As of November 8, 2017, I am officially a 200-hour Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT)! I’m so excited to be able to share the gift of yoga with you.
A little bit about my own journey: I started a regular yoga practice a couple of years ago hoping that it would help with my anxiety—and it did—but the practice quickly became so much more to me. It gave me a new relationship to myself, to my body, to God, and to others. It’s so much more than stretching or a workout—it’s a true spiritual practice that real and sacred. It’s a lifestyle. And for a while I thought of these parts of my life as a poet and as a yoga practitioner as lovely but separate spheres that didn’t have much to do with each other.
But as I continued to travel the country performing my spoken word poetry, I began to notice that the deep and heavy things I was writing about—faith loss, religious trauma, sexuality, and starting over—were having a huge emotional effect on people. I would see people in my audience in tears, physically reacting to the emotions they were experiencing. And I began to feel more and more responsible for stewarding that emotional reaction beyond the performance. I didn’t want to just perform my poetry and leave. I wanted to empower people with the tools to take control of their own healing long after I went home. I began to wonder what it would look like to be able to apply the mindful breath and movement of yoga to these experiences, giving people a whole-heart AND whole-body emotional and spiritual experience. Before I knew it, I was signing up for teacher training.
Which brings us to today! Head on over to EmilyJoyPoetry.com/Yoga to see what I’ve got to offer!