Anyone can do yoga. Yoga can happen anywhere. You don’t have to have the right clothes, get stronger, become flexible or heal all your aches and pains before you start. You begin where are with what you can do. And you keep going until, if it suits you, it becomes a way of life.

CHRISTINE’S PHILOSOPHY OF TEACHING

Yoga is not for everybody. But yoga will benefit anyone who has the interest and the desire to practice. In order to reap the benefits one must commit to a consistent routine. And there has to be love. At least there has to be the understanding that not loving the body or yourself does not work very well and then we can arrive at the only alternative: to tend to and care for this miraculous vehicle in which we temporarily reside. If we care for our bodies the quality of our living experience will be better. Much better.

I have taught yoga for over 20 years and I have been a movement teacher for 30. Dance was my first passion and discovering yoga was revolutionary even to my dancers body. Once I began a yoga practice it took me many years to learn what it meant to love my body. Dance for me was not a loving act. It was competitive and pushing the body to its limits made it physically aggressive.

I have observed that often people come to a yoga practice with an  agenda to fix what is wrong and move on. Their approach to the body is like an object that is not operating the way they want it to and they would just like it to be right again so they can go on ignoring it and do what they like. In the beginning this was my attitude so I can understand! It is a cultural way of viewing our bodies. They serve us, we don’t serve them, and when they give us pain it is something to fix, not something to slow down and listen to.

YOGA is about healing and relating to our bodies with respect, tenderness, patience, compassion, wonder and love. Yoga is fully living in our bodies and knowing our bodies as safe places to be. Yoga is being present with discerning awareness and sensate contactfulness.Yoga is being embodied. When we are truly embodied we have access to all of our internal sensations, feelings and emotions. This is where we discover the richness of our life. And Yoga is fun! Joy is implicit in movement, movement is life.