Developing a Home Yoga Practice
When I began practicing yoga in 1998, a home yoga practice was the only one available. I lived in a small town in Central Florida, not yet touched by The Villages development, and the closest yoga studio was an hour away. Practicing in a yoga studio wasn’t available to me as a high-school senior with a limited budget, a full load of classes, a packed schedule of extracurricular activities, and 2 part-time jobs.
So, I went to the local Walmart and perused their small fitness aisle. Between stretching bands and soccer balls, I found a single Yoga DVD: Rodney Yee’s Yoga for Beginners. I bought it, took it home, and officially began my yoga journey.
Rodney was a source of calm and balance during a transitional time of life. I dutifully practiced my alignment-based beginner yoga sequence until scratches rendered the DVD useless. Thankfully, having memorized the sequence Rodney taught, I happened upon another branch of yoga in an unlikely setting: a college classroom.
It was my first year at New College of Florida and I was on track to be a geneticist. A career in research science was my future, no questions asked. Until I walked into an Introduction to Asian Religions class and my life shifted. The teacher, John Newman, PhD, skipped the scholastic introduction and simply guided us through Alternate Nostril breath as a foundation to a meditation practice. Listening to his voice as I watched my breath, I had an experience of being calm in my body.
As an anxious person with a trauma history, the profound difference in my resting emotional state made an immediate impact.
After attending his class for a semester, I changed my major to Religions and went down a path of study that eventually led me back to postural yoga. Meditation and breathing practices were the tools I relied on to manage the stressors of college life — working several jobs, juggling coursework, and writing far more than I ever expected to each week. I also had the profoundly auspicious experience of learning meditation from skillful teachers in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, as Dr. Newman often translated for Tibetan Buddhist teachers in diaspora.
Through it all, I had the postural yoga learned from that first Yoga DVD (thank you, Rodney Yee!)
Over time, I was introduced to my next “yoga love:” the Ashtanga practice. It fit my need for movement and the athleticism and dynamism of the practice appealed to me at the time.
But I soon discovered that the Ashtanga practice has severe limitations: for those with limited mobility, it is nearly inaccessible, and for those with a hyper-mobile body, it is a recipe for chronic pain and frequent injury.
So in 2007, armed with a new desire to share movement and wellness as a career, I completed both a Yoga Therapy training and a Master’s Degree in Food and Nutrition Sciences, with an emphasis on evidence-based coaching and movement therapies.
I was fortunate to find a 750-hour Yoga Therapy program and am grateful every day for the mentors that guided my own practice, and the evolution of the Wisdom Method. I had the good fortune of studying with Saraswati Devi and Vaz Rogbeck (RIP) of the PranaVinyasa Radiant Transitions Teacher Training. The Ayurvedic and Pancha Karma studies that inform the Art of Wise Living Retreat came later, with Light Miller (RIP) and Bryan Miller, among others.
The lessons from Yoga Therapy training stayed with me and continue to inspire me daily. The key insight I developed from my training as a Yoga Therapist is that our profession isn’t about teaching poses — it’s about teaching people.
That means meeting people where they are, in the body they have, and adapting the practice to fit that person in the moment, rather than forcing someone into a shape or using my own body to demonstrate a “perfect'“ pose. This was not a popular perspective in the early aughts! In fact, I often had to define “Yoga Therapy” and “Therapeutic Yoga” for people.
While there are important distinctions between Yoga Therapy and Therapeutic Yoga, the key takeaway is working at your own pace, in your own body, knowing that the shape you make is less important than the mindset you bring to the practice.
The yoga community has grown leaps and bounds in the last 25 years since I’ve been practicing. Rigorous academic research on the science of yoga is coming of age, and I’m amazed and excited by the growing field of Yoga Therapy Research. Most importantly, you no longer have to scour the shelves of your local Walmart to find a yoga DVD. Nor do you have to travel an hour from home to practice with skillful teachers. It’s easier than ever to access safe, accessible, evidence-based, and trauma-informed therapeutic yoga — even in the comfort of your own home.
