OM PAGE

Come Monday morning, June 28, I will be on a plane headed to Prague for a month stay, to teach Yoga for writing students that come to study writing and photography abroad through Western Michigan University. I have been blessed in given the opportunity to teach for this program because of my beautiful husband who directs the program, year and year now for 17 years.

This will only be my second year of teaching in Prague, but this year something more awaits me, The Wellness Studio.

I will be teaching Yoga at The Wellness Yoga studio and bringing Yoga with me wherever I'm able. Wherever and whenever I can help guide others through their bodies, minds and spirits, through asana, pranayama, meditation and chanting, I am blessed. Of course, the asana(postures) are more openly embraced and people are often more reluctant to settling into a comfortable seat, doing breathing exercises, or using their voices, sounding out ancient sounds, mantras and vibrations, but I am hopeful, as I make my way on this yogic path that if I am able to teach one person how to find a sense of peace and comfort within their bodies, if I am able to guide one person closer to cultivating more self love, I am living out my divine purpose.

My story is a success story. It's also a survival story, a story about how the practice of Yoga had offered me the courage to take my life back. I had contemplated taking my own life many different times over the years. As happy as I have become it seems impossible that I had come so closely to ending it all, to ending this magical journey. But until one truly lives from truth, in truth, one will not know the true meaning of happiness and peace. Each time I stepped foot onto the mat the voice within me began to speak loudly, sometimes it screamed at me, and it was only whenever I came to Yoga classes. It was as if my true voice was only heard when I was on the mat. More accurately, it was the only time I allowed myself to truly listen. I had suppressed my voice, and allowed another's to dominate my own thoughts and desires. I began believing what I heard, day after day. I had created a false sense of happiness, year after year. I covered up all the lies that were spoken to me, and also the lies I told myself about the life I was living. I was living in a classical, text book, misogynist relationship, and after nearing almost 18 years, I left. I began through Yoga to discover the FLOW of life rather than battling my way through the days ahead of me. Life had became a chore. But once I honored that little voice within me, when I allowed it to grow and to be heard, life became the blessing that it is!

I am grateful every day I wake up, and every night when I lay down to sleep. I am most grateful that I am still here, and when I turned over the leaf, (I literally picked up a leaf and turned it over!) I vowed to honor my heart, my life, my voice, and to dedicate my life to helping others through Yoga. I also vowed more specifically to help other women.

When we honor ourselves, we honor others. When we heal ourselves, we heal others, and when we spend time on our mats, listening to our breath, hearing our hearts desires, wishes, and dreams, we bring the body, the mind and the spirit back into greater alignment so that we can grow within the true flow of life. Invoke the Goddess within you EVERY DAY!!! Honor yourself, love yourself, in loving yourself, you love and heal others.

Namaste-The divine in me, sees and honors the divine in you.

Till next time.

With Full heart, breath and JOY!!!

OM Shantih, Shantih, Shantih

May there be Peace, Peace, Peace

Lokah Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu

May ALL being be happy and free from suffering.

This year, July, my writings on Yoga will appear in the magazine, Spirituality and Health, along with being in the quarterly Integral Yoga Magazine. I welcome you to follow me here, and there, and if you're in Prague from June 28-July 29, stop by The Wellness Studio and take my 2 hour Vinyasa Intensives. Or if ever in Kalamazoo, Michigan come by Sunrise Yoga where Sunrise Yoga's mission is not only to teach Yoga, Meditation, Chanting and Pranayama, but we also offer Invoking the Goddess Workshops, to liberate the Goddess! We recreate ourselves through Yoga, Crafts, and other self honoring ceremonies. The Goddess teaches us how to fall in love with ourselves, with the Goddesses that we already are! There is also a beautiful Goddess Walk/Labyrinth at Sunrise as well, come walk it. Invoke the Goddess every day!

www.SunriseYogaKzoo.com

The Big Yoga Guys are coming to town

As a budding owner of the very small, cozy and quaint Sunrise Yoga studio of Kalamazoo, where I often find classes filled with two or three people, where sometimes no one shows at all, where I often sit alone in lotus, with candles, meditating, chanting, doing a private practice, I feel the power of yoga growing within me and around me.

I am instilled with faith in what Sunrise Yoga has to offer, and what Sunrise will continue to grow to offer. I've come to realize the space at Sunrise Yoga in Kalamazoo is small, very small, maybe the smallest yoga studio around. Six spaces fill the room and one must embrace this intimate setting as being part of the practice itself.

It is an intimate place for sharing. I have practiced for many years in big studios such as the one I heard of that is coming to the area just this morning. The Big Yoga Guys are coming to town. I'm sure they will offer Teacher Trainings, something I do not. They will offer their yogi's many teachers, for now there is only me. And they will offer something I will never be able to give, a big yoga space. They will offer all the things a big yoga studio is able to offer, all the creature comforts, the professionalism that makes a yoga studio successful. But I have faith that Mom and Pop studios, like Sunrise Yoga in Kalamazoo, will thrive. There is room for us all to thrive and the Big Guys coming here lets me know, yoga is growing and I'm honored in being part of that growth.

I plan to return to India in August of 2011 for more training in the Krishnamacharya lineage. I will continue to learn how to help others in more personal ways, in more intimate settings, promoting and spreading that which is healing, that which is powerful and positive.

True growth isn't defined by the outward space, but rather by making and creating more inward space so that we may grow externally more brighter and lighter.

I am humbled by the journey, honored in having a healthy body so that I may continue to do what I love the most, practice, teach, and learn more about yoga thereby learning more about myself and others. Peace be, in and out, and all around. Till next time.

First class is free with a canned good donation.

www.Sunriseyogakzoo.com for details on classes.

Sunrise Yoga, The budding lotus flower, growing like an Oak.

April 12, 2010

Peace out & in, that is what I intend for my blogs to be about, promoting peace while helping to spread some more positive energy into the world. Much of what I read helps to cultivate a deeper awareness of one's mind, body and spirit and after some contemplation, after not having enough room on my status area of Facebook, to express myself fully, I decided to return to this old blog spot I created while in Prague last year. I created this blog spot area thinking I would document my trip to India through the blog, but then when I got to India all I wanted was to absorb the experience and the full training at Krishnamacharya Yoga Mandiram without writing about it. I wanted to take the time to fully experience the world of India for that short month knowing I would be back soon enough to share all my experiences.

Since India, I have opened Sunrise Yoga studio in Kalamazoo, Michigan. www.Sunriseyogakzoo.com It is a budding new business and I must say I am so grateful for the opportunity to undertake such an endeavor, as it comes with great risk, but I also know that if I didn't try to open a yoga studio, I would live to regret it. Not following my dream of creating a sacred space for myself and others to practice yoga is something I have dreamt of since 2002. Eight years later I have realized a dream. That is a powerful feeling to experience.

In one month I have collected numerous canned goods, as the first class is free with a canned good donation for Kalamazoo Loaves & Fishes, helping to feed the local hungry, while also helping to build healthier minds and bodies. It's a win/win. It's growing slowly like a fine Oak tree, but slow is steady and fast is fragile, as often said in yoga classes also applies here to the growth of Sunrise Yoga.

I have offered many classes where I show up alone only to use the time for a personal practice. Rather than sitting in the empty space brewing and seeping in worry about no one showing for class, I have used the no attendance classes to be a time of great lesson, in letting go, having face to face time with ego that inevitably pops out and loudly from time to time. Then I reach for my copy of the Yoga Sutras and begin reading or for The Bhagavad Gita. Sometimes I practice the chants I learned while at KYM in Chennai and then after the reading or chanting I am good as new, and so far, better for having had the moment to be with myself, inside of myself, feeling the interconnectivity of us all through the ancient syllables that I chant, or through the words of Patanjali and Krishna, with all holding the power to keep me thinking, and being, positive about this new adventure as a Yoga Studio owner and teacher.

After reading, chanting, practicing asana, or meditating, and more often, after all of this above, I always find that part in me that reaches that part in me that FAITH. I find faith in what I'm teaching and learning and know in my heart it is as Gandhi has said, "Be the change you want to see."

It's not always easy putting all these positive ways of being into play for ones life, but the reading materials, the yoga practice, the teaching, and the small but mighty community that's building here at Sunrise Yoga is like a budding lotus flower, growing like an Oak, it is strong, it is fragrant with sweetness and is truly the most beautiful thing I have come to experience because as I look at Sunrise Yoga, all the pictures that adorn the walls of the space, of the people I met in Chennai, I know that it's not all about me at all, it's about them, it's about the lives that we can touch and help heal, and to be healed by, well beyond the time when we are no longer in immediate touch.

The incense I burn and offer to Lakshmi and her owl, to Krishna, Krishnamacharya, Hanuman, Ganesha, Murugan and the faces in the pictures, those seen and unseen, I am reminded of my duty. I am reminded that we are all here to heal and to be healed. I am reminded of the dedication that's needed to do good work not just for myself and Kalamazoo, not just while in the studio, but from the moment I wake till the time I rest my head at night, I must do my duty to be the best I can be for myself and by doing that I am living the life of yoga.

Peace be in and out, for one and for all.

May those moments that come up in your lives, that appear as you hadn't expected, may they, too, be the moments where and when you dive deeper into yourself to do your duty towards being the best you can be, reaching fulfillment, wherever you are without judgment, without force, and with great compassion and love for the person that looks back at you in the mirror, while accepting your best, who and what you are, on any given day.

Dancingly,

Om

Krista

Prague Angels

Prague offers images of angels everywhere. I feel at home seeing so many of them, my Mom collects them. I hope you enjoy the ones I've posted here(if I can figure out how to post them:)

With Heart, Krista