Touch is one of our primary languages. From the moment we connect to our mothers cellularly in utero, to the moments after birth, when we rested on the skin and body of our mothers, we learned how to soothe and regulate our body. Our skin is the way we connect to the world around us. In times of stress, or overwhelm, it can contract and tense. This is one of the wonderful ways it can support us from not feeling and sensing in moments of distress. Tension in our skin can have

I can’t count the number of times this year that I have cried because of the state of the world. As an American living abroad at this moment in history, my heart is totally breaking for my country. Any way you cut it, the world will not be the same as we enter 2021. One of the only things to get me through this year has been my spiritual practice. And lately, I have been sitting with the goddess Durga. She is a goddess that appears at a moment when it seems as though all is l

In one split second, I realized that I had to make a decision about who I am. In that moment, I had to make the choice about who I was and what I stood for. It was the first time that I really met the Durga energy in my life, even though I had no idea who she was at the time. It was the year 2011, and I was living in Cairo, Egypt at the time. It was in the middle of an uprising known as the Arab Spring. At the time, I was studying human rights law. So it was an interesting mo

One of the practices I have really gotten into lately is meditating with a little ritual to open the space. I always find it to be an incredibly powerful experience. In fact, it was something that ancient yogis would do each day when they went through their meditation rituals. I thought I would write a blog post about my little ritual on opening the space and give you some tips on how you can create your own. First, I wanted to level with you about what it means to 'hold spac

Kali, you wild goddess. The first time I met her, it felt like the rug got pulled out from underneath me. Again and again and again. The deepest darkest places, hidden in my psyche, came to haunt me. My fear reared its head. I met her in her full force. Which can sometimes happen when we are unintentional with the goddesses. But, as I got to know her and became more clear in my own boundaries in the ritual space, we met differently. I learned that she was, in fact, love. Her

Lakshmi was the first of the goddesses that I ever met. On the day that I decided to meet her, I cleaned my house. It was weird. I mean, not that I am not clean, but I am not usually that clean. As I sat down to read Sally Kempton’s book, Awakening Shakti, I had to laugh. The first paragraph said that they way to welcome in Lakshmi was by cleaning your home. There is something about having a clean house, or clean energy, that allows Lakshmi to come into someone’s life. It was

I avoided getting to know this goddess for a long time. But for months, I had been feeling an ego death sneaking up on me. Right around Christmas, I could feel this plateau happen. Something in me was dying, brought on by a building emptiness and discontent. I had to sit with whether or not I wanted to keep teaching. Or if I even identified with being a yoga teacher. At some level, that label no longer fit me. Saraswati is known as the flowing one, very closely associated wit

Hey yogis! I got a chance to interview the owner of Estuary Yoga in North Melbourne. I spoke to the amazing Lucy Lawes about her vision, her teachers, and what has been an inspiration for creating her studio. I was really excited to interview Lucy because I actually did an interview for her blog a few years back. She has continuously impressed me with her dedication to her practice of yoga, both on and off her mat, and compassion for those in her community. She is one of thos

"Death is not the biggest fear we have; our biggest fear is taking the risk to be alive—the risk to be alive and express what we really are. Just being ourselves is the biggest fear of humans. We have learned to live our lives trying to satisfy other people’s demands. We have learned to live by other people’s points of view because of the fear of not being accepted and of not being good enough for someone else." - Don Miguel Ruiz One of the things I have come to realize is th

Hey yogis! One of the directions I would like to take the blog in is to explore different studios throughout Melbourne, their brand, and the reasons that they bring on board the teaching team that they do. I am interviewing studio managers, the people who make the decisions about who to hire, so you can get some insight into the process. For the first post in this exploration, I spoke to the amazing Zoe Klein over at One Hot Yoga & Pilates. One Hot Yoga & Pilates is one of th