And I’m Back in the Game!

I have been practicing yoga since I was 18 years old. Quick math *puts on Einstein cap* : that equates to precisely 22 years, 4 months and 3 days. Or so.

Point being, a lot can happen in 22 years. I started off as a kiddo with the firm belief that only Hollywood actors did yoga (and that they were lying: you eat what you want, do yoga, and look like that?! Ah, the Aughts and reading too many celeb magazines), only to eventually cave and explore group classes in the basement of The University of Virginia’s Aquatic Center where I slip-slided on cheap yoga mat rentals (note: baby powder and/or deodorant on palms does NOT prevent slippage), and eventually fell in love with Ashtanga under the tutelage of Jennifer Elliott. Fast-forward to TT with Maty Ezraty and Chuck Miller at Yogaworks, falling in love with arm balances, teaching LOADS of advanced asana, injuring myself a-plenty, leaving Los Angeles and the studio scene for a life on the road, years teaching online for a massive company, to finally embracing the wild and unknown beauty called autonomy aka Haus of Phoenix.

Phew.

That’s the super-truncated version, but it supports my point: a yoga practice, just like life, is always adapting and evolving. These choice words are KEY. Let me explain: in life, we must adapt to survive. It’s in our DNA. On the yoga mat, we adapt to make posture accessible. We modify for injury, adjust for our mood, remodel to fit an aging body, reassess according to our energy levels. And in doing this — knowing everything is temporary and we must adapt — we EVOLVE.

Has my yoga practiced changed? Yes, without a doubt. I rarely arm balance anymore, and my days of pressing to handstand are long gone. Sometimes my ego mourns this physically impressive era, but my mind knows better. I am here, in this meatsuit, ready to adapt, observe, and re-learn what yoga has to offer.

This is the approach I take when I build classes and programs for Haus of Phoenix. What do we as a community need? I found after 2020, so many of us needed to reintroduce ourselves to our bodies and to the mat. We had freshly shed old versions of ourselves, leaving many of us feeling lost, raw, and exposed. A once familiar practice now felt daunting. What once felt effortless transformed into something foreign. It was, and might still be, WILD. Losing a part of your identity is never easy, even though creation almost always grows from the ashes of destruction. We are called Haus of Phoenix, afterall.

All this to say: I wrote the Back in the Game program for this exact reason. Life happens, things change, we fall off the horse, and this program is an open hand to help you back up. Four classes paired with four meditations, each one growing in challenge and duration. There is no specific structure — you can do one a week, or if it’s been a while, stick to week one for as long as you’d like. When you’re feeling solid, explore the next class, but remember your key words as you explore: adapt and evolve. You got this.