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I’m often asked how I got into yoga so here’s my yoga story…
I have been active all my life. I took ballet lessons for years and in college got into cycling; a sport I adore to this day. The pleasure I felt from moving is probably what saved me since it was the memory of the sensation of exercise that rescued me from becoming a true couch potato.
During college I, like many of my generation, took a sharp left turn into the hippie world, which for me included lots of drugs and rock ‘n roll. Within weeks of graduating from college and disheartened by the war in Vietnam I headed for London. What a wonderful place that was, especially in the early 70s! I embraced all that swinging London had to offer. I loved every second of it but physical activity pretty much stopped. After a couple of years of this behavior I was in pathetic shape physically and had gained about 25 lbs. Yearning to move again I decided to find an exercise class. A friend suggested yoga but picturing incense and swamis sitting in lotus pose I was not enthused. In a true twist of fate, the only exercise class at my local adult ed center in Birmingham, England (where I was living while my boyfriend was in grad school) was in yoga so I reluctantly enrolled. My first yoga teacher, Elizabeth Keeble, made yoga accessible and saw some promise in me. With her encouragement I progressed rapidly. When we moved back to London she sent me to Penny Nield-Smith, a truly wonderful woman with whom I studied for years. Penny taught the same sequence of poses every class and I credit her for laying a strong foundation of asana and rational sequencing that has served me well.
Pretty soon I was attending a yoga class at least four times weekly and beginning to practice at home. When I asked her about learning poses I’d seen in Light on Yoga, Penny suggested I seek out Kofi Busia in Oxford; so off I went. I began going to Kofi’s challenging weekend workshops pretty regularly, traveling up by train and staying at a hostel. Those weekends were mini immersions for me. I would go to class, then to my room to read and practice. It was there I first read the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali and the Bhagavad Gita and begin to consider yoga was more than poses. I also started taking classes from Vera Sida, a remarkable woman, who had started practicing yoga during her 50s when she became intrigued by a book on yoga that she was binding in the factory where she worked! She took me under her wing and offered my first job teaching. Looking back on it I was woefully unprepared but I loved it and began to dream about quitting my job.
In 1978 my husband and I decided to move to Boston where I hooked up with the small but enthusiastic yoga community. In 1980 after my daughter, Sarah, was born I opened the small yoga school I still run today. I’ve watched yoga grow and change in ways I could have never imagined but The Yoga Studio has been a perfect fit for me.
Over the years my yoga practice has continued to evolve. Informed and fulfilled by Iyengar yoga for many years, by the mid 80s I began to yearn to explore other viewpoints. I found myself particularly drawn to the inner, exploratory work of Angela Farmer. Her gift at helping students break up old patterns was just what I needed at the time. She urged me to listen to and follow my own voice and guidance; a voice she said was strong, authentic, and waiting to be heard. With some trepidation I made a decision to trust that voice and have pretty much followed that inner guide ever since.
My greatest delight in yoga is that the practice stays fresh and continues to inform and inspire me nearly everyday. I continue to marvel at how this simple and practical system taps such deep places within that sustain in me in the good and not so good times. I am also forever grateful that I make my livelihood doing something I truly love with students who have stuck with me over the years and are as devoted to their yoga as I am. I am truly blessed.
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