Stay up-to-date on the latest from Asheville Yoga Center with our blog! Meet our teachers and hear them share more about their lives and yoga practice. Read tips on how to integrate yoga more deeply into your life off the mat. Learn more about inspirational teacher training programs, and discover new ways to deepen your practice!
What I find most rewarding about teaching yoga is that I get to spread this amazing and wonderful gift that nourishes peoples’ bodies, minds and hearts. I feel so honored that I am a vessel for this ancient wisdom to flow through and help change the world.
My very first introduction to yoga was in 1974 when my neighbor, Eve Diskin, then the president of the American Yoga association, came to my school to teach me how to do yoga. In all honesty the only thing I remember is that we did shoulder stand! And I thought it was so cool!
I’ll be honest— I was really turned off by my first experience with yoga. After having many friends tell me how I should try yoga for its peaceful benefits, I signed up for an Intro to Yoga course. As I lay down on my mat preparing for class to begin, the teacher walked over, stomped his foot onto the floor next to my mat, leaned over, and yelled at me to move my mat so that it was in precise alignment with the wall. When I moved it, he yelled again saying it was still a millimeter off. Shortly afterwards, he started walking on his hands around the room, admonishing other students for various inadequacies in the way they were practicing. After the class, I walked out and thought to myself, “what an @#$%&!, if this is yoga, it’s not for me.” I had paid in advance for the course, but didn’t return, and based upon that experience, planned on staying clear of yoga in this lifetime…
The Guru mantra is an ashtang mantra, meaning it has 8 parts. These 8
parts catalyze the kundalini energy to initiate through your own effort and
devotion. The first part of the mantra – Guru Guru Wahe Guru – projects
the mind to the Infinite, the source of knowledge and ecstasy. The second
part, Guru Ram Das Guru – signals “the wisdom that comes when we
serve the infinite”.
To me, it’s more about sharing yoga than teaching. When I began walking this path of yoga, it never crossed my mind to teach because I had enough work to do on myself. I began to fully focus on my Sadhana (my own practice). Through this process, practicing every morning and afternoon at some beach, park, plaza or outdoor space, people started approaching me out of curiosity and asked me to share with them. That’s how it all began, organically and this is how it still feels and will always feel. Even though in times of being a father and a husband, I need to make a living to support my family, I still consider it an exchange of energy. From the most profoundness of my heart, I share this path of yoga that carves and transforms my life infinitely.
The first yoga class that really captivated me was a power flow style with Sarah Powers. I was young – still in college, and a dedicated runner and climber at the time. Yoga was poetry for the body. In my attempts to find a class / teacher similar to Sarah, I stumbled into Ahimsa Ashram in Washington, DC and found kundalini yoga- which felt like
rocket fuel to me. Some 30 years later, I am still enchanted with kundalini and the
incredible power of the practice to transform. And, I still love flowing vinyasa andmany other styles. I think of myself as a “yoga universalist” – I love all the
lineages and paths deeply but kundalini is the maha (great) practice of my heart,
the one that I do every day, no matter what.
We can practice ahimsa or non-violence with others, mother Earth, and also ourselves. When we notice thoughts of judgment or criticism, there’s an opportunity to return to the breath, witness those thoughts and emotions, and allow them to flower. This momentary gap enables us to choose how we respond – ahimsa lives in our breath, that dynamic and divine pulsation of inhalation and exhalation that we share with all living beings.
We can practice ahimsa or non-violence with others, mother Earth, and also ourselves. When we notice thoughts of judgment or criticism, there’s an opportunity to return to the breath, witness those thoughts and emotions, and allow them to flower. This momentary gap enables us to choose how we respond – ahimsa lives in our breath, that dynamic and divine pulsation of inhalation and exhalation that we share with all living beings.
Did you know that Ada Limón, the extraordinary 24th Poet Laureate of the United States, loves yoga? And yet, in a recent On Being podcast, she laughed while sharing the following:
When I lived in New York City, my two best friends, I would always try to get them to go to yoga with me. And they would say, “I don’t want to go to yoga.” And I was like, “Why?” And they said, “I just don’t want anyone telling me when to breathe.”
I know, right?! Breathe in—do this. Breathe out—do that. Enough already!
A short time after I moved to Asheville, NC in 1996 I stumbled upon a little yoga practice room above an antique shop downtown. There was no sign outside advertising it as a studio or practice space. At the top of a narrow and creaking staircase there was simply a wooden bowl for donations.
– Mary Oliver
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