Yoga with Lisa

14/02/2022

I'm back, and my most authentic self wants to show up for all of you. See you soon!

31/08/2020

I was able to teach a few of my neighbors in a nearby playground over the weekend, dominating the soccer pitch on a mild Sunday morning, wondering at the tiny plasticine pellets that kept encroaching on our mats from the fake grass, plenty of space to move and breathe. I don’t generally do choreography as part of my sequencing. When I’ve had a regular few students for a while, I will offer variations, explore an asana, or space or shape in the body, in more depth, but it’s been a long time since I’ve had that continuity on a regular basis. I have been a sub and a pinch hitter for many of the years I have been teaching. The continuity has to be for myself, to always arrive in class ready for whoever has decided to join me, and trust that my years of practice and my desire to serve will be enough, even though, sometimes, they aren’t. This isn’t easy. This isn’t natural for me. I struggle with a long-term desire to please everyone, a perfectionist streak that often results in inaction. Inaction is not an option when we all meet at a certain time and place with an expectation that yoga will happen. And yoga can happen, union, perfection in this moment. I just need to make sure I get out of the way. Hope to see you in practice (weather permitting).

suggested donation $20 (cash or venmo to )
unlimited members of breathe strength, no need to donate
no one will be turned away for not donating
my share of funds this evening will go to

BYO mat! props + mask optional during practice.

25/08/2020

Alas, class is canceled. But I'm on for next Tuesday!

19/08/2020

The last class I taught was indoors and in person, as I have always taught, on March 8th, . My answer to COVID at the time was to forgo hands-on adjustments and promote collective care, wiping down props, staying home if you're sick. Days earlier, I had said out loud, I want to teach yoga full time. (Yeah, I know.) The months that followed have exposed the depth and breadth of my ignorance, the vulnerabilities of my people and my community, and the desperate need for my practice, breaking on the shores of my consciousness like waves in the wake of a storm. The storm is far from over. My need is not only my own; it never was. I’m not going to teach online anytime soon. There are teachers that need to make a living, and I have a family and a day job. School starts soon, in some capacity. Thanks to , pushing the limits of viability for a small neighborhood studio, I will be able to teach, in person, for the first time in months, and do what I do, which is hold space, even in the open air. There is work to do. This is how I serve.
Join Charlotte on Thursday 8/20 in Rainey Park at 7:30pm, and me the following Tuesday 8/25, same time, same place. Weather permitting.
Suggested donation $20 (cash or venmo to )
Unlimited members of breathe strength, no need to donate
No one will be turned away for not donating.
My share will go to , focused on centering mental health care for Black women and girls.
BYO mat! props + mask optional during practice. Please maintain safe distances. Don't forget to vote and fill out the Census!

01/06/2020

Black Lives Matter.
These are the educators and leaders and yoga practitioners that I am following these days, and there are many, many more to add. That so many have chosen to educate the willful ignorance of our white supremacist society is a grace without measure. Especially if they are new to you, and you identify as white, please enter their spaces as though entering a class during centering. All have compiled resources to address the immediate needs of our black brothers and sisters demanding justice. If you have the financial means, contribute where you can, to these women and organizations, and to the causes they identify.

01/06/2020

Black Lives Matter.

These are the educators and leaders and yoga practitioners that I am following these days, and there are many, many more to add. That so many have chosen to educate the willful ignorance of our white supremacist society is a grace without measure. Especially if they are new to you, and you identify as white, please enter their spaces as though entering a class during centering. All have compiled resources to address the immediate needs of our black brothers and sisters demanding justice. If you have the financial means, contribute where you can, to these women and organizations, and to the causes they identify.

18/04/2020

"This moment is an opportunity that comes with great pain and deep lessons. May we create a new way of being so that when generations to come read history books they will be able to hold onto hope. They will see that we chose to conjure something other than more suffering and grief. May they see that we chose to conjure liberation, ease, breath, freedom, space and collective care." - Michelle Johnson

Beloveds, today I sat in meditation and touched into my own grief about all that is swirling around in the atmosphere. I've been talking to so many about their grief, which means I have been holding so many others grief and mine finally bubbled up. I am not sure about all of the things that might be breaking my heart right now, but one thing I am sure about is I am trying to maintain hope while reviewing a history that suggests humanity has a pattern of turning a blind eye to suffering and the causes of suffering, which in turn creates more suffering. We all are suffering but we are not suffering in the same ways. We are not experiencing this moment in the same way. We are not in this together. Our identities, social location, ancestral memories, lived experiences and relationship to power define our experience of COVID-19.

When hope evades me because history haunts, my grief surfaces and I turn towards it, attend to it, breathe, pray and then take another breath as I contemplate what skillful action might look like moment to moment.

When hope evades me because history haunts me, I dig deep and remember my ancestors went through suffering much like the suffering we are facing today. My mind doesn't allow me to remember my ancestral memories but my heart and the earth do.
The will to survive and dare to thrive is in my bloodline.

When hope evades me because history haunts me, I conjure and stir, doing magic calling on all the energies, deities, guides and spirits that might support us in remembering that if we continue to dissociate from the ways in which we cause harm to others and the planet, all we will breed is more suffering. This moment is an opportunity that comes with great pain and deep lessons. May we create a new way of being so that when generations to come read history books they will be able to hold onto hope. They will see that we chose to conjure something other than more suffering and grief. May they see that we chose to conjure liberation, ease, breath, freedom, space and collective care.

Asé