YogaDen

YogaDen, a call from the wild

I started practicing Yoga in the winter of 2008 at a rustic, run-down cowboy ranch in Wolf Creek Montana, USA. To get there, I drove five days solid from North Carolina, alone in a Mini Cooper, through the Cherokee National Forest, the coal mining depressed areas of West Virginia, horse country of Kentucky, the corn growing state of Indiana, through Sioux Indian territory, the ancient Badlands of South Dakota, into the fabulous Cowboy territory of Wyoming, through a Crow Indian Reservation and out across the open plains of Big Sky Montana to the Rocky Mountains and finally into a cold and snowy Wolf Creek.

Yoga wasn’t the initial objective; this wasn’t a relaxing ‘Yoga Retreat’. This was a hard core six-month residential Meditation and Consciousness teacher training. Students from all over north America had left their jobs, family and loved ones to commit to six months, no frills, no luxuries training through long hours of meditation, discussion, study and training. Some people would call it hell on Earth. Others, one hell of a challenge!

The Yoga started out as just a physical practice every day for an hour; a welcome break from long hours of silent stillness in meditation. There wasn’t a glamorous yoga studio, any yogic music, or even an instructor, just a group of people practicing together that had some yoga experience. There were several large taxidermic moose heads mounted on the wooden walls with a variety of antique spurs, saddles and working ranch memorabilia as décor! However, for me, the Yoga became so much more; a personal journey into a new type of freedom. I was a complete beginner, but I couldn’t believe the way my body changed over a relatively short period of time from intense joint stiffness, acute debilitating pain and rigidity to pain free, strength and flexibility. And therefore, taking my heart along with it into healing.

Practicing Yoga in this dedicated way for one hour every day for months, seeing the results and changes within the body, mind and heart, was the start of how YogaDen came to be. It instilled in me a need to share to others, practice harder, help people feel better within their own struggling bodies and hearts. To live a more conscious, healthier life, to be free of pain and to lead by example; if my body and heart could heal through Yoga so could others!