Yoga Archives - Page 2 of 3 - Elisabeth Perucca

May 10, 2018May 30, 2018

Natural Born Healer

My first memories are images of comforting my mom and others. It’s kind of my destiny. No wonder I have come up with my own healing method, Yoga for Renewal.

I’m three, maybe four years old. I’m in our 400-square foot apartment, which is on the fourth floor of our building with no elevator, in the blue-collar neighborhood of Belleville, Paris. It’s the middle of the night. My dad is out of town, in another province, building a school or a hospital. Money is scarce so, at night, he sleeps in a sleeping bag on the working site. I’m standing in the middle of the flat. In front of me, I see my mom. She’s in the bathroom, standing, her head bent over the sink. The light is dim. My mom’s nose is bleeding. I see the blood dropping in the white sink, for hours. I’m scared. That red on the white sink… I don’t like it. I wait and look out for my mom, refusing to go to bed until I know she’s ok. Years later, she confirmed to me that the nosebleeds—which happened regularly, always at night and when my dad was away—did last for hours.

Panic mode

Another night. I’m around the same age, maybe younger. My dad’s away building another school in another province. I’m wrapped up in a blanket in my mom’s arms, while she, in panic mode, runs down the staircase of our apartment building. We end up in a taxi. The driver’s voice is soothing. He’s probably concerned. What are this young woman and her child doing outside, at this hour? Years later, my mom revealed to me that she had suicide impulses. She was attracted by the apartment’s windows and the height. To run away from these impulses, she grabbed me and ran down the stairs as fast as she could until the impulses and the panic faded away.

Years ago, my mom and I walked through Montmartre (Paris) where an artist created our faces' silhouette drawing.

I’m eight or nine. It’s the summer and we’re on vacation in Spain. Spain is such a joy, and my dad is with us! Nevertheless, my mom is starting to break down. She’s unable to stay standing for more than five minutes. Then she faints. No one knows why, including the Spanish doctor my parents go to consult out of despair. I walk holding my dad’s hand on the village’s port. I’m wondering what I could do to make him feel better.

Tell your story, breathe and feel your body--Deeply

For as long as I can remember, I helped heal. It’s my purpose—along with dancing. It took me a while to come to terms with it. First, my mom started her own healing path—a couple of years after the Spanish vacation. Then, she took my hand when I was a young adult, and showed me the way to heal myself from the pain and trauma that circulated from her blood to mine. I also had to set myself free from what I thought my dad wanted me to be—a “success” in the corporate world. Life has its way of pushing you onto the right path. Have you noticed that? In my case, the universe threw two cancers my way, ten years apart. They helped me find my purpose for sure.

I received the message so deeply that I’ve come up with my own healing modality--Yoga for Renewal. If you’re ready for something new on your healing journey, you can take my hand too, and join me in one of my small group classes or a private session. There’s space to tell your story, and there’s space to breathe and feel your body--deeply. “That’s exactly what you need to heal,” my mom says. She knows. She’s done the hard and brave work to heal her wounds and tame her demons. She’s my hero.

February 12, 2018May 8, 2018

Are You Shedding The Skin Of Your Past? Yoga Therapy Can Help

Talking about a previous skin... Summer 1992. In Barcelona during a "Thelma and Louise" road trip with my friend Emilia. We drove from Paris to Barcelona and then across to Nazaré, Portugal. It was a "free spirit" break in the middle of my (short) career at Disneyland Paris.

Every time we experience a big life change, we shed an emotional skin. Here's how yoga therapy can help in this challenging growth process.

Have you ever had the feeling of shedding your emotional skin?

Shedding skin is not a bad thing. It’s part of life. Expecting a baby, moving from one country to another, living after the loss of a spouse, recovering from a surgery--I see lots of skin shedding happening all around me.

I’m going through this growth process again myself, right now. Several events have caused my “old” skin to shed: the recent loss of my yoga teacher, Aline Frati; building the foundations of my own style of yoga therapy, Yoga for Renewal; a personal relationship that pushed me to establish clearer boundaries; and the awareness, finally, that I made the right life decisions in the past three years, despite being judged as “wrong” by significant people in my life.

Even though my “new skin” is not fully in place yet, I can feel that it’s getting closer. Several things are helping me in this growth process. Checking in with people in my life who have the ability to listen deeply is one of them. Sharing who I am and what I am experiencing with someone who listens from their heart is one of the most healing exercises I have ever encountered.

My yoga practice is a great friend too. These days, early every morning, I set aside time that I spend on my yoga mat in my home studio in Atlanta. The combination of the yogic breathing with simple movements does magic. It helps me go inwards and check in with myself. How do I feel in my skin? Am I feeling congruent right down to my cells? Am I true to myself? Am I at peace with myself? How can I breathe into that pain in my lower back? What is that pain saying that can serve me?

If you are shedding an older skin, as I am, I invite you to, first, recognize the process you are experiencing and to honor it. Shedding skin is a big deal.

Once you have actually acknowledged that you are shedding skin, you may want to go through the process on your own or you may choose to seek a little assistance. If assistance feels right for you, I invite you to consider joining me in the upcoming Yoga Therapy 6-Class Series I am about to teach. We’ll be meeting in Terminus Chiropractic in the heart of Cabbage town in Atlanta, every Tuesday evening from February 20 to March 27.

I have designed this Yoga Therapy 6-class series in a way that offers you the healing tools that have helped me the most and continue to do so. I start every class, which is 1hr 45mins long, by bringing the students into a circle and asking them a simple self-reflective question, for example, “What was the most challenging thing that has happened this week?” Once everyone feels complete with the way they’ve answered—or not answered, I lead students in a deep, gentle yoga practice that will help you listen to your body, relax deeply, and “dissolve the patterns of fear and anxiety that get fixed in the body in the form of tension and pain,” as Aline Frati used to say.

I hope you will join me. I would be honored to accompany you in your next new skin.

January 11, 2018May 3, 2018

A Last Au Revoir To My Yoga Teacher

Once, I asked Aline Frati, my yoga teacher, "Do you consider you teach therapeutic yoga?" She answered, "No, I teach a yoga approach for everybody. I teach the yoga of non-duality in which we search for our true nature, beyond all conditionings."

Every breath and every pose I lead my yoga students into are inspired by my yoga teacher, Aline Frati. Aline left us on Jan. 2. Tribute.

My yoga teacher, Aline Frati, left us on January 2, in Paris where she lived.

I happened to be in Paris when Aline made her transition. I was going to fly back to Atlanta the day of her religious ceremony, when Delta unexpectedly cancelled my flight early that morning, allowing me to attend the ceremony, which was held at the Père Lachaise, the most visited cemetery in the world.

After the funeral, Barbara, another of Aline’s students, and I decided to walk through the cemetery to catch the train at the Père Lachaise metro station. On our way, we met a man--one of those “real”, direct-to-the-point, cheeky Parisians--who knew the place like the back of his hand. He guided us to see tombs of many famous people, including Jim Morrison, before disappearing like smoke. I don’t know about you but I believe in signs.

I wrote a few lines about Aline that I read to Aline’s family and friends. I know that Aline would have loved for me to share them with you on my blog, so I’ve included them, below. Namaste.

Discovering yoga with Aline deeply shook my life. She supported me all along my journey.

Aline taught the most therapeutic form of yoga I have ever come across--far from the “yoga-robics” that is often taught in France and the States, where I live.

Above everything, Aline wanted to help us develop our capacity to listen to our body--without judgment. About her yoga approach, she also said, “the purpose of this yoga is to dissolve the repetitive patterns of fear and anxiety which we experience, since childhood, that get fixed in the body in the form of tension and pain.”

Aline fully expressed her art during the yoga retreats she taught at the Abbey of Saint Antoine, a 11th century abbey in one of France’s most beautiful villages, niched in the pre-Alps. “It is the teacher’s quality of presence that helps a person harmonize, not the yoga technique,” she told me during one of those retreats.

Thank you, Aline, for what you have passed down to me. Thank you for being a precious friend, a guide, a light that led me to my deepest self. Just like I asked for your guidance when you were here with us, I will continue to ask you to guide me in yoga therapy and in building on the foundation of what you have taught me.

Your friend, Always,
Elisabeth

LAbbayeDeSaintAntoine — Every summer from 2005 to 2016, Aline taught a week yoga retreat at the 11th century Saint Antoine abbey in a village in the pre-Alps. Aline's teaching combined with the spirit of the ex-abbey run by a Christian community that hosts personal development workshops, revived my soul and deepened my understanding of this yoga practice every time I attended Aline's retreat.

Aline (center, sitting down) with us, her students, at the abbey during the 2008 summer yoga retreat.

December 29, 2017April 10, 2018

Wrap up 2017 with my annual Year in Review

Laying down the foundations of a new alternative healing approach, that's what 2017 is about. What is yoga therapy? What does the ideal and most healing yoga therapy class looks like for me? Experimenting Yoga for Renewal. Transforming it. Testing it again. Re-changing it. 2017 has been an altogether exciting and grueling year full of questions--and sometimes answers. Here's 2017 in seven photos.

January-February

I lock myself in my home office, and collect yoga training and gestalt training material as well as my experience as being my own yoga therapy patient to design a 3-day workshop, "Thriving After Illness", the cornerstone of Yoga for Renewal's alternative healing approach. Its purpose is to help people find their inner fire after illness. In the middle of this, I take a break to participate to Atlanta's version of the Women's March on January 21, the day after Trump takes office.

March-April

After a unsettling month of March during which I am naturalized as an American citizen, I teach "Thriving After Illness 3-day Workshop" for the first time ever at Vista Yoga, Atlanta, in April. While teaching the program, I have the confirmation it works. I feel relieved and more grounded.

May

I feed my blog with blog posts, teach individual sessions of yoga therapy, and realize that "Thriving After Illness 3-Day Workshop" can help everyone, not only people who are recovering from illness.
I bring the best French tradition ever, the "apero"--drinks and finger food before the real dinner--to friends in my all-in-one home/office/yoga studio duplex, in SW Atlanta. More grounding comes along.

June-July

It's time to say bye bye to the beautiful loft, in downtown Atlanta, where I've taught Yoga for Renewal's weekly class for the past months. I modify "Thriving After Illness 3-Day Workshop" so that it's adapted for anyone who needs a "decompression week-end", not just people who are recovering from illness. "Thriving After Illness 3-Day Workshop" becomes "Yoga for Renewal 3-Day Workshop".

August-September

Again, Vista Yoga hosts a Yoga for Renewal premiere. There, I teach a 4-class series over four weeks, a "sampler" of YFR 3-Day Workshop, in August for the first time ever. Ten students--the series is at full capacity--help me grow as much as I help them.
A new community. A family. That's what I (finally) find in the Deep South after ten years living in the States. It all starts with my friend Stacie inviting me to her wedding on August 21, the day of the total solar eclipse, in South Carolina, on the path of totality. Shifting experience.

October-November

I participate in a two-day training on healing circles in the tradition of Native Americans. We're a dozen of volunteers who have committed to be part of a Trauma Response Group in SW Atlanta. That style of healing circle is used in some of Texas' prisons to ease up conflicts. I realize how opening up can be challenging in the American culture--maybe more so that in the French culture. In November, I teach my 4-class series over fours weeks for the second time, at Candler Park Yoga, Atlanta.

December

Back to the roots. In France with my mom (center) and our cousins, Giovanni (left) and Rosine (right). All three of them emigrated from Italy to France between 1949 and 1964. Out of five surviving siblings, my maternal grandmother (Carmela Picano) and three of her siblings (Concetta, Crescenzo and Antonio Picano) left Italy. Carmela, Crescenzo and Antonio emigrated in France while Concetta left for the U.S. My paternal great grandfather, Geraldo Tartaglia, was one of the first Italians to commercialize Italian fine foods to the French. He had a foot in both countries.

December 1, 2017April 10, 2018

Time to Regroup After a Year of Testing My Yoga Therapy Method

My naturalization ceremony on March 10, 2017, in Atlanta. Several people have asked me the same question lately, "What (the hell) makes you stay in the States, these days?" I always give the same answer, "I've met a community of great people, my people."

Yoga for Renewal works. That's the good news. Man, it's been a process. The next step is to make myself known. Right now, time to renew.

I’m a yoga pioneer, and I’m going through a rough time right now. I’ve spent this year building the foundations of my yoga therapy business, Yoga for Renewal, in Atlanta where I live. These days, it seems like every time I open a door, I find a stop sign on the other side--so I’m feeling stuck. And since YFR brings to life what I carry intimately in my soul and what I’m here for, this bothers me.

One of the things I’ve worked on this year is my elevator pitch. Here it is. “YFR is the unique yoga therapy approach that I’ve developed, situated at the intersection of yoga and therapy. It brings two healing modalities together--the unique yoga practice I’ve learned from my yoga teacher in France, Aline Frati, and a time where I invite participants to become aware of what is weighing on their heart and share—I call that time ‘the healing circle’.”

Not bad, right?

If the person I talk to looks interested, I keep going. “You want to know what you truly need in your life, right now? There’s a grief that’s weighing on your life and that you haven’t allowed yourself to go through. Whatever gets in the way of your joy will come up in a YFR class so you can contact it, name it, feel it in your body and transform it into free energy.”

The whole year, I’ve taken two steps forward and one step back.

I started 2017 designing YFR’s three-day workshop, which captures the essence of my approach. For three days, participants practice yoga, then share what is coming up for them in a healing circle, then return back to the yoga mat for more breathing and postures, then back to the healing circle, and so on.

I taught the workshop for the very first time in the spring. There were only three participants. Still, the group was enough to show me that my method worked. One participant became aware of how physically and emotionally strong she was despite a serious chronic condition; another recognized her need to grieve after the loss of a loved one; while the third left before the end of the three days, avoiding addressing her guilt.

Later in the year, I designed the Yoga for Renewal 4-Class Series--a condensed version of the workshop. My first series brought together a group of ten. Yeah! Each week for four weeks in a row, I taught a two-hour class where participants practiced yoga and came together in a healing circle.

During this series one of the participants became aware of how vital it is to express how she feels. Another spoke her truth to a loved one, something she had never done before. Another dropped out half way because of a sore throat, or maybe a trip out West, or maybe both.

I’ve also had to cancel a workshop and a series for lack of people registering. That sucked.

“Write an elevator pitch.” “Put less text on your flyers.” “Put more text on your flyers.” “You need to teach in hospitals!” “Have you talked with chiropractors?” “Do you think the French would be more receptive to what you do?” My friends’ suggestions and questions have uplifted, helped, confused or depressed me, depending on what they said and my mood in the moment.

There are a few things I know for sure. The body and soul are inseparable. When we contact and express our emotions, we move towards better physical, psychological and spiritual health. I’ve developed YFR based on those principles. Yoga for Renewal works—for those who are ready.

Last but not least, I’ve gone too far to give up!

Next week, I’ll fly home to Paris, taste my mom’s home-made pizza and get nurtured from her wisdom, walk on the city’s bridges, go salsa dance with my friends, make eye contact with cute guys in the streets, taste the world’s best wines, joke with my cousins, share my journey with my yoga teacher, and experience whatever the universe has in store for me. Au revoir. I’ll meet you on the other side for more Yoga for Renewal.

"Feeling and do some yoga", that's how a client describes Yoga for Renewal.

November 14, 2017April 10, 2018

Yoga Teachers, Therapists—Help Your Clients with Yoga for Renewal

Bringing a student to breathe, to connect with their true feelings, and to name and respect what has been hidden. That's what Yoga for Renewal is about.

Yoga for Renewal is at the intersection of yoga and therapy. So if you're a yoga teacher or a therapist, YFR can help you help your own clients. Here's how.

Yoga for Renewal is what I carry intimately in my soul and what I am here for.

I am hypersensitive, a lover of movement (mainly dance), and I have a passion for aiding in healing. After years of preparation, I’ve designed YFR, a new healing approach, that is made up of both a specific yoga practice and a time dedicated to self-awareness and sharing.

The yoga practice helps a person develop their ability to listen to emotions and feelings that have been buried alive, to listen to what their body says—openness, relaxation or, on the contrary, constriction, pain or even disease. The time for self-awareness is a place where clients are invited to become aware of what is lodged in and weighing on their heart, and to verbalize and respect what they are finding.

Yoga Teachers—Help Your Students Put Words on Their Symptoms

At the end of my five-month yoga teacher training in 2010, each of us 29 students had to teach a yoga sequence to the rest of the group. I teamed up with another student and taught the last thirty minutes of a gentle yoga class. We had all been through an intense training which had stirred our personal “stuff”. I could feel the exhaustion in the room. Half way through the part I was teaching, everybody was in child’s pose. Intuitively, I sat next to a student I felt close to, and rested my hand on top of her back. She burst into tears and sobbed. After class, she expressed that she felt overwhelmed with sadness over the loss of her brother who had passed away years before, and for which she had never grieved. The five-month training and the class had brought to the light the suppressed grieving.

If you are a yoga teacher, more likely than not, you have taught a class where one of your students has had an emotional breakthrough. Because of its nature, experiencing YFR can help you listen with greater presence to what your students have to say, and help them put words to their feelings and symptoms. It can help you go one step further, as a yoga teacher, by showing you the way to your clients’ symptoms, using the power of words.

Therapists—Help Your Clients Reach Feelings Buried Alive, with Body Work

The first time I ever attended a yoga class, I had years of therapy behind me. The work —whether in individual sessions or in group—had helped me break down the walls of the “prison” I lived in to comply with my parents’ needs. That day, I took my first class in Paris with Aline Frati who has been my yoga teacher ever since. Something unexpected showed up for me. For the very first time I felt connected to my body. I felt the hurt of satisfying others--of years of pushing myself in an exhausting career and of an abusive relationship--within my tissues. Connecting with my body and soul so deeply put me on a fast-track to healing.

If you are a therapist, experiencing YFR will help you to help your clients reach and go through physical resistances and muscular restrictions that will bring them to feelings that have long been buried alive. From that place, you will be able to help your clients respect what has been hidden within their tissues, and within their soul. YFR’s body approach will help you, as a therapist, help your clients reach their deepest authentic selves faster than with using verbalization alone.

Years of therapy, yoga, re-connecting with dancing and a love for healing--all led me to design Yoga for Renewal.

One of these days, I hope to meet you all on the mat.

October 27, 2017April 10, 2018

My Big Move’s 11th Anniversary–in 11 Photos

Here's a photo gallery to celebrate when I first moved from France to the States in Atlanta, Georgia, eleven years ago, and my blog's first anniversary. It's been a ride.

2007.
Atlanta is both enchanting and brutal. I have to re-learn everything, while exploring my new existence with my American husband. Every morning I roll out my yoga mat in our living room. The yoga I practice --and that I've learned from my French yoga teacher, Aline Frati-- helps me to dive deep inwards and navigate through the misunderstandings in my relationship, and the hazards of being a new immigrant. Still, I feel I don’t fit. Six months later, I push through the door of a therapist’s office. He listens and says, “Be who you are”. I feel an instant relief in my chest, and keep going.

2008.
At a wedding with a theme--The 40's. Feeling isolated in this transition year. John travels for his business a lot. Thank goodness, I pick up a writing gig. I spend most days in my home office. I visit my family of choice--Valerie and Dave in Orlando, FL and Jenny and Larry in Lansing, MI. My friend Carole from Paris comes to visit. I also manage to attend, for the fourth year in a row, Aline's annual week-long yoga retreat, in Southern France. There, I pause and feel. "Teach! You're ready!" claims my yoga teacher.

2009.
The "American dream" collapses. John is out of work part of the year. I find a huge writing project--which helps! I spend days in my home office, writing. Feeling isolated and that I have lost track of myself. What about my dream of teaching yoga? I sign up for a yoga teacher training and spend the summer building my (arm) muscles to prepare. In America, I find yoga is about fitness and strength!

2010.
I bump into a training in the practice of Gestalt therapy. We're four trainees and Leif Roland, gestalt practitioner and trainer. All of us are foreigners! Over six months, I learn to become aware of what I feel in the present moment, to respect that, and to be fully present for others. That's where I meet Julia De Leon, my soul sister, and Ciprian Stan, who tragically passes away in 2014 from ALS. I want to teach yoga in a "new" way. My intention is to teach the yoga practice I've learnt from Aline Frati, my French yoga teacher, and complement the practice with a time where students can share how they truly feel. I give the "protocol" a name--Yoga for Renewal.

2011.
My dad comes to visit me, us. He's astonished by the cars, "they're all brand new!" and Savannah. He's also appalled by the "bad" wine that is served in restaurants. One day, while I drive him to the local fresh market, he says "you have to have killed mother and father to get used to here!" It's a French saying that we use when we refer to someone who is or has accomplished something particularly difficult. I stay silent and think, "yes, it's one way to say what I've experienced."

2012.
While working as a freelance writer, I train as a certified yoga therapist. I teach my first-ever Yoga for Renewal group class series in Candler Park Yoga in Atlanta. I am testing, for the first time, the power of the combination of yoga and a healing circle where I encourage students to connect in deep and personal places, all for their personal development. The students' progression over the series tells me the "protocol" works.

2013.
My marriage is falling apart and neither of us are aware of it. John and I buy a house in the 'hood in Southwest Atlanta, 11 miles from Atlanta's Northern suburbia where we live--an ocean apart. It's a big, healthy house --4,000 square feet--which needs lots of interior renovation. The first time I step inside to visit it, the solid stone necklace I'm wearing breaks apart, for no reason. I see the stones roll everywhere on the floor... Looking back, it's a sign. The house feels too big. I still say "yes" to the purchase because of a big den that we can convert into a home yoga studio, and to save the marriage.

2014.
My friend Randy, a talented astrologer and coach, tells me what he sees in my chart for the coming months. "You are going to go over a big bump. It will be at the scale of an atomic explosion. After this time, you will find your purpose, the real reason why you came here." Randy is right. Within four months, John and I separate, my dad is diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer while I'm diagnosed with a second breast cancer. I move back to France to take care of myself and regroup with my family. Before leaving Atlanta, my friend Julia introduces me to her friends, a group of sensitive, like-minded people who love to connect, help make the world a better place and party.

2015.
After my treatments, I return to Atlanta to divorce. Three months later, I'm back in Paris for my dad's funeral. That day, I look at the sunset from my parents' house, just outside of the city. I've looked at dozens of sunsets from their place but that evening is different. The sunset is the most beautiful and intense I've ever seen. Back to Atlanta, I infuse Yoga for Renewal with what I've learnt in the past year--a huge lot.

2016.
A trip to Italy, the place of my family roots, changes something that is deeply buried in me, something transmitted from my lineage. While hiking in the mountains, I have the chills and feel I need to deposit, at this spot (photo), the pain my mom and my ancestors have endured on this land, and reclaim the pride of being of Italian descent. The same year, I decide to let go of my writing business to dedicate my time to Yoga for Renewal and build its foundation in Atlanta.

2017.
I find my voice with my blog and I walk Yoga for Renewal from the toddler's stage to the young child's stage. It's now clear--what makes me tick is to help people process feeling that have been buried alive through the yoga practice and the healing circle. I start establishing the brand and the protocol in Atlanta with a three-day workshop and a group class series at Vista Yoga. Another group class series is planned at Candler Park Yoga. This is also the year of connectedness, festivals, new friends, new community, dancing and music. The journey to be me continues.

September 27, 2017April 10, 2018

Stop Thinking Positive! Do Your Shadow Work Instead

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.

MLK-Retreat-PennCenter-SC — 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.

August 31, 2017April 10, 2018

My Heart Belongs To Avalon

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.

StacieAndArt-WeddingCeremony-Aug17 — 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.

HelmeHollyAndI-Avalon-Aug17 — 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?

July 27, 2017April 10, 2018

The Man Behind Yoga For Renewal

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.

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.

Breuvardes-Retreat-Center — 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.