Friday, August 29, 2008

A brief history of my yoga

Blessings

A brief history of a my yoga

I started doing yoga eleven years ago living in Los Angeles and working as a full-time art director in the entertainment industry. The mega loads of computer time and stress led me to poor posture and a bad back. Which then moved me to start taking yoga classes. Mostly as another form of staying in shape for ice hockey and keeping my back healthy. I have always been athletic. As a kid I participated in a wide array of sports. I also studied marshal arts and at graduate school I took tai-chi classes. Both disciplines showed me a bit about movement meditation and breath work. Soon after starting my practice I noticed that I always felt uplifted after yoga. However, at this point I was really working from the outside. In 1998 until 2002 I began going to classes more frequently, sampling LA’s yoga studios and practicing with amazing people. I especially liked Sean Corn’s classes at Yogaworks and began to attend her vinyasa yoga classes regularly. Sean still inspires greatness in me.

During December of 2002 I moved to Mammoth Lakes, in the Sierra Nevada’s and lost out on having LA’s amazing yoga classes to attend, so I started practicing at home, on my own to a small degree. But after some time, even though yoga was still on my mind I was not practicing asana (postures) very much.

The summer of 2005 brought me to Pasadena for more work as a art director. While not doing much yoga at first, I was skateboarding a lot, another way I like to flow. Unfortunately I injured my cervical spine. However this unfortunate event helped me in many ways. The most important was that I began to look inside my body and listen for more information about who I was and what I needed to heal. During my recovery, I started taking restorative and gentle yoga classes. Then as my strength and range of motion increased I morphed into Iyenger and Flow classes. This time unlike my introduction to yoga years before, I began to practice vipasana meditation. This is when I began to notice that I was working from the inside and from my heart first.

I moved back up to the mountains for the 2005/06 winter. During a record snow year in Mammoth I received my Professional Ski Instructors of America Level 2 in alpine skiing. With great enthusiasm I embraced the yoga in Mammoth and found some good teachers who helped fuel the fire in my belly for more yoging. I was now on the path and there was no turning back. In the spring of 2006 I began taking extended trips to study at Exhale/Sacred Movement in Venice. Then I went to the 2006 Yoga Journal Conference at Esties Park to study with Shiva Rea. A truly memorable and awesome experience! In December, 2006 I attended a teacher training with Erich Schiffmann. Also impressive.

In September of 2007 I attended the Embodying The Flow module of Shiva Rea’s teacher training and decided to enter in to her 500 R.Y.T. program at the Samudra Global School for Living Yoga. In the last year I have taken 350 hours of training with Shiva and other great teachers involved with the school.

Teaching Yoga

After attending Erich’s training in 2006 I began teaching yoga to friends, family, skiers, snow boarders and skateboarders. In the fall of 2007 I began teaching Prana Flow, Meditation, Freedom Style and Restorative yoga classes and workshops at the Healing Arts Centre's Movement Studio in Mammoth Lakes.

This summer I relocated back to Los Angeles pursuing my path as a yoga teacher & artist. I have been teaching yoga & meditation at Downtown Yoga Circle in Los Angeles and Yo Mama Yoga in Santa Monica as well as teaching privates.

And here I am continuing to grow...

Om shanti,

Scott

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