YOGA WITH AVERY

🌈⚡️GRATITUDE ⚡️🌈 Next week we’re heading to @casatararetreat to welcome SUCH an incredible group. Already so much goodness has materialized through this project! 😩🥰💘 I’ve been reflecting on how just 1 year ago our first big QT retreat, a miracle that almost didn’t happen, was the gateway and catalyst for SUCH profound goodness for everyone there… deep connections, relationships, healing and root level shifts that continue to bloom 🌷from that auspicious and transformative gathering. It’s been beautiful and humbling to witness the ripple effects. 🔥 (On a small personal level, for instance, it was after that experience I got the courage to finally tell my biofamily ‘I’m trans.’ Though much bigger were the life changing connections and portals that opened, through that experience. New horizons revealed, for so many…) So, with immense gratitude, THANK YOU to everyone who donated funds and energy to help us provide this potent, loving, urgently needed immersive healing space for our community. With your help we were able to maximize scholarships + equity spots, successfully fulfilling our goal to sell out our retreat with majority trans, majority QTBIPOC. Huge gratitude to everyone whose energy has gone into this dream, and emergent, powerful reality! 🖤🖤🖤 I deeply love our courageous co creation and how we work together, Tiger @liveyourown.life and Meesha @alchemystic_studio !! It’s already been epic, and the best part yet to come, so soon! May knowing this too is real create a little more space for possibility, whereever you are, dear ig fam… Much love Avery #transjoyisresistance (at Casa Tara Retreat) https://www.instagram.com/p/CqWSds5Pi5Z/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Heading into #transweekofvisibility with a lot of #t4t devotion ✨ Especially now, embodied spaces for connection that honor the nuance, sacredness, tenacity, and brilliance of trans ness feel so precious. Sometimes the magic of something softening, shifting, healing even, isn’t complex or dramatic… sometimes it’s subtle, quiet, sometimes… easy. So much is falling apart, being born. So much is possible. Slide read: trans led trans + queer centered yoga spaces are needed because there are consistent patterns in how: gender affirming yoga can empower euphoria, belonging, and nervous system regulation, where mainstream yoga can trigger dysphoria and aggravation specifically trans, non-binary, and queer bodies hold pain and inflammation internalized transphobia + homophobia affects our bodies and minds in ways cis het yoga cannot address, and sometimes makes worse many trans, nonbinary, queer people struggle with unworthiness, shame, and related disembodiment, and yoga can help us transform these wounds at the root level healing is possible when we feel safe enough to be present with what is, and when we explore this work together, we are affirmed in our inherent wholeness and belonging. 🌷🦋❤️‍🔥🏳️‍⚧️✨🌌 If you’re ready for some affirming, loving support for your asana + yoga practice - join us?! 🖤 Sadhana Support Collective helps trans folks, queers and counter-culture yoga lovers committed to collective liberation reconnect to the practices they love, break the burn out cycle + be nourished, embodied, and spiritually strong through committed yoga practice empowered by adaptive, functional asana in an affirming community without bypassing their body or the wisdom of their lived experience. 💘 #transyoga #nonbinaryyoga #queeryoga #communitycare LINK IN BIO https://www.instagram.com/p/CqROFv6vFNk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Happy Valentines Day, dear lovable one! ♥️💌♥️💌♥️ Yes, Valentines day can be an annoying reminder of our unhealthy obsession with romantic, normative love, and the capitalist hunger to consume material metaphor and performance of connection that can distract from actual connection. AND, the vulnerability, intimacy, and truth of LOVE is immensely relevant anytime!! So, I'm sending you a burst of heart shaped appreciation today! Also a few memes My heart to yours 🌌🫀 🖤 Yoga sometimes uses the language of lover and the beloved to describe prakriti and purusha, or us - the part of us that is defined by body, mind, identity, ever-changing aspects - and the inner most Self, or soul. Does your yoga practice help you be in loving relationship with your Self? If your practice is driven by the purpose of loving connection, secure attachment, and intimacy with Purusha, the innermost Self, how does that inform what and how and how often you practice? 💞 You're warmly invited to come to special V-day Self Love Restorative Yoga class with me tonight. If you don't have other plans this could be the perfect thing! Sliding scale, and it includes a replay 💞 . . . "Yoga is an interior penetration leading to integration of being, senses, breath, mind, intelligence, consciousness, and Self. It is definitely an inward journey, evolution through involution, toward the Soul, which in its turn desires to emerge and embrace you in its glory.” - Guruji BKS lyengar, Light on Life (at Self Love) https://www.instagram.com/p/CoqBAdlPfun/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

today was I supposed to have a top surgery consult but instead, since I recently found out I have a little cancer, I had a small but still not fun surgery to deal with that. 11 stitches ! Hm. Grateful for the privilege of access to Medicaid and doctors and care. And that I went in. Nothing like feeling the intimacy and realness of death to awaken appreciation for aliveness, the purpose and meaning of being here. Legacy, and letting go. Feeling like… it’s ok to want what we want, to need what we need. What is true is true. Honesty and love and presence, catching the sparkle in my kids eyes, not to be postponed. Probably this will be something I can manage and I’ll have more time but nothing is promised. So if you wanna come study with me, ha, don’t put it off forever! It’s definitely 2 different operating systems, living life as a long game vs if I only have a little time left… It’s been so rich, deep, magical this life. If that’s all I get I’ve done it fully. It’s been more than enough. And also I feel like I’m just now fully finding my stride loving and knowing who I am and how and who I’m serving, my cosmic contribution in tender steady bloom, so not done yet… Don’t really wanna share more rn (Thanks for not dm ing im already so behind 🙈) but really really appreciate the love n support from my dear ones. Thank you If you wanna send good vibes, possibly in the form of donations for our fundraiser for the April QT retreat 😘🙂 - or just energetic spells - much appreciated 🧡 xxoo . . Image: avery, a white bodied trans masc person in a brown jacket looks to the side with hands in their pockets. They stand in a fallow garden, in front of an adobe style wall and gray sky. (at New Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/Conv1nJvQlr/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Delighted for this V day gathering of queer trans yoga magic! 🖤 Our first guest teacher Philosophy Spark Session of 2023 inside Sadhana Support Collective 🖤 This Tuesday! 4:00 PM MST • (75 min) Alchemy of Yoga - Transmuting Forms with Luna Sophia aka Hector 💞 @hector.yoga LIVESTREAM . . Yoga philosophy and its teachings present us with different ways of perceiving materiality and existence. This leads us to a radical re-introduction to what is an essential form and a transient form. Come learn about this dance. Find out how it asks for a radical and reaffirming approach to our existence, as well as how it reminds us of our stake and place in this universe. 🐚🌗🌌❤️‍🔥 Luna Sophia (They/Them) aka Hector is a trans non-binary person who calls the colorful streets of New York City home. Their approach to Iyengar Yoga is one of relationality and context. A dance between a living tradition and body of teachings that meets each practitioner uniquely where they are. They apprenticed with Theresa Rowland from 2008 to 2014 at Studio Yoga in Madison and became a Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher in 2014. They are a faculty of the Iyengar Yoga Institute of New York and serve as the vice-president for Iyengar Yoga Association of the United States. Yoga and its philosophical world presented them with a new frame through which to understand and engage with life. Yoga has saved them and supported their journey through the many iterations of their existence. Luna proud nerd and social activist who is finishing a degree in Sociology and Philosophy at Hunter College. CANT WAIT! for Sadhana Suppprt Collective members - join us ?! LINK N BIO beautiful artwork on last slide credit: @indg0 (at 𝓣𝓱𝒆 𝓤𝒏𝒊𝓿𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒆) https://www.instagram.com/p/ColHTokPSTZ/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Can you help us fund queer trans joy?! 💌 The grassroots organized, by-us for-us QUEER TRANS Yoga Retreat we are organizing needs your support! Help us provide urgently needed, profoundly impactful healing and community care. 🧡 Especially white cis het yoga folks, this is a great opportunity for you to, as a recent donor said, experience the pleasure of supporting rhizomic care through inclusivity and access in yoga! 🧡 . We currently have a long waitlist of amazing QTBIPOC folks who want to join our upcoming April retreat, but we still need to raise $6800 to make this possible. A kind anonymous (trans! so cmon cis allies) person has pledged to MATCH up to $1000 of donations that come in by Valentines Day! Can you make a direct positive impact and donate now? ➡️ donate via linktree ➡️ Venmo is ➡️ email or dm us to arrange other payments methods, such as mailing a check or contributing with credit card LINK IN BIO so much gratitude!! for sharing, commenting, helping us get the word out! . . . This project (and post) is a collaborative creation by Avery @yoga_with_avery Meesha @alchemystic_studio Tiger @liveyourown.life 🏳️‍⚧️🤎🌈🌺 (at Casa Tara Retreat) https://www.instagram.com/p/CogGo_bvK9P/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

trans thoughts 🖤💌 Also this Wednesday evening is our 1st QUEER // TRANS community gathering in Sadhana Support Collective Can’t wait to just chill in that space and bask in that radiance ✨ thanks @may__nicholson for the support and encouragement to make this part of the SSC flow. . . If you are a queer // trans person, love alignment based asana, yoga philosophy + spirituality and want more support and community - you should join sadhana support collective! We’d be so happy to have you; I think you’ll love it. . . . Slides read: for many years before I was able to admit to myself “I am trans“ I felt a deep love, a reverent adoration, for transness and trans people. It was kind of an irony, funny, then, to eventually realize oh, maybe this is partly because I’M TRANS. That’s a powerful thing the oh I’m trans moment. There were/are so many complex layers of internalized transphobia its complex, and the truth that contains any complexity is that transition is so fucking wonderful. I love testosterone and growing deeper into masculinity. It’s an incredible soul quenching relief. Gender transition is the thing that has most given me a deep feeling that it’s OK to exist. So the fact that there’s been more anti-LGBTQ mostly anti-trans legislation in the first month of 2023 than 2018, 2019, 2020 in 2021 COMBINED is pretty scary n sad n disturbing. allies. Please advocate for us in all the small and big ways and trans non-binary, GNC bbs please please invest in good good care for yourself, at least as much as you give to everyone else (I see you) we didn’t expect it to be easy, but uff Trans and queer people are not an expendable fraction of the world, not dangerous. We are part of the most beautiful precious parts of the universe and key to our collective future. . . . 🗝️🏳️‍⚧️🌌🌈 #transissacred (at Transgender) https://www.instagram.com/p/CoVqGA4PTRG/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Happy full moon in Leo 🌕💛🗝️ Hope you have some moments rn to bask in the inner and outer ✨✨✨ . . . In classes this week we’ll be exploring the theme of standing poses for embodied clarity, how to get grounded in spiritual connection and intuition through physiological stability. . . . Some questions we’re exploring this week in Sadhana Support Collective: . . 🌖 How do asana and pranayama connect me to a sense of, as Iyengar wrote, "knowing before you know how you know?" 🌖 How do I experience embodiment helping me trust these inner messages? What gets in the way of trusting myself?  🌖 How does intuition and self trust relate to my ability to disrupt inner and outer harm? 🌖How do I discern intuition from fears/ patterns?  . . . Feel free to add any musings in the comments here! May your practice this week be an anchor to your own embodied intuition, humble spiritual strength, self trust, and through that ways to live the practice of ahimsa, nonviolence/ harm disruption within your own body mind and in your relationships, and how you're in community and collective impact. See you in class, loves! . . . Image id in comments Photo by @__bbmmgg__ Collage by avery 🖤 https://www.instagram.com/p/CoTj0gLO0yN/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

“To understand the history we embody is to understand whose eyes we use to see, whose stories and fantasies we inherit. Colonization, along with its violence, is an altered looking. The imposition of a story of entitlement.” - Prentis @prentishemphill 🌌 “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” - James Baldwin 🌌 “Difference must be not merely tolerated, but seen as a fund of necessary polarities between which our creativity can spark like a dialectic.” - Audre Lorde 🌌 “Belief initiates and guides action - or it does nothing.” - Octavia Butler 🌌 What a heart breaking and heart healing time we are in! Complexity and miracles abound! It’s all too much but here we are! . Reposting this series cause it’s true everyday #blackhistorymonth #blackfuturemonth . . . Willing to be performative if it helps leverage funds for redistribution and access in good ways 💁🏼‍♂️ I’m realizing have a knack for this actually, somehow, so, bring it. This month the allotted 10% net from classes n sadhana support collective goes to Black trans justice organizing. We’re also still fundraising to create QTBIPOC access to the Queer Trans Yoga Retreat - Black trans practitioners priority 💘 link in bio or see my recent post about this, or the recent post at @liveyourown.life and @alchemystic_studio 🦋🤎 https://www.instagram.com/p/CoJSiEau-zK/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

It’s not too late to join us this evening for HAPPY HIPS: Fluidity through Stability 2 hour asana workshop 4:30 pm mst Come live or enjoy the replay for Sadhana Support Collective Members 💛 Sign up: LINK IN BIO! Now is the perfect time to jump aboard … 🚂🌈🌈🌈 For $27 a week, roughly the price of 1 weekly drop in class at a mainstream yoga studio, you get access to SO MUCH sweet support: 5 intimate, adaptive, transformative livestream classes per week, unlimited on demand, monthly philosophy and asana workshops, community support, and so much more! THE SADHANA SUPPORT COLLECTIVE IS... → A place to access counterculture Iyengar Yoga asana, pranayama, philosophy classes and workshops to fire up your practice! → A system to clarify your practice so you can benefit from the presence of consistent yoga in your life without feeling overwhelmed, isolated, or stuck in old patterns. → An intuitively guided approach that works with your body, not against it; loving accountability, expert guidance, the depth of lineage, and tbh a lot of FUN! → A queer affirming community where co-inspiration and mutual support thrives. 💘 Sadhana Support Collective helps queers and counterculture yoga lovers + folks committed to collective liberation ❤️‍🔥reconnect❤️‍🔥 to the practice they love, break the burn out cycle + be nourished, embodied, and spiritually strong through committed yoga practice empowered by adaptive, functional asana in an affirming community without bypassing their body or the wisdom of their lived experience. . . Be in touch if you have any questions! (at Queer Island) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn5Q80UPOkz/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Hi you 😍 - I'm Avery (they them) I 💖 creating healing spaces that cherish and center queer & trans folks, that don't require assimilation! I’m a white bodied, queer, trans Iyengar Yoga teacher, community weaver, and wellness organizer with over 20 years experience. I offer a vast knowledge of functional anatomy & stability so you can experience tangible, empowering transformation in body mind and consciousness. While asana is just one aspect of Yogic study, it’s a uniquely powerful portal to experiential freedom, healing, and joy! The Iyengar method emphasizes embodiment as a way to integrate yoga’s teachings. Its philosophical + spiritual rigor are grounded in asana so students can have a direct experience of transformation that often otherwise remains in the realm of concept or metaphor. My classes are intimate, customized to who’s in the space, and what folks are needing. They are educational: you’ll learn about functional anatomy, how patterns in body/mind relate to ancestry, trauma, collective conditioning, and how we can become more free! 💛 My primary love-offering-project right now is stewarding a beautiful online yoga community called 💘Sadhana Support Collective💘 Someone recently told me it's the ONLY online Yoga Membership that centers queer and trans folks! Wow really!? It's a badass, tender, inspiring group. An emergent container! We explore deep dynamic asana, pranayama, rest, involution… We not only study the Sutras, but how to embody them, how are they problematic? How to apply a queer lens? QT community is my main! I love you all so much. I wouldn't be alive without queer community. There’s a certain way we’re obsessed with giving, disrupting, serving. It brings me so much joy to support + witness people who give SO much experience deep release, nourishment, empowerment, to see my students lit up through precious practice and sacred shared space! I’d love for you to come explore this gorgeousness for yourself! The best way to learn all about it is to come to the FREE workshop I’m offering on Saturday! Are you registered? LINK IN BIO 🌅 (at Albuquerque, New Mexico) https://www.instagram.com/p/CnnyTz4uocw/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

A consistent yoga practice is a game changer. 😴Better sleep. 🕊️Less suffering. ⚖️More stability, ☀️energy, ❤️‍🔥discernment, 🏹capacity. 🌅 A connection to purpose and spiritual strength, that no one can take away. 💛 It's fucking powerful! 💛 However... Most folks run into 3 traps that derail their practice: 📛1. Isolation + perfectionism leads to feeling like a failure, like it's never "enough." They perform for what they think practice "should be" and miss the good medicine they really need. 📛 2. Binary thinking. They feel like their yoga practice is separate from the rest of their life - and perhaps even selfish. A disconnect between self care and collective care, spirit and matter. 📛 3. Practice starts to actually work... and it's weirdly scary.The body and mind experience tastes of freedom, but it's disorienting, and the subconscious derails momentum to keep them in the old familiar ruts and obsolete stories about what is real. If you find yourself lost in even one of these, 😩 it will prevent you (from getting relief (that is actually so within reach!) These traps are more than just distractions: NOT practicing means not disrupting the patterns that sap your energy, derail your commitments, and keep you stuck in the old familiar forms of suffering. If you want a more consistent yoga practice but keep getting derailed, join me for a free workshop... 💞 Reclaim Your Agency and Peace / How to Have a Yoga Practice You Love a FREE workshop This Sat, Jan 21 1-2:15pm MST Sign up: yogawithavery.com It’s a beautiful, inspiring journey with an epic slideshow, and a lot of really practical cool insight to support you on your embodied healing journey, so you can experience less surviving, more thriving… 🌱 Join us, live this Saturday, or use the replay, which will be available for 48 hours post event. Tag someone you wanna come with?! #sangha See you there! 🌈🌈🌈 Big gratitude for nurturing me and this project @may__nicholson 🙏🏼 (Image ID in comments) (at Yoga Practice) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnk4Kp_PW9X/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Centering queer + trans community in my yoga offerings infuses everything with such vitality, depth, richness, meaning… it’s taken many years of iteration and is still in process but definitely feeling a ton of gratitude for the incredibly beautiful qt folks in my life, for the SADHANA SUPPORT COLLECTIVE crew, for the in person and online queer yoga gatherings that bloomed last year and the ones unfurling into reality now. Queer and trans friends, I’d love for you to come to my free workshop this Saturday💛 This FREE workshop on Jan. 21st specifically for queers, trans folks, and counterculture yoga lovers like you: Reclaim Your Agency and Peace! How to Have Yoga Practice You Love I'll be sending out a replay good for 48 hours after, so if you can't join live you can still get the goodness! This is a beautiful, inspiring workshop; I'm really excited to share it with you. Last time, people got a lot out of it: "Avery! This workshop was revolutionary! I love how you integrate the physical, political, and the spiritual together without sugar-coating anything." - Luke, he/him 🌈💌🗝️ Grateful for the growing community inside Sadhana Support Collective and all the ripple effects unfolding… Thanks for helping invite friends. See you there! Xx https://www.instagram.com/p/Cni6wInOoPf/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Visionary emergent healing in queer community on the horizon 🌅 And an invitation to support it! 🌙⭐️🌞 An incredibly beautiful group is in formation for our 2nd annual QUEER \\ TRANS YOGA RETREAT April 9-15 2023 At Casa Tara @casatararetreat Collaboratively offered by: Avery @yoga_with_avery Tiger @liveyourown.life Meesha @alchemystic_studio 🌈 We have just a few spots left - If you want to join us, check out all the info and apply at yogawithavery.com 💘 LINK IN BIO One reason we are doing an application process is to create a space that is at least 🏳️‍⚧️50% trans n nonbinary folks, and at least 🤎50% Black Indigenous people of Color. In addition to equity pricing, we are fundraising to provide extra support! 💌🗝️💰🌈 This time our scholarship efforts are focused on supporting Black QTs to attend this incredibly special gathering. Can you help us? Inspiration from Meesha: …we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to make sure the container is intentional, diverse, and inclusive. We are putting out a call to make this endeavor more feasible for ourselves and more importantly, the folks that want to attend. 🌟ASK: If you are not a QTBIPOC person in the community, you can help us gift this retreat to someone who is, and may not be able to attend due to financial constraints? We are looking to fundraise $3900. This is a wonderful way to practice yoga off of the mat; an ancient practice called karma yoga asks us to give while expecting nothing in return, which inevitably blesses us with the boons of our practice. Sometimes we need to lean on our community for help, and that is perfectly ok, and quite frankly, the natural order of things. You can donate at the LINK IN OUR BIO. Any amount helps, so if you can't go, please consider helping someone that wants to!! ——- Sharing/ saving this post, tagging folks in the comments, sharing the link and info about this fundraiser also helps too! Thank you in advance 🌺 #collectivecare #commmunitylove #queertransyoga image ID in comments (at Casa Tara Retreat) https://www.instagram.com/p/Cnfcnwqvphk/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

When it comes down to it, what keeps you showing up for asana? In over 2 decades of teaching, i’ve observed how usually the most dedicated students practice consistently because they know if they don’t, their suffering, pain, anxiety, inflammation etc will increase in ways that hugely impacts their life. Many people come to asana initially for relief. And for the first 5 to 10 years of practice, this often remains the driving force, although I’ve also seen with long-term practitioners how as time goes on, elements of spiritual, transformation, and body consciousness, etc. takes the lead. My initial interest in yoga was initially driven by inquiry about perception and consciousness, and a quest for understanding more intimately what does divinity, purpose, and being alive, really mean. The embodied element of asana was key, though, and the effects on my body, and especially my mind continue to fuel my commitment practice. I’m curious how this is especially for other folks who have a committed practice. Are you more motivated by spirituality/ joy, or by reducing suffering? Or would you answer this entirely outside those parameters? #heyamdukhamanagatam ☀️ I’m offering a free workshop in 6 days exploring how to clear the psychological barriers to practice, come!? Bring a friend 💛 Reclaim you Agency + Peace How to have a yoga practice you love Saturday Jan 21st LINK IN BIO 🍯💘🌈 . . Photography of these lovely #yogakarunta moments in the morning sun by @__bbmmgg__ 🙏🏼 My shirt reads, “protect trans kids” #iyengaryoga (at Yoga Practice) https://www.instagram.com/p/CncmUTJPHqI/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

Do you want a deeper, more committed yoga practice, but keep falling off rhythm and being hard on yourself? Do you struggle with body pain, overthinking, fatigue, and overwhelm? The world is heading in some intense directions; now is the time to be resourced, clear, strong. But is it even possible to sustainably change the patterns that keep you feeling exhausted, stuck, burnt out? How do you have a practice you'll really show up for consistently? Join me for a FREE WORKSHOP! Especially for queers, trans folks, and people working for collective healing. Reclaim Your Agency and Peace! 💘🫀🌈 How to have a Yoga Practice You Love Join us LIVE on zoom Saturday January 21 1 PM MST 🫶🏼 A deep, consistent yoga practice is a game changer. It catalyzes goodness in EVERY aspect of life! It helps you reclaim a sense of capacity... Agency. Peace… Embodied vitality, a secure attachment to the inner Self, presence, a sense of collective purpose and spiritual strength, that no one can take away. It's... fucking powerful! But have you found despite glimpses into how amazing yoga can be, you haven't been able to keep it up? ⚒🪷 Unearth + disarm the psychological blocks getting in the way of you showing up for a consistent yoga practice so that you can feel strong, nourished, and empowered on your path. . . I'm here for you - and you don't have to do this alone! In fact, some simple shifts in how you approach practicing yoga can make ALL the difference. Come shift your relationship with Yoga - right on time to embrace a fresh start for 2023. Ignite a deeper, more satisfying, life changing, consistent practice... Join me for this FREE fun, juicy, playful inspiring workshop. It's not an asana class - bring a warm drink; you may want to take notes! This is your next step on the path ... let's do this! Visit the link in my bio or yogawithavery.com to reserve your space today! ID in comments. (at Yoga Practice) https://www.instagram.com/p/CnVdX_MvfW3/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

‘the obstacle is the path’ - words from one of Gwi Seok’s well worn #iyengaryoga shirts in class this week at a small gathering near Hilo, Hawai’i. I love this phrase, this approach. Sharing a few precious pictures from the special time, with a very special teacher. @iyengaryogagwiseok I’m so grateful! There are not many teachers I trust to study with like this. It’s a bit strange and lonely sometimes to be a trans Iyengar yoga practitioner. I’m glad for your tenacity, realness, commitment, intelligent heart, and love of practice, Gwi Seok 🤎 2022 took a lot, was so much. I needed a deep timeout to reset. I am grateful I said yes. (Thanks @ramsaywing !) There were beautifully lived values around community care. Joy in sharing practice. Anti capitalism n acknowledgment of land, context, reciprocity, always present. There were simple community meals, lunches of packed leftovers; careful composting. We witnessed the earthy, erotic molten dance of liquid fire under a piercing bright, emotionally tender full moon in Cancer. Meaningfully, at the exact time our small crew gathered in opening protocols n ceremony with local Indigenous elder Kumu Ehulani Stephany, the nearby volcano Kilauea unexpectedly overflowed Her crater with abundant molten lava, the biggest flow in years! 🫀🌋🌕 The sacredness and abundance felt auspicious for this coming chapter … We went to the ocean, and ahhh that heart melting water, in the place called, ‘in the breath of the water’ … but spent the final day not at the beach, but in an offering of grit and sweat removing invasive species from the dense rainforest with Hawaii Environmental Restoration’s Keau'ohana Native Rainforest Restoration project. Most of all, lot of practice in Craig and Kila’s wonderful shala. That was the best part. Gays make my favorite spaces. I am practicing not being ashamed of experiencing such beauty, nurturance. I am building capacity for receiving and giving. I am practicing many unwritten things. Thanks for reading if you did 🌙 Thanks to @__bbmmgg__ for many of these 📸 🙏🏼 . . . Hope to see you soon in class! Or for my upcoming free workshop 🥰 LINK IN BIO (at Kilauea, Hawaii) https://www.instagram.com/p/CnSvyzfPrl6/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=