yoga by alisa

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The success of Yoga does not lie in the ability to perform postures but in how it positively changes the way we live our life and our relationships.
— T.K.V. Desikachar
 

book a private yoga session with alisa here.

why practice yoga?

I’ve been practicing yoga regularly for about 15 years, and have had a daily yoga practice since 2013. I never intended to practice daily, but once I had a custom yoga practice, I found that life was so much easier to manage on days when I did my practice. Pretty soon I realized that I didn’t have time not to practice.

I enrolled in a yoga teacher training program not because I thought I wanted to teach, but because I wanted to understand what this magic was…how was it possible that moving gently for 15-20 minutes a day (if I don’t sweat, does that even count as yoga?) transformed my entire life?

To paraphrase yoga master T.K.V. Desikachar, you know your yoga is working not by how your physical practice looks, but by the way your relationships and your life improves.

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I teach a style of Hatha Yoga called Viniyoga, developing customized yoga practices for each client based on where your body is and where your life is right now.

This is yoga for every body — a practice that welcomes our body where it is in this moment, and looks to our breath to be our guide and teacher. The point of a yoga practice isn’t to see how flexible we can become; it’s to practice on the mat the way we want to live our lives: to be intentional about every movement, every breath; to create space between something happening and our reaction to it; to be connected to the guidance of our intuition; to be centered in who we authentically are; and to be grounded in the midst of external chaos.

To support someone’s personal transformation is one of the greatest gifts I can imagine.

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I completed my 300-hour yoga training at the Yoga Well Institute with Chase Bossart, who trained with T. K. V. Desikachar (the son of T. Krishnamacharya, widely regarded as the founder of modern yoga). It’s an amazing lineage that I feel pinch-me lucky to be a part of, and I’m constantly reminded that these teachings don’t belong to any of us…once they’re gifted to us, it’s our responsibility to pass them along.

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