**just more to say on the “About Flow~into~yoga” topic that is too much for the front page 🙂
This name (while admittedly cliché and wordy) gets to the heart of what I most deeply believe in, why I practice and teach yoga. In Sanskrit, it means “to unite” – starting in the deepest layers within the self and extending out to the furthest layers of the universe. I’ll never forget when I learned this in my 2016 yoga training and a light went off! My sustainability studies a year later heightened this deep knowing that I’d had all my life, teaching me the science behind how everything is truly interconnected. I had spoken of this interconnectedness in my 2012 Peace Corps application when I wrote that I wanted to be a volunteer “to connect through our similarities and learn through our differences” – which I learned was possible through an undergraduate minor in Cultural Anthropology. You see – the connection is there, sometimes we just have to draw the lines! The more I live by this knowing, the further this truth that WE ARE ONE is validated all around me.
Then, on the other hand, the word “flow” stems from the Sanskrit word “Vinyasa,” which translates as “to place in a special way”. On the mat, this looks like moving the body into various forms in synchronicity (or unity) with the breath. Krishnamacharya, the South Indian yogi master who taught Pattabhi Jois (founder of Ashtanga Vinyasa), taught that the vinyasa method is a step-by-step practice to meeting the needs of the particular practitioner – there’s no “one size fits all”. His teachings also emphasized that this flow is much deeper than being moved by the breath on the mat. As water effortlessly flows to fit the container, we too can flow through every facet of life.
The more these concepts of flow and unity engrain into my personal life, the more that I learn to move from the inside~out and to pause the movement long enough to hear the inner voice that stems from pure good. It’s been interesting to observe myself flowing in and out of these practices, as I have come to see firsthand that how I care for others is reflected in how I care for myself.
So yes – Flow~into~yoga – as in, flow into unity. Feel your wholeness. Trust that you are intricately connected to the highest good, and therefore are supported in your path towards wellness. Through this wellness journey for at least 20 years myself (yes, it truly started at 10 years old – another story for another day) and FINALLY feeling the peace I’ve been searching for from the inside~out, I can attest to it taking genuine hard work AND that the fruits of that labor make it so well worth it.
We all have our “stuff” that weighs us down, that tells us we can’t do it or that we are undeserving of feeling pure peace. And this is just one of the many messages around you that say – “you are free to let it go, you can do anything you really want to do, and you are deserving of feeling all the good that this world has to offer”. If you’d like guidance, I would be thrilled to “unite” with you and, together, find the practices that bring you back into the wholeness that is YOU.
