I feel deeply blessed to be heading into my 23rd year of practicing yoga and guided meditation. My passion for it started internally at age 18 when I began studying the Yoga Sutras, to find focus and to relieve stress in my life. Three years later, my practice opened up to the physical practice of Iyengar yoga. Spiritually, I had already found my home in practice and at age 21, the picture was complete – my body loved it. I continued to explore the many different avenues of this practice, all based on the same principles of uniting the mind, body, and spirit through breath. I began to practice Ashtanga, which I found to be exhilarating and fluid. After coming through second series Ashtanga, I began exploring my options further. I trained to teach yoga at the original Yoga Works in Santa Monica with Maty Ezraty, Chuck Miller, and Lisa Walford, where I began my process of learning how to teach from a deeply spiritual as well as physically-aligned, safe place.
We moved back home to Michigan in 2003, as I was pregnant with my second son. Concurrently, I was diagnosed with metastatic resistant thyroid cancer. Metastatic lymph spread and resistant to its only cure. I have since in six years had five radical neck dissection and lymphectomies, my last one just more than a year ago. Each time my practice continues to come back, reassuring me that it is always there regardless of my physical or emotional state. They say I will never be in remission as I live with my cancer. I found my cancer through meditation and continue to find it every time it is back or revisiting in my meditation sit time, which is crucial. Not only did this experience provide perspective for my practice but has also allowed me to teach yoga as a healing modality. Between my third and fourth surgeries, my baby brother went missing and was found murdered in the Grand River. We all have a story, and I am open about mine because what I know in the deepest pieces of me is that this practice is the reason I am still alive. Physically, emotionally and spiritually, it is my lifeline. Medically I have baffled them. I am literally in the 1% and on paper, I shouldn't be alive. We learn through this practice to come through absolute adversity with grace and gratitude. I believe all I have come through in practice has allowed a cleaner house for healing in all aspects.
I am determined to live my life to the fullest each and every day I can. I honor and thank my incredible husband, my babies, my family, my friends and students, and my wonderful teachers.
