhat eases the sense of depletion. I suspect you might know the feeling. The question is: Why does it take so long to admit it? And who do we think we’re fooling?
Like so many of you, I am finely attuned to my body and to my mind. The slightest change in calibration – be it physical, mental, emotional, spiritual - reverberates throughout my integrated system like shock waves. I trust my body and what it communicates, and I trust that I know my body best. I trust myself to make sound decisions that affect my body, mind, and spirit – I trust you to make yours.
What I mistrust? The ubiquitous “I’m fine”, “I’m well”, “I’m good” when someone asks me how I am and when I ask someone else. This mistrust bases itself on my direct experience. If I, your average human being albeit one who possessed huge amounts of energy, feels depleted from time to time, I assume with a high degree of confidence that most other humans do, too.
My depletion flows from a hidden underground spring of challenges, many of which we share. A primary culprit? Two years of coping and then recovering from the pandemic – in the case of MB and me fighting to save a business while facing the worry about loved ones. We’ve heard your pandemic sagas, too: saving your kids from the shock and challenge created from it, working from home (a blessing and a curse), feeling stuck.
Depletion results from so many triggers: grief, worry, overwork, no work, conflict with friends and family members, overeating and undereating, too much exercise and, for most of us, too little. Sometimes the cause slams into us like the fast-moving service vehicle that recently rear-ended my car on the freeway from following too close. When an accident happened in front of me, and I was able to avoid colliding into it because I’d left enough space, the driver behind me had not. Stopped dead in my tracks turned out not to just be a phrase. That impact depleted me in multiple ways and forced me into cutting back my schedule.
I wanted to keep going – this is both an instinct and a learned behavior (“just keep going” being a favorite idiom in many family structures). My head, my neck, my brain, my mind, my heart say otherwise. I’m listening to them. MB said recently and kindly, “My Energizer Bunny is missing in action.”
Stopping for a while, what a notion. It’s in the pause that we find ourselves and our well-being again. I’m working less because those are the doc’s orders as my eyes and brain require time to establish the proper communications patterns between them. In the pause, a secret revealed itself to me: When we finally admit to feeling depleted, healing and rebounding begin. Slowly, the body wants to move again. Carefully, the brain permits trying different approaches to counter the ever-present pounding headache. Mindful that we are energy, we attune to the ebb and flow of it and make different choices.
What if, when you feel depleted, you stopped yourself dead in your tracks? What if, instead of blustering through with the “I’m fine” and “I’m well”, you told the truth – “Right now, I’m pausing for a bit”? Would you, like me, begin to turn a corner into respecting your body, mind, spirt? And if you’re already practiced at this, share your stories.
What I’ve learned from this experience is to honor only that which I am feeling – whatever the feeling is – and pause in it. In the pause a solution reveals itself, whether it’s for rest, action, reflection.
The philosophy of yoga encourages us to “stay in the body”; to find the middle path; to non-harming ourselves and others (ahimsa); to telling the truth to ourselves and others (satya), and to cleanliness toward ourselves and others (saucha), which means to take care with ourselves and others.
Don’t wait for a debilitating shock to your system, for doctor’s orders, for collapse. Admitting to depletion (satya) completes it so we can move forward with the confidence that we know ourselves best. Admitting to depletion is the first step in defeating depletion. Join me.
The ancient art and practice of the 8-limbed path of yoga, of which pranayama is an integral branch, focuses on this three-part connection of body, mind, and breath (or spirit) - three integral components or ingredients that lead to a solid, growing, and focused yoga practice. These three facets of our practice are undeniably connected, interwoven, and entangled even if we are not consciously aware of their triangulation with each other.
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