My Way
The journey of finding my Way, and sharing it with others has been one of the most important and exciting of my lifetime. It has kept me sane, and happy. It has helped me to trust.
On a personal level, I have had to face my “dark side”. My motives and my perceived inadequacies, my level of honesty. I have been consistently pushed outside of my comfort zone in the nearly 20 years I have been both a student and a teacher.
The more difficult part for me is that I have had to simultaneously embrace my goodness. My pure heart and empathetic spirit. I have had to own the pull in my gut, with a strong purpose and a vision, and the necessity to share it.
Sharing this practice has been about embracing all these facets of myself, the duality of my messy-ness and my beauty. Letting it all be okay. These are the BIG picture gifts of my journey.
I was born in 1983 with borderline infant alcohol syndrome to an alcoholic mother who blackout drank her whole pregnancy with me. I was lucky to survive and spent my first months in NICU at the hospital. I was a super creative and fun child, intelligent. I wanted to shine but felt that it was wrong.
I was told that it was wrong.
I wanted so much to be accepted and seen. To be loved. We all do.
I started drinking and using drugs at 13. Started getting arrested, sleeping with strangers, losing all my things, most importantly my self-respect. I had no dignity.
I moved to Mexico at 18 and things got very dark. Living in a hammock on the beach sustaining off of bananas and tequila. My family came to get me (they would say ‘SAVE’). I entered into my freshman year and joined a sorority at University of Colorado @ Boulder. I went from living on the beach to a pink princess house on “the Hill”. I partied and got into heaps of trouble. After nearly being kicked out of school 3 times, I hit a bottom. An emotional and spiritual one.
Miraculously, my stars aligned and I got sober.
I started doing more yoga and eating spinach out of paper bags at Saturday morning farmers markets.
My perspective on everything started to change…I saw the sun sparkle on the snow covered ground. I went to a Rainbow Gathering and met thousands of soul seekers.
Then surprisingly, I moved to China.
I was hired at the China National Petroleum Company on the top floor of a skyscraper overlooking Beijing wearing a tailored pink suit. The fancy corporate gig, just didn’t feel right.
I decided to teach Art and Communications at an International School instead. I started two years of yoga training with Uton Laoshi north of the fifth ring road. I did yoga teacher trainings in the US and Bali. Met Ross. My James Bond.
In 2011 we left China and travelled the world together. For two years.
I started a blog called Taozi Tree Yoga where I shared my heart and about our journey, and it did very well.
Ross and I were engaged in Agra, India, got married in Mexico, then went back to China in 2014.
I started having babies and taught yoga full time and opened my first small yoga studio in 2018.
Since Covid hit, it’s been tough. I had to close my studio, got stuck in Mexico, had an emergency operation to remove a fist-size tumor in my ovary while 18 weeks pregnant, been through redundancy, a new studio build and renovation, ALL the Covid-craziness, back to the US and Mexico where we have been the last 10 months.
But through all of this, my love and passion for yoga has kept me going and good continues to pour out at me. New adventures await as we are launching new consultancies, and I am in a MA of Religious Studies program which lights me up.
I want to raise our children fluent in Chinese, Spanish, and English to help connect cultures and understand we are far more similar than we are different. I understand God to be Fluorescent Black, a Super-Conscious Space that all matter came from, and will return to. My life is in devotion to this.
Because of my yogi practice, I am aging slowly - it has kept me upright, strong and flexible, even when crippled with exhaustion, uncertainty and loss. The meditation consistently clears my head, so I am able to make hard decisions with confidence. Plugging in to my core, keeping my eyes on my own journey, living with more joy, I can “wear life lightly” and take the ebbs and flows in stride.
Having to show up on the mat for my students is just like having to show up on-point for my own children, it has acted as a healthy catalyst to maintain my own course. To “take care” of myself when I start to feel overwhelmed with the circumstances of life and I drift too far from the path.
Through my practice, I have come to see that life is precious, it is fleeting and I can enjoy it, by helping others find their own joy, even when it's full of chaos and uncertainty.