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I’ve recently been drawn to orchids. I’m so fascinated and intrigued by them. For some varieties I find there is a simple elegant quiet grace to them and others are wildly bold and enchanting. In all kinds there is a profound complexity that exists in their structure and how they reveal themselves. They are all exquisitely beautiful and mysterious. It’s so difficult to use only 3 words but what comes to mind is that I’d describe their personality as elegantly graceful, exquisitely beautiful, and profoundly mysterious.
My yoga teaching and personal practice are very influenced by the 5 elements of earth, metal, water, wood, and fire. My sequences and practice flows work with opening and unblocking the meridians from traditional Chinese medicine that are associated with those elements. To create balance and opening, I blend together yoga postures, functional strength and flexibility training exercises, therapeutic brain-based movements, and improvisational free form movements.
I am constantly seeking nature and the outdoors for replenishment, restoration, and rejuvenation. Being in nature I reconnect to a grounding mindful way of being. All of my senses open and I feel infused with a sense of joyfulness and expansiveness.
I want to help people live in their bodies, really inhabit them and have a sense of embodied wakefulness in their human forms. I aspire to help people reconnect with the sensations in their body so they get to know themselves better more fully and reclaim the autonomy of their bodies. I value and believe in the power of yoga and mindful movement as a path to personal and collective transformation. When we reconnect and sense into our bodies in specific intuitive ways, we find there has been a deep forgetting. Once we begin to restore that feeling of inhabiting the body, revitalize that which has been dormant, reclaim our natural presence and vitality, we reawaken us as our fullest most authentic selves in all of our power and grace. And we are home. We become more fully awake and alive, remember the joys of moving our bodies and find we can live in a more conscious connected being state with a wide open mind and a wide open compassionate heart.
I started to dive deeper into broadening my view of caring for one’s health when both my parents had to deal with major health issues and I had a number of health issues of my own. I have a deep curiosity for understanding the root causes of things and I’ve done a lot of searching, questioning, and studying to discover what practices are best for myself and close loved ones. I’ve found looking at health from a holistic point of view is most supportive. It’s taken a lot of experimenting and deep listening to what my body needs. I do my best to respond and utilize tools to support those needs. I’ve discovered that health is a matrix of interdependent body systems and that if I care for all those systems, give them a bit of attention regularly, then I feel my best. I look mainly to plants for nourishment and healing. I try to live in a way where I’m conscious of what is in my environment and intend to live in a way to lessen the toxic load on my body and energy. All this, combined with healthy respect for conventional care when needed.
I’ve found that happiness is interrelated and intertwined to my health. If I’m caring for my health, my happiness is positively affected. And with my study of yoga and meditation, that perspective has really opened my eyes that happiness can be in each step of each moment of our daily lives. We can often choose how we feel in any given moment, and by pausing and relishing in the gifts we have, and feeling gratitude for what’s right here, our happiness can be abundant.
Mindful awareness is woven into the tapestry of all the work I do. It is a key thread and integral to everything I share. I’m very interested in supporting people to feel and be mindful in a way that awakens one to the fullness of each moment so we can live in our fullest creative potential.
My movement and contemplative practices help me open up more awareness in my self and my environment. I set aside time for my formal yoga and meditation practice, as well as take short breaks throughout the day for mini sessions of improvisational movement and moments of breath awareness.
When I’m outside in nature I journal or write poetry about what subtle nuances my senses have experienced. For example, I lie in the grass taking in the sky and clouds and feel the blades of grass and ground beneath me and write a haiku to capture my experience. I also often find myself asking, “How does nature inspire me to move? What movements can I explore that are inspired by the movements in nature – the wave of trees, the falling of leaves, the quiet of snow, the ebb and flow of water, the scuttling of crabs, the brilliance and vibrancy of flowers, the songs of birds.” Then I explore by mimicking the movements I observe or hear, or feel into what I see or hear and explore how that translates into movement. With both explorations I am listening deeply to how my body would like to move. Through this kind of discovery process I come away feeling refreshed and deeply nourished.
At sunset I often go up to the roof of my apartment and move and dance surrounded by the open sky. I drink in the stunning patterns of the clouds, the vibrant pinks and oranges of the setting sun, the silhouettes of the cityscape in the distance, and feel a renewed sense of openness and awakeness and aliveness.
Curiosity and discovery has played a big role in guiding me in my exploration as a yoga teacher and movement specialist. I’ve allowed my curiosity to take the lead and bring me to what is interesting and compelling. My explorations have led me to so many amazing, deep, and profound discoveries that I continually aim to share with others.
When I was dancing professionally I strived to weave a kind of magic each time I stepped on stage and I continue to aspire to bring a kind of subtle magic in each time I share yoga or mindful movement. If we open ourselves to the mysteries of life experiences we can find that alchemy exists right along side us and with us on our paths.
Social Presencing Theater (SPT) is a fascinating methodology that blends together contemplative arts, theater, and dialogue discussions, to discover fresh insights for personal and collective transformation. It’s a very collaborative creative process where very easy simple movements are used to discover what’s right in front of us in reality and what might be possible in the future in it’s best version. We are sensing into the felt sense of the wisdom of the body, our personal body and our collective body. By collective body I mean, when we are in a group of people there also exists a kind of whole collective body that is felt together and interdependent much like much like an eco-system, ie. a coral reef. So in SPT we discover what it’s like to shift from an ego-system, focused on ourselves, to and eco-system, focused on the health and well-being of the whole. In this process we gain access to a holistic intelligence that was previously inaccessible by our thinking minds only. We discover new insights that we could never reach with our rational minds. Whenever I practice and share these practices with others there are so many “ah-ha” moments. Really profound information is revealed that boggles the mind (in a good way!) and we find our way to a heart centered intelligence that can be powerfully transformative and enlightening.
We connected and reconnected with women who have been and longtime friends, while having s’mores, and my boyfriend and I were struck with inspiration! I have a niece and many friends who have young girls, and we had a desire to create a story with an inspiring heroine that young girls could look to for a model on how to be in the world. We wanted to tell a story that celebrates boundless imagination, friendship, community, and love of the outdoors, where those things are valued as some of the best elements in life.
Get a copy of S'mores Indoors here!
We spend a lot of time in our mental, thinking minds, a kind of living from the neck up only. Often we think that that is our only reliable or best source of information. And yet there is another source of information, a wisdom in our bodies. We often ignore our body and it’s subtle (or loud!) messages and cues have become so disconnected from what’s right within us. If we slow down, pause, sense what is there, and listen deeply we find that there are answers to questions coming from the neck down, the rest of our bodies! We discover an intuitive body intelligence and awareness that can be incredibly informative and a way to unlock our fullest potential.
Moving in harmony with music in refined and nuanced ways is highly cultivated. You gain the ability to do any and all movements with ease and effortlessness. I utilize this ingrained expertise and find that moving in my daily life with grace and rhythm helps me navigate my way in the world in a way that makes sense to me.
I’ve discovered that I need movement as part of my daily experience as much as breathing, eating, sleeping, talking, walking! It is an essential and vital part of my well-being and absolutely necessary to function at my best.
Working in synchronicity with others helps you feel that the sum of whole is greater that its parts and you create something more beautiful and evocative and brilliant than you could by yourself.
Collaborating with others in a respectful and compassionate way is so important and valuable in creating a whole full experience with each other and for a community. It’s a win-win-win for everyone and benefits all people, beings, and the planet as whole.
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Deeply inspired to share the transformative magic of this woman's work with you, we are collaborating with Lynda at our next Flowerlounge event next month ~ get your tickets here!
Learn more about Lynda + her work at lyndasingyoga.com. She offers 1:1 + group yoga sessions, group classes for the workplace, self-care workshops for social workers and mindful movement / Social Presencing Theater workshops!
