Elisabeth’s blog

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Pinktober aka The Month of OVER Giving

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A couple of days ago, lying and finding balance and support on a branch of the huge old oak tree that lies on the ground in my backyard. On Sept. 4, the tree looked so strong it seemed it was going to be there for ever. Irma and its winds brought it right down later that day. If the oak tree had fallen the opposite direction, it would have crashed the place where my neighbor, Ronika, her family and I live. As she put it,"We're blessed!"

Here's the story of how, as a double cancer survivor, I found what breast cancer means to me as an illness. Maybe this story will make a difference in a life out there. Maybe yours.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month helps me recognize my humanity through my two biggest battles —a first bout with breast cancer in 2004 and a second one ten years later. I also reflect on my sister fighters, survivors and thrivors –whatever we feel we are--, and on my sisters on the other side.

Let me share a (real) story that will tell you what breast cancer means to me as an illness. Hopefully, it won’t have anything to do with your own self at all. Or maybe it will resonate for you, or for someone you know. If that’s the case, my hope is that it will make a difference in your life or someone else’s.

In March 2015 soon after my treatments, on the French West coast. I had just dropped the pink scarf I had worn for the past five months. My goddaughter, Clara, then six, convinced me with her question, "What's wrong with your hair, anyway?"

January 2015. I’m coming out of the woods after being diagnosed with breast cancer seven months before. I’ve found a refuge at my parents’ home, close to Paris, and I’ve finished the big chunk of my treatments –surgery and six rounds of chemo. My hair is (temporarily) gone, and the incision and infection following my surgery six months before, won’t heal. My father is fighting his own battle against lung cancer, and my marriage is on the edge of a cliff. Thank goodness, I manage to keep the infection localized, despite chemo, my tribe’s here, and my writing client has put me in charge of a fun, global video project.

Along with the medical treatment, I begin the process of spiritual treatment, with the first step being to finally recognize who I am, instead of looking for others to recognize me. What are my dreams, beliefs and values? What makes my soul unique? Do I love my husband? Do I want to go back to Atlanta?

I have the answers deep inside. I feel I still need confirmation. That’s when I call Caroline Quemerais, an astrologer and healer, for answers.

When I step into Caroline’s home office, in the ‘hood right outside of Paris, I feel uneasy. I contemplate getting up and leaving, but, within seconds, decide to stay. She looks at her screen, on which she reads my astrology chart.

“Your father was not present by your mother’s and by your side when you came to this world. His absence was powerful. It gave you the unconscious message that you were not good enough for him to be here. This has shaped your intimate relationships. Ever since, you’ve chosen men who are absent when you need them, and you’ve over compensated to be accepted and loved by the men of your life”. I freeze while Caroline talks. Her conclusion resonates even deeper in me, “that’s what breast cancer is about. It’s about a woman’s belief that, in order to be loved, she needs to give—a lot. It’s about giving so much, and feeling it’s never enough, that she grows a third breast—a tumor.”

The appointment lasts a long, intense hour where so much is said that I’ll end up with a bronchitis the next day. I’ve since realized that I prefer working with healers that leave certain things unsaid. That day, though, Caroline tells all.

She sheds the light on positive information, too. “It was difficult for your father to decide to be away when you were born. He had to work far away from home to take care of his family’s needs. That’s love too. You can see that now.”

While listening to Caroline, I remember what my father had confessed to me as soon as he was diagnosed, six months before, “When you were born, I was up North (of France), working on building a school and supervising a team of four workers. I could have dropped everything to be with your mother. Then, I would not have been paid and neither would have the other workers. We all needed the money--badly. So, I decided to stay another two days until we were going to be done, and then run to see you.”

March 2015, two weeks later, at my friend Carole's costumed birthday party, all dressed up in the 70's!

I hear Caroline saying these words over and over again, “Play the princess! Be a princess! Be loved for who you are, not for what you do!”

You, too, may want to say those words, to yourself or to a woman you think needs to hear them.

Happy Pinktober.

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Stop Thinking Positive! Do Your Shadow Work Instead

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Last February at Ballethnic, the dance school at the end of my street, where I attend afro-yoga classes. What I love about my teacher, Theresa, is that we both share who we are, our shadow side, before or after dancing.

Ready to feel your heart with authenticity, speak your truth, and free up the energy stored as suppressed emotions?

When you attend one of my group classes you practice yoga for sure. You also, at some point in the class, whether at the beginning or the end, sit in a healing circle. “What do you feel, right now?” “What do you need, right now?” are questions I’m likely to ask you. That’s because I believe healing requires each one of us to have the courage to go inwards, connect with, and recognize what we truly feel—whether it’s what we consider positive or negative emotions.

Some call this process the “shadow work”. I call it “self-awareness”. Regardless of what we call it, this process is at the opposite end of the spectrum from “positive thinking”, which has become a multi-billion dollar industry. Visionaries of all sorts (authors, doctors, celebrities and more) have done a great job convincing many of us that we have the choice to either hold on to our painful emotions and suffer until the end of time, or let those emotions go and replace them with the beautiful things we want in our lives—a loving partner, a tribe that understands us, a job that is the reflection of our life’s purpose, the body of a god(dess), the financial abundance we deserve—and live happily ever after.

The thing is, forcing ourselves to think a certain way despite what we may truly feel, splits our soul instead of serving us, as a Brazilian shaman explains in an article originally published in the Huffington Post.

I believe the process that brings healing has nothing to do with thinking. I believe healing arises with our ability to feel our heart with authenticity. Feeling fully what is weighing on our heart, becoming aware of that emotion, whether it’s sadness or anger that we’ve suppressed, so we can keep going on with our lives. Experiencing that feeling in all of its stages and accepting it, is what makes us, ultimately, cross over to the other side, and become the entirety of who we are and find peace with ourselves. Just like a seed needs to live a certain amount of time in the darkness of the soil before it grows into the light and turns into a flower, that’s also how healing occurs.

Another component I find to be essential to healing is speaking our truth and sharing it with people who have the ability to receive who we are. When we voice what is going on deep inside us--when we show our authentic selves to others, we free the energy that we’ve mobilized to hide ourselves, we find our soul--our home, and we feel “whole” and more alive. See and recognize others. Being seen and recognized is what makes healing circles so powerful.

So what about yoga? The yoga I practice and teach is at the service of the “shadow work” or “self-awareness” process. It melts our emotional barriers down so we can have easier access to our true feelings. It also helps us integrate what we truly feel right down to the cell level. It makes us breathe into the space where the suppressed emotion was stored and free up that energy so we can live our full potential.

How interesting life goes... At the end of my visit on St Helena Island, SC, last year, I bumped into the Penn Center, the first school for freed slaves in the South before being an important refuge for Civil Rights leaders. This is where Martin Luther King Jr. wrote his famous " I Have a Dream" speech.

In August 2016, I spent a week in St Helena Island, SC, alone. I rolled my mat out in the Airbnb, and each day I walked back and forth between the mat and the beach. One day, I contacted the sadness I had felt and suppressed back in 2014, the day after my surgery, when my dad came to visit me in the hospital. We had both been diagnosed with cancer the same week, a month before. For the first time in my life, I sensed that my dad was lost. I felt I had to be strong for him and swallowed my tears. Two years later, in St Helena, that sadness surged. The ocean and the solitude helped the sadness to arise. And wow--did I sob that day! Then, my body and soul started a yoga practice, organically. On that mat, I felt all of my cells process the sadness, feel it, accept it, respect it and find peace with it. On that mat, I connected with my dad, sadness to sadness, in a powerful way, even though he had passed away a year before. Finally, on that mat, I arose from my ashes.

 

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My Heart Belongs To Avalon

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Dave Webster, one of Avalon's landowners, leads the Eclipse Ceremony Parade on August 21 to get us ready to view the eclipse. We're on the path of totality!

From a celestial wedding to finding my soul's home. Here's my journey.

The universe, as well as my “stuff”, has shifted with the total solar eclipse.

August 18th, mid-day. Here I am, arriving at the gate of Avalon, a beautiful piece of wooded land with a river and a lake in South Carolina. I’m getting ready to camp for four days to join Avalon’s Total Solar Eclipse Festival and my friends, Stacie and Art’s, wedding. Avalon is greeting me with a blue sky and bright sunshine. Emotionally, my own weather report is different. I’m navigating a romantic heartbreak.

Over three hundred people are expected to join in this celestial weekend and I won’t know anyone other than a handful of yoga-teacher-friends.

The first person I meet is Helme, a soft-spoken, handsome guy. He’s setting up what looks like a Middle Eastern campsite in the forest. “Is this your camp site? It’s huge,” I say. “Yes, people like to stop by so I make it nice.”

Helme offers to give me a tour of the land on his golf cart. I feel a soothing, healing energy from my new friend and the people that are setting up their camp here and there. The land itself, is also giving me great vibes. We stop in a shaded spot by the river and instantly I know that this is where my tent belongs.

On the solar eclipse day, Stacie and Art sing their wedding vows in the "Acoustic Chapel of Avalon", a space in the wilderness where the newly weds and their tribes have created a whimsically enchanting universe. Pure magic.

Little by little, strangers arrive and set up their camps around mine. Michael, aka “Oz”, is experimenting with a hammock-tent extended between two trees. “Let’s see if this is better than sleeping on the ground.”

Have I ever shared that I’ve often, if not always, felt misplaced, mis-fitted—like an outsider? Being sensitive and a people-lover has done that. As a child, I always comforted the kid who was rejected. Growing up, I wanted to be a dancer or an actress. Back then I didn’t see who I was, so I gave up those dreams, one after the other, for a “responsible” job. In the corporate world, I was an “internal journalist” which meant I met people, asked them questions about who they were and what they did, and wrote their stories in company magazines. I managed to have a role helping people feel good—at least about their professional selves. On the personal level, I’ve always had a hard time imagining myself in a “traditional” life—you know, married in my twenties, my husband and I raising our kids. Instead, I married, later, a man with a big heart although, at the time, he saw little of who I was—someone who needs to share her soul, not so much the material life.

Back to Avalon. After two days of strolling from my camp “neighborhood” to the meadow, from the meadow to the waterfall, from the waterfall to Avalon’s social area, here I am dancing in front of the stage where an Atlanta band is performing. It’s almost midnight. My friend Gloria grabs my hand, “follow me, we’re all meeting at Helme’s.”

There’s a fire pit in the middle of the large tent, and seven maybe ten people lounging around it. A young woman, Emily Kate Boyd, an Atlanta singer and songwriter, is playing the acoustic guitar and singing a soft song. More people enter the tent as the night goes by. A man plays the flute, and before long, three women play the fiddle. All spread the space with magic. A woman stands up and dances around the fire. When a musician sings “A Horse with No Name” with his acoustic guitar, my feet propel me upwards. Here I am, dancing too. Here I am, feeling I’ve found my tribe. Zero excuse needed for being the way I am. Zero excuse needed for feeling the way I feel.

Friends like Holly and Helme make Avalon magic.

I came to Avalon to celebrate Stacie and Art’s love, see the total solar eclipse, and camp in nature. In the end, I realize I’ve found my home. How about that?

 

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Letter To My Dad

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England, 1972-73. A French man in the UK North Sea. A builder and an adventurer at heart, my dad, Jean-Louis, overlooked the construction of a "jacket", the metallic structure that supports an oil offshore platform. This was the day the "jacket" set sail in the North Sea.

Two years today since my dad went to the other side. Time for a letter...

Dear Pa,

It’s been two years to the day since you passed to the other side. I miss you. Thank goodness, I feel your presence. Always.

After you passed, mom asked me what I wanted to keep out of all your stuff. Your hi-fi music system—the one you bought in England in the late 70’s--and your collection of vinyls were the first things that came to my mind. While I was in France this past month, I listened to your music, many from Latin America--samba, bossa nova, flute of the Andes—while lying down on the couch. With my eyes closed, I could see you sitting in your rocking chair in our living room, savoring your music—something you used to do for hours.

You’ve always loved music and dancing. Oh man, you had so much fun telling me over and over again how you first met mom. You saw her at a dance in an Italian neighborhood right next to Paris, when you were both 19. You invited her to dance. She first turned you away before finally accepting a dance with you--unable to resist to your charm, as you always said. Since then, you two danced every time you had a chance.

Naturally, I’ve always loved dancing too.

You had a work capacity that was out of the ordinary. It was fueled by the fear you always had of not having a roof above your head. Your family marginalized you when you were 17, so you left home, and slept under the staircase of Parisian apartment buildings until you had enough money to afford a hotel room.

Remember when I was five or six? As a carpenter, you brought me with you in your Parisian workshop on Saturdays. Ah the smell of wood… A little later, you sometimes took me with you when you supervised workers on construction sites. You talked with them about the week’s work while we all had charcuterie together for morning break. That’s taught me to adapt anywhere. Today, I cruise from one community to the next, in Atlanta, regardless of people’s economic status, religion, color, and whatever other characteristics.

You had the soul of a sailor and worked on the oceans, on oil rigs, for over 20 years. Maybe that’s got something to do with me living at the other end of the world.

A disease is a shortcut. Shortly before you passed, you succeeded to give yourself over to softness in our relationship. Remember our very last phone conversation? You told me how proud you were of me--of the way I had fought to become a yoga therapist--in America, on top of that. You said “chapeau!” (“hats off!”) to the fact I never gave up on my dream of teaching my own style of yoga. With those powerful words, you finally recognized who I was.

My yoga activity is starting to take off. Can you imagine? I’m actually helping people dance their body and soul through yoga, and recognize who they are. Doesn’t it all make sense, now?

This coming weekend, I’m going to South Carolina, to a festival which will be followed by my friend Stacie’s wedding on the day of the total solar eclipse. My astrologer friend, Randy, says, “Solar eclipses help us to identify the crapola that we need to really, really, really work on. They are a living metaphor. They remind us... They warn us of our most serious needs both individually and collectively. They are not easy to navigate sometimes largely because the truth hurts and we feel naked and weak at such times“. I can feel my own “crapola“ come up today –fear, fear of love mainly. This morning, during my meditation, I heard you whisper, “Let the fear go, ma cherie, you’ll be fine. And I’ll be always here for you anyway“.

I’ll see what I can do, I promise, pa.

My dad and I the day of my wedding on Bastille Day 2007, in our family home close to Paris. Photo credit: Augustin Detienne.

Je t’aime,
Babette

 

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The Man Behind Yoga For Renewal

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Laurent Malterre co-hosted, for years, therapeutic groups in the Bordeaux region with two other French therapists who trained (among other places) at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California, in the 80's.

As a yoga therapist, I help my clients speak of their hurt. I work under the supervision of a French, licensed psychologist, Laurent Malterre, who guides me where to go and where to stop in that journey.

Yoga for Renewal is based on what the yogis have been saying for thousands of years—the body and mind are inextricably bound together. That’s how Yoga for Renewal has become a combination of yoga practice and the expression of one’s true feelings through language.

Aline Frati, my yoga master who lives in Paris, inspires the unique style of hatha yoga (yoga of the poses) I teach. In addition to Aline, a man is also part of Yoga for Renewal’s family. Laurent Malterre is a French, licensed psychologist whose practice is niched in one of the oldest streets of Paris, rue des Gravilliers.

Every other week, Laurent and I have a skype session where we share questions, challenges and results that my yoga therapy brings. How does yoga help a person melt their barriers down and, ultimately, share their true feelings? What does a specific symptom--physical, mental or emotional, say of a person, their story and healing path? What does sharing through language, after a yoga practice, bring to the table? How far can I go as a yoga therapist--not a talk therapist— in inviting a person share what they really feel through language?

We’re crafting Yoga for Renewal and what yoga therapy can be.

Laurent is a husband and father to four kids, who loves to spend time in his impressionist-style family countryside home, an hour’s drive from Paris, that he’s transformed into a small retreat center. Professionally, he has a passion for working on issues in intimate relationships and on gender and sexual orientation. He’s also an author and teacher of clinical psychology.

We came into each other’s lives 15 years ago when he helped me through my first breast cancer. Back then, I lived in Paris. Laurent and Aline, who have never met, helped me find my way to health. While Aline guided me to connect deeply with my body, Laurent helped me become aware of the woman I was. Less than two years later, I left Paris for Atlanta--for love.

Fast forward ten years. I knocked on Laurent’s door again, in despair. In the course of one year, I had bought a house in Atlanta with my husband, met a soul who changed the course of my life, walked out of my marriage, and been diagnosed with a second breast cancer a day before my dad was diagnosed with lung cancer. I felt so confused I thought I was mentally sick.

Rue des Gravilliers, Paris, France.

The ordeal forced me to look deeper at my shadow side. In those past ten years, I had, again, done so much in an attempt to feel loved, that I exhausted myself.

Breast cancer is the disease of too much giving and lack of self-care. Trust me.

Instead of searching for the love of another, this time, I started to turn the gaze to myself, to see the beautiful soul that I am--to see what my life purpose is. I found that inside my soul, there was Yoga for Renewal. With Laurent’s help, I explored, while navigating through treatments, what healing meant for me as a woman, as a yoga therapist, as a patient and survivor--what the yoga practice did for me, how the relationship with others and speaking my truth were also key to my health.

With Laurent’s impulse, Yoga for Renewal emerged as a “wellness protocol” involving a lot of yoga practice, punctuated with self-awareness and self-expression, through language.

The retreat center, outside of Paris, where Laurent Malterre hosts small therapeutic group week-end workshops.

Giving birth to Yoga for Renewal helped heal my body and soul. I physically felt the miracle unfold. Slowly, from being my therapist, Laurent became a mentor. Yoga for Renewal was born. And so was I.

 

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Speak Your Truth. And Start Healing.

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Sometimes yoga won’t do it. How I realized that going into the hurt and speaking my truth is a must for healing.

Sometimes you can practice all the yoga you want but, it doesn’t do the trick emotionally. The poses and the breathing might help you relax and unknot the tension in the moment, but still, if you struggle with an unresolved emotional hurdle, you may need to find help outside of the yoga practice—perhaps by using your voice and speaking your truth—something that many of us dread.

Years ago, I had a personal experience that made me realize, in a powerful way, that there’s nothing like speaking my truth for my wellbeing. I had moved from France to the States only three months before. John, my fiancé at the time, and I had planned to get married six months later, in France, with our families and friends. We suddenly had to change our plans. An immigration lawyer advised us to get married within the next three weeks as I was on a tourist visa and the U.S. Immigration could stop me from re-entering the country the next time I was going to travel overseas. Three weeks later, we got legally married at the city hall of Marietta, GA. The experience turned out to be traumatic. The “ceremony” at the city hall was a group wedding—which neither of us expected. A dozen of other couples, most of them dressed in jeans, repeated their vows, along with us, after the city’s official, in a large dark room with no windows. It felt surreal. The cherry on the cake was that friends who said they would attend, didn’t show up at the “ceremony” nor at the small get together we had organized, without giving us a heads up.

Freshly arrived from my French culture, I was dipped into an ocean of ruthlessness—at least, that was my perception. I came out of the experience physically shell-shocked. And talking about my feelings with my new spouse brought tensions, so I gave up. I had to find a way to come to terms with my first life experience in my new country of adoption, one way or the other.

I naturally turned to the one tool I knew –my home yoga practice that I had learned from my teacher in Paris. I had never stepped into a yoga studio before and wasn’t going to until two years later. So there I was in the early morning, for many days in a row, doing yoga on my mat in our living room. Each day, the practice helped me unknot the tensions. Yet somehow later in the day, the feeling of being physically shell-shocked came back. Something was unresolved and showed up in my body despite the hours spent on the mat.

All of that changed the day a therapist I knew in France asked me over the phone, “How are you?” The question triggered tears and words. I started sharing what had been weighing on my heart for days. His full presence and deep listening changed everything within minutes. Suddenly, I could heal, continue on with my life, and plan our wedding party in France on Bastille Day 2007.

The experience came out to be a great teaching. I realized that, as a yoga teacher, I was going to use yoga to help people connect physically with the issues, and also help them use their voice to speak their truth. There was no way around bringing clients go into and speak about their hurt.

Being present. Listening. Going into the hurt. That’s what my yoga therapy method is about.

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Is Yoga Therapy Fake News?

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As yoga therapists, we're breaking grounds and making the field--a challenging and exciting time to live!

If you're like everybody else, you don't know what yoga therapy is. Here are four questions to help you see clear.

I get the question almost daily, “What’s yoga therapy? Isn’t yoga supposed to be therapeutic, in the first place?” And it’s true, yoga is a 5,000-year old mind-body practice that early seekers came up with to feel happier. So, yes, yoga is therapeutic by definition. That was years ago, though. Since then, yoga has turned into a physical practice mostly for those who are “fit”!

In the ocean of yoga styles, yoga therapy is a new yoga, a yoga for the “misfits”, which really means a yoga for each one of us since we all shift from being “fit” to “misfit”, and vice versa, during the course of our lives. Here are four questions to help you understand this practice that hardly no one knows yet, and what to expect from it.

Is yoga therapy actually a thing?
Yes and no.

Yes, in the way that the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT), a non-profit founded in the late 80’s in the Western U.S. by a handful of yogis and doctors, has released training standards for yoga studios that want to offer a yoga therapy training program, and for yoga teachers who want to teach yoga therapy. There are 27 IAYT-accredited yoga therapy training programs, and 2,500 IAYT-certified yoga therapists, in the world. Each certified yoga therapist has received a training that answers the IAYT’s requirements, and is committed to obey to a code of ethics.

No, in the sense that yoga therapy is unregulated. Unlike acupuncture, chiropractic or counselling, there is no license given to those who are trained as yoga therapists. The IAYT is working on establishing yoga as a respected and recognized therapy. In the meantime, we’re the first generation, and breaking grounds.

That being said, there are yoga teachers out there who have had no formal training in yoga therapy and, still, who do a job just as good, if not better, than certified yoga therapists. It all depends on the teacher’s quality of presence and knowledge.

Who can yoga therapy help?

Anyone interested in deepening their healing journey. The practice is accessible to everyone, regardless of their fitness level, body type and mobility. I’ve had clients come to me for physical issues--lower back and hip issues, weight management, post-surgery recovery, post-cancer treatment recovery, Parkinson’s disease, and more—as well as for emotional breakthroughs--post-partum depression, grief after loss of a loved one, anxiety, to name a few. Yoga therapy can also help when we simply need to check in, feel and know what is truly going on with ourselves emotionally and physically, so that we can take the necessary action whenever we’re ready.

How does yoga therapy work?

It depends on the yoga therapist. Each one of us works with who we are as a human. Some yoga therapists have a background in physical therapy, others in psychology, others in the arts and more. We all do share one thing in common—we use yoga techniques to help a person create, develop and nurture their physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well being.

I personally love helping a person dive into their body, and feel the emotions that have been stored. My classes start with a specific hatha yoga (yoga of the poses) practice that’s geared to help participants connect deeply with their body. The practice is usually followed by a time where I invite them, thanks to a “toolkit”, to become aware of how they truly feel and then share it with their own words. Body connection, awareness and spoken word. These, to me, are the keys to wellbeing, if not health.

What does a yoga therapy session typically look like?

Yoga therapy works well in one-on-one private sessions or in small group classes or workshops. Other than that, each yoga therapist works their own way. Whatever the setting, you should expect a high quality of presence from a yoga therapist.

In a nutshell, the keys to achieving the benefits of yoga therapy is finding a teacher that you connect with, the believe in the body-mind connection and the willingness to step into that space.

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My Yoga Teacher And I

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During her 40-year career as a yoga teacher, Aline has trained dozens of yoga teachers including her daughter Sandra Drai. Some, like me, teach outside of France.

Aline Frati has taught me everything in yoga. Her yoga practice, where "listening" and self-awareness are prime, is truly unique.

I’ve come across many yoga teachers since I’ve started practicing yoga. Some have helped me dissolve the tensions that were in the deepest tissues of my body. Some have guided me in the philosophy of yoga. Others have shown me how breathing exercises can expand my awareness. Others have made me feel like I’m dancing. Still, out of all of the teachers who have crossed my path, there is only one whom I consider my true teacher in yoga. Aline Frati has been teaching yoga for 40 of her 79 years--both in classes that she hosts in her classic Parisian-style Haussmannian apartment and also at retreats in France, India and Israel.

A friend dragged me to her class, in 2004. I had never done yoga before. I had been diagnosed with breast cancer shortly before, and was ready to do anything to break from the depression and the fear that came along with the diagnosis.

Aline taught a semi private to my friend and I. The experience with her style of yoga was like love at first sight. I had been pushing myself for decades. I worked in corporate jobs--sometimes in brutally competitive environments--I had no passion for, and I was coming out of a toxic relationship of ten years. I had managed to survive all of this thanks to my inextinguishable joy and the support of my tribe. And here I was, in Aline’s apartment, connecting for the very first time with a part of myself that I had ignored most of my life—my body.

Although Aline says “this yoga approach is for everyone”, the yoga she teaches is the most therapeutic form of yoga I have ever come across. Far from the “yoga-robics” that is widely practiced in the West, her yoga is about developing our capacity to “listen” to our body without judgment. It’s also about dissolving the repetitive patterns of fear and anxiety that we have experienced since childhood, that get fixed in the body in the form of pain or restriction. “The goal is to help a person become aware of this fixed energy so that it can be freed, and find its way back through the body’s global energy,” she explains.

Since 2005, I’ve attended over half a dozen one-week long yoga retreats with Aline. Most of them in an 11th century abbey in the ancient village of Saint Antoine L’Abbaye hidden in the French pre-Alps. The abbey served as a hospital in medieval times, and is now a personal development center run by a Christian community. Every single corner of this place heals.

During Aline’s retreats, I’ve seen her eat almost nothing for a week so that her perception was as clear as it could be for her students. “It’s the teacher’s quality of presence, not the yoga technique, that helps a person harmonize,” she says.

Bringing a person to deep relaxation is pivotal in her yoga teaching. “We can’t modify anything without the body being deeply relaxed first,” she says.

As a little Jewish girl, Aline survived World War II in occupied France. Later, she left an unhappy marriage taking her two kids with her. She met her spiritual teacher, Jean Klein, who passed away in 1998 at the age of 86, when her marriage started falling apart. “Every time I was around him, I felt a sense of unity between us, a thread of love and affection.”

Everytime I've needed deep renewal, I've been lucky to end up at Saint Antoine L'Abbaye (French Alps) during one of Aline's one-week yoga retreats that she's taught in the healing center, almost every year since 2005.

Despite Aline offering me many of Jean Klein’s books, I’ve never understood his writings and philosophy. That’s okay. I don’t need to understand. The most important is that I now feel in my body what is going on with me, and I pass this approach to others through my yoga therapy practice. “Merci”, Aline, for showing me the way to my body and soul.

 

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The Beauty Of Connectedness

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Taking the time to be together with friends for a Sunday lunch, French style, which means home-made food, wine and therefore staying hours at the table.

My journey of bonding in the past decade in the States, with its ups and downs.

Things have shifted for me recently--in a good way. I’m rediscovering the joy of being connected with others. I now have friends who call me, text me, stop by my place. And I do the same.

Life hasn’t always been like that.

We all need to be recognized for who we are, to be heard, to be hugged. In other words, we all need to bond. And since I moved from Paris to Atlanta 11 years ago, I’ve learned not to take bonding for granted.

First, there was that feeling of being uprooted. Thank goodness, I was with my new love and husband at the time. My focus was on him--on us.

Then three years ago, I returned to France to rebuild myself during what I call “the nuclear explosion”. My dad was diagnosed with lung cancer and I was diagnosed with breast cancer, all while I was separating from my husband. Once I recovered, a year later, I returned to Atlanta. By then, everything had changed--me, for a start. My friends too. The friends we had as a couple had faded away and created new friendships elsewhere. The few friends who remained in my circle were scattered around the Atlanta metro area--these American city hubs are tough on friendships! On top of that, I let go of my 20-something year job as a corporate journalist, last year, to be a full-time yoga therapist. With that move, another layer of connections-at least via phone and email, went away too.

Amidst the discomfort and shock from all of the change, I almost decided to move back to France, when suddenly, this spring, everything changed. I started meeting people who recognized who I am. I mean, a bunch of people. All at once.

I met people who had done crazy things—just like I had. I met people who instantly understood what I do in yoga therapy. I even met people who remind me of me when I was 17 taking drama classes in Paris. (Yes, there was a time I wanted to be an actress.) Picking up pieces of myself I left along the way, being recognized and heard for who I am now, showed me that life is meant to be lived, not a struggle.

It was during those three tough years, though, that something changed within me, which laid the foundation for the transformation that occurred this spring.

I paused. I started turning my gaze towards me, seeing and recognizing who I am, the making of my own soul. For the first time, I decided I was not going to wait for someone else to recognize and approve of me. I started recognizing my beautiful side as well as my shadow side. Then, I started feeling love for myself. Slowly, steadily, surely. Love, in all its forms and shapes, needs to start with oneself. There is just no way around this if we want to live a joyful life. And sometimes it takes a nuclear explosion to get there. David Peace, the pastor of my little church, said it quite eloquently, “It’s in the darkness of the soil that the seed grows”.

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What Does Your Body Say?

TenThousandWaves

April 27, 2017. Imagine a Japanese garden in the mountains of Santa Fe, New Mexico, with hot tubs, saunas, the sound of water and birds... Ten Thousand Waves is the most awesome spa experience I've ever had. 

Learning to listen to our body is a beautiful gift we can give ourselves. Yoga therapy helps do just that--listen to our body, un-knot the muscular structure, feel fully in the moment and find the words to say who we are and what we feel. All crucial steps in our healing journey.

If we’re not sure of how we feel about something, our bodies hold the key to helping us determine our truth. All we have to do is listen. That’s because our body has a consciousness. In fact, our body is the exact reflection of our soul, and goes through our life’s experiences–whether positive or negative—just like our soul does.

For example, when we’re around a person who brings us joy, we feel comfortable and relaxed in our body. On the contrary, when we’re in the company of a person who we feel is hostile, we feel tense and unease. If we could step out of our skin and see ourselves, we would see how much our body language speaks to us.

Sometimes, we experience something that puts us so much in despair that there is no way to vent the grief and the pain. Both feelings become buried in the body.

Dr. Alexander Lowen (1910-2008), American physician and psychotherapist, developed a specific type of body psychotherapy called Bioenergetic Analysis, and worked all his life on the continuity between body and mind. He said “Every chronic muscular tension in the body has associated with it sadness, fear, and anger.”

I see it in my clients and I see it in me. A wound, when not healed, will show itself in the body in one form or the other—through a muscular restriction, or shallow breathing, fatigue or even an illness.

That’s when yoga therapy –which is delivered on a one-on-one basis or in small group settings-- kicks in. First, the practice requires that you pause--a must in the healing process. Healing only occurs when the body and the mind are relaxed, not when on the go. Then, the yogic breathing associated with the movements help you go inwards, un-knot the musculature structure, and read your body’s messages.

Yoga gives you access to your wound, helps you become fully aware of it, feel and sense it completely. Exploring and recognizing your wound, what is weighing on your heart will, in turn, help you express the grief through words and even crying releases. All for the sake to clean the wound and let the healing occur. The process may be challenging at times as we have this natural feeling of being scared of approaching our wounds. Still, when we do the work, it always brings us to a state of feeling more alive and experiencing more joy. And that’s the beautiful thing about yoga therapy.