Practice Yoga

⚡️⚡️PRENATAL PRACTICE PLACE ⚡️⚡️
It is an honor for me to announce my latest offering for any human currently carrying child, whether you’re 5 weeks or 35 weeks! Come practice with me during this special time!

This foundational prenatal yoga course is suitable for beginners and seasoned practitioners alike. I offer my signature prop work, hatha, slow flow, and restorative classes for varying moods and energy levels for any given day, 2 basic strength training classes (lower + upper body), 1 functional yoga for p***c bone relief, and 3 Yoga Nidra practices to address the stress, anxiety, and overwhelm that can accompany this unique (hormonal) time. Beyond the physical, this program offers ways to practice presence, breath, and relaxation, preparing you for birth, postpartum and beyond.

Makes a great baby shower, blessing way, or congratulations gift for your friend or partner, or as a self-care gift for you and your baby!

From now until the end of the year, get $10 off with code”FORYOU”

Link in bio for more info. 🤗

I’ve taken a long hiatus from social media but status update for those of you reaching out. Still pregnant! today, so it could happen any day now. Even though I’ve been away, I’ve been working hard to create a Prenatal Yoga bundle, which I’ll also give birth to in the next couple of weeks! Stay tuned!

Love and miss you. Hope you all are staying sane out there.

I’m so sad to report the closing of one of my yoga homes. While it’s been 13 years since I did my training and was a regular at the studio, my time at Yoga Union in NYC has made a deep impression on my practice, my teaching style, and what I value in a community- an organization and ethos in which the practice and teachings of yoga are central to its members and its function. I am indebted to Alison West for the blood, sweat, and tears (labor, time, and money) she put into this studio. So many of us found refuge from the City, our previous Yoga (mis)education, our injuries, conditions, and asymmetries, and even from our own personal traumas. We will forever remember 2020 as an apocalyptic year when things shattered, glass broke, and we all screamed at the top of our breathless lungs, but it will also mark the closing of what is, to me, a sacred yoga institution. I dedicate this virtual space to commemorating Yoga Union, and hope its next iteration continues to guide us when we begin to put the pieces back together.

Thank you Alison.

”Om Bhur Bhuva Swaha,
Tat Savitur Varenyam,
Bhargo Devasya Dhimahi,
Dhiyo Yonah Prachodayat.”

Photos 1+2 courtesy of Yoga Union
Photos 3 and 4 from 2007 Summer TT


@ Yoga Union & Yoga Union Backcare and Scoliosis Center

To you all, I am a (talented) yoga instructor with passion, charisma, and expertise, who has weekly livestream classes and a library of on demand classes. 🙃⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
But the rest of the time, I am MAMA. It is so all-encompassing, my own conscious mind can barely comprehend it. I remember for 2 or 3 days after Opal’s birth, each time I would look in the mirror, I would see her face. The image was still mine, but the only thoughts that surfaced were, "this is Opal." It was strange and psychedelic, and it feels like my heart is trying to escape my body even thinking about it now. I knew I would never again look at myself without seeing her in me.⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
So here I am 3 years later, wearing a self-made crown to celebrate myself as the matriarch. The mother who birthed nursed lost so much sleep, cooks cleans soothes yells rages repairs sings dances teaches and LOVES LOVES LOVES. Motherhood is my path. There is not a single moment I wish this wasn’t my life. I've cried and screamed and thrown my hands up in the air more times than I can count. I've acted in horrible ways I'd never want anyone else to see, yet she has, and she still loves me, madly. I've also been more selfless, giving, patient, kind, and playful than I ever have with anybody else, ever. I'd give my literal life for her, without question, and regularly give her the best parts of my breakfast, lunch, + dinner, because she finds it more appetizing than her own (even though it's the same).⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
Motherhood has been hard, but what I see as possible for life has been clarified and stretched in a way that is both frightening and exhilarating. This is the fire I needed to heal the trauma that the years of yoga and meditation just weren’t able to access. This is the heartbreak I needed to learn to be the mom that I needed (and still need), so that Opal can have the mom she needs.⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
So today, thank you MOTHER for embodying the yoga of compassion, devotion, and unconditional love. May we learn to serve, to love, and to live our happiest, most meaningful life for the sake of others.⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣⁣
Happy Mother’s Day. 💕

Channeling this expansion, serenity, defiance of the ordinary, and harmony with the natural world in tomorrow’s Savasana class. ⁣⁣
⁣⁣
Thursday 8:30-9:40am PST⁣⁣
⁣⁣
Sign up here: http://ellen.yoga/classes⁣
⁣

This week marks week 6 of shelter in place quarantine lockdown meltdown. I’ve been extremely fortunate and have more childcare help than before; am eating better than ever; feel a surge of creative energy that is getting put toward my yoga practice and teaching, as well as cooking and, to my surprise, painting; am logging more miles of hiking than in previous months; and have generally feel strong and healthy through it all. But I am also feeling the psychological weight of this time, the collective fear and anxiousness, and the very real “cabin fever” which should not be dismissed as something we need to buckle down and survive. We need to move. We need to connect to nature. We need human connection. These are human needs.

I hope you are able to do some version of all of these this week, whether it is finding a desolate field and sitting alone or with your quarantine family in communion with nature, or simply going outside, taking off your shoes and digging your toes into the earth. And if you need to move, because you do, I have two more streaming classes this week. We will support the body in new ways, move mindfully and intentionally, and give our bodies the pranic relief it is desperately seeking.

Hope you can join. Sign up link in bio.

Wednesday - 5 PST
Thursday - 8:30am PST

Here is something I’m excited about. Practicing and teaching yoga. Connecting to more of you. Making space for our vulnerability during these new, unknown times. Getting out of our heads and into our bodies. Using yoga and its vast tools, ancient and modern, to regulate our nervous system, boost our immunity, and be present, so we can be a source of strength for ourselves and all those around us. (Parents especially, I’m looking at you.)⁣
⁣
We will never be the same post Covid-19. How we handle and cope at this tender, scary, and ever changing time will shape who we can be after this has passed, and we fumble our way into creating the new normal. ⁣
⁣
Please join me for by donation, live, streaming classes three times this week, 5-6:15pm PST. ⁣
⁣
Tuesday⁣
Wednesday⁣
Thursday ⁣
⁣
Use link in bio or go to my website for more info and to sign up. ⁣
⁣
Love.

2 years, 7 months, and 15 days. This is the exact age of my daughter, Opal, and this is how long I have nursed her. Tonight was our final night, and she officially had what we have been calling her "milky graduation." I've been preparing for this day for the last year. ⁣⁣⁣
⁣
Just as I always knew I wanted to have children, I never questioned whether or not I would breastfeed, never set a goal of how long I would nurse, and certainly didn't consider what it would be like to wean. I tell this story because I took for granted that breastfeeding could be one of the hardest trials as a mother, and that having never been breastfed by my own mother, living in a culture where there are wild assumptions about breastfeeding mothers and mothers in general, and not having any real exposure to or education about it, would mean that the odds for success were against me. I wish that beyond my fantasy of being the kind of mother who could exclusively breastfeed, I was prepared for some of the challenges - physical, emotional, cultural, and professional - that it came with.⁣
⁣
Read the rest on my blog. Link in bio. @ Milk