The Magazine of Yoga Outrageously Talented Columnists

Corinna Barsan

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A New Yorker through-and-through, Corinna finds peace and energy in the concrete jungle. She is an editor, writer, light seeker, curiosity hunter, and woman about town. She is equally at home in Dries Van Noten or Gaiam, she still uses pencils, and she loves her coffee but doesn’t take it too seriously… kind of like life–it should be sweet, light, and delicious. You can find her musings and preoccuptions over at Shiny White Page

Susan Blood

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“I’m really good at figuring out which container the leftover chili will fit in. I live in a recording studio. I write Trout Towers and operabetty.com. I really really want to play the opening chords of Back in Black on electric guitar. I have never played electric guitar. Up until quite recently I had 5 chickens in my livingroom. I like lemon curd, have a knack for finding four leaf clovers and prefer to be called “the iconic Susan Blood.”

“I liked your idea of mentioning the double diamond yoga class. I was in that class because Chris had gone on tour with Patty Larkin and oh my stars did he owe me a couple days of r&r.”

Photo: Lucy Blood

Natalie Dart

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Sit back, relax, put your feet up, wiggle your toes a lil… Enjoy the journey of a mystical voyage through the interchanging artistry of miss natalie dart as she frolics lightly through pinecovered paths in the finger lakes country. Bubblegum tasty selections of an ephemainspiration from the sunshine rainbow mist of waterfalls to the wistful cloudy sky. Join Natalie for cotton ball daydreams and the intuitive creativity of flowering green free love beauty.

Photo: Sherrie Scaglione

Barbara Denowh

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Barbara Denowh is a yoga teacher in Helena, Montana. She rambles about teaching, her wonderful husband, and her hound at babsbabble.com. Look for Barbara Denowh Yoga on Facebook or email denowhyoga@gmail.com

Ruth Farmer

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Ruth Farmer directs Goddard College’s Individualized MA Program and teaches at the Community College of Vermont. Ruth is an essayist and poet, whose work focuses on the Magnificent Every Day.
Photo: Ruth Farmer

Elizabeth Goldberg

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Director of Urban Dermatology, Dr. Goldberg also serves as an Assistant Clinical Professor in The Department of Dermatology at The Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City. Her offices are located at 594 Broadway in SoHo.
Photo: Elizabeth Goldberg

Anna Guest-Jelley

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After a brief (~3 weeks) stint as an Accounting major in college, Anna quickly realized that teaching was her call and passion. Since then she has followed what she lovingly calls a circuitous career path as an English teacher, violence prevention advocate, and now, yoga instructor. She had brief dreams of playing drums in a band, but they were thwarted when she figured out (a) how loud drums are and (b) that hand-eye coordination is not her forte. She is an advocate for women’s rights by day, a yoga teacher by night, and a puppies’ mama all the time. She is making her way through life with joy, curves and all. Visit her at her website CurvyYoga and on Facebook and Twitter.

Tali Koziol

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Tali lives in Denver and teaches Vinyasa yoga. Living in Colorado she also is spoiled with beautiful hiking and snowshoeing. She enjoys knitting, cooking, and writes at Cupcake Mafia.

Mora Hecht

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“It’s never wrong to do the right thing.”

I have no idea whom to attribute this to, but I believe it is the answer to every conundrum one may face in life. I quote it to my children every chance I get.

I discovered my love of writing in the fourth grade. Reading aloud a book report, the room erupted with laughter and applause and I have been writing ever since. Freelancing, my fabulous son-in-law encouraged me to join the blogosphere. I reside happily in Florida with my wonderful husband and two cats.

You can find Mora, blogging with pearls on, at www.morafla.blogspot.com

Photo: Michael Hecht

Joanna Heller

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The winner of our “I Knew My Life Had to Change When…” Spring Call for Entries.

Joanna just returned from a silent retreat with her partner Nikki. She writes, “We wanted to spend a bit of time with you at Kripalu but when we came down to the cafe, you were talking with Sarah and Ty Powers. We tried some sign language but you didn’t see us!”

“We’re learning how to speak again. It’s easy.”

Ashley Hunt

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If I am a changing entity, then balance and happiness is also a forever evolving process,
and if it wasn’t so, I would be pretty BORED.
Thank you life.
BLISS and LOVE
May we all meet one another in the LIGHT

http://reflectlightandlove.blogspot.com

Photo: diggy lloyd

Emmanuelle Lambert

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A 30-something French gal in Brussels, living a yoga-infused life with her lovely geek boyfriend, training to be (hopefully) a great Vinyasa Flow yoga teacher. Loves of my life include obviously music, dark chocolate, London UK, books and dancing in my bathroom when no one is watching.

Follow Emmanuelle on her blog Plans on a Comet

Photo: Emma, with permission Plans on a Comet

Jessica Lesley

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Jessica Lesley is a Los Angeles based yoga and Yoga Tune Up® teacher. In between teaching classes you can find her taking a class from some other LA yoga teacher or studying anatomy books (always looking to name drop muscles). She enjoys watching conspiracy theorist on YouTube and daydreaming on the Santa Monica ferris wheel. Visit her at her website jessicalesley.com and on Facebook and Twitter.

Natalie Lewis

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Le Cordon Bleu, Paris culinary school graduate and avid recipe developer whose core belief system is based on the celebration of every cherished moment through appreciating life’s simple pleasures. When I’m not cooking in my Summit, New Jersey home, you can find me traveling, writing and eating my way through this terrific journey!

Find Natalie at Chef Natalie Lewis or on her blog Daily Crave.

Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg

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Recently when asked to name my life purpose, I realized I’m alive to praise god. By “praise,” I mean to come into relationship with, learn from, and journey alongside, and by “god,” I mean the life force — rocks shimmering in the shallows of the river, cottonwood leaves in the wind, and animals, humans, seasons and cycles of the earth and sky. As a poet, writer and songwriter, mother, wife, professor in Goddard College‘s Individual MA Program, poet laureate of Kansas, workshop facilitator, occasional gardener, mediocre cello student, and earnest if not always graceful yogini, I try to remember to choose words and deeds that align with praising god. This doesn’t mean I always know what to do, and sometimes the very intention to live from the point of praise means I especially am dwelling in uncertainty (to paraphase Pema Chodron, who I read often), but then again, I’m in love with how much imagination life has.

Read more of Caryn’s writing on her blog http://carynmirriamgoldberg.wordpress.com
and website http://carynmirriamgoldberg.com

Josh Pollock

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Josh Pollock is a student of Environmental Studies at Goddard College, where he studies practical sustainable design for urban areas. He lives in New York City and works as an audio engineer and web designer. His website is ComplexWaveform.com.

Sally Pasley Vargas

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If you want to skip the frying pan and jump right into the fire, learn to cook in a restaurant.

In my early twenties I put my bags down in a yoga ashram in the New York Catskills and ended up staying for about ten years. Soon after I moved in, the ashram opened a small roadside vegetarian café. Over time the café expanded to become a large destination dining spot, primarily thanks to the influence of a kindly neighbor who also happened to be a French chef. So now I had something to do when I wasn’t meditating; it was a lot of work and a lot of fun.

Cooking, it turns out, is a fantastic way of cultivating awareness and presence and somehow the two seemed to stick with me. I‘ve written two books: The Tao of Cooking, a vegetarian cookbook, and Food For Friends, a book of food gifts, both published by Ten Speed Press. Currently I write recipes for the Boston Globe, blog at Cooking Lessons and occasionally teach cooking classes. I live with my husband and college age son in a suburb of Boston.

CORRESPONDENTS

Nicole Fleetwood

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Nicole Fleetwood is a scholar and writer on the arts, media, and black culture. She lives in New York with her son.

Joslyn Hamilton

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Joslyn spent ten years in the yoga industry as a teacher, studio manager, and minion for an alleged yoga guru before tiring of the hypocrisy, egomania, and insidious competitiveness inherent in the yoga-for-profit world. She left her yoga life and founded her own freelance writing business, Outside Eye Consulting, simultaneously finding her voice as an outspoken blogger. Joslyn lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she recently launched RecoveringYogi.com, a rebellious commentary on the vapid Bay Area yoga scene.

Vanessa Fiola

Recent post: RecoveringYogi: The WikiLeaks

Like most artists, Vanessa Fiola draws on her own life experience to inform her work. So far she has been blessed with a life saturated with inane, absurd, fantastic, harebrained, hilarious, and downright sordid experiences. Vanessa co-founded a national street art project, has performed readings of her work in Los Angeles for Theatre Junkies as well as in Seattle, has ghostwritten blogs and developed training materials for a yoga kingpin, and is one half of the creative mind behind the online advice column Dear Brutal Truth.  She recently exhibited her first visual art piece at The OK Hotel Gallery in Seattle. Her musings can also be found on her personal website, where you will soon be able to find her new line of t-shirts, Write Monkey, Write. Vanessafiola.com.

Leslie Munday

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Leslie Munday has been in the yoga scene (albeit the far, far reaching corners) since the late ’90s. She’s experienced her share of foibles, inconsistencies, and hilarity in the industry as a student, teacher, and studio owner, which inform her contributions as one of the founders of RecoveringYogi.com. She currently teaches yoga (Kundalini, natch) in her hometown of Austin, Texas. Leslie counts writer and entrepreneur among her many hats. She recently launched her own business, Stepstone Services, and her blog, Flirting With Grey Gardens.

Diane Herbert

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Diane Herbert is a mother with two young children who’s also a seasoned business woman with twenty years of experience in information technology and intellectual property. “I find myself seeking ways to balance these two challenging and satisfying but very different worlds,” she says, “That urge to bring them together leads to discovering my energy in new personal passions like food safety and healthy life style choices.”

Tram Le

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I believe in eating more real food that grows from the earth, like whole grains, fruits and vegetables, rather than pre-packaged meals-in-a-box. I’m a proponent of slow food, farm to table, sustainable farming practices, all that good stuff. I love dark chocolate and pistachio-flavored French macaroons. I have always believed that the time and effort you spend in making food for others is a labor of love, so in my blog I hope to show you how to make your favorite foods healthier for you and the people you care for.

My philosophy on food and keeping a balance of mind, body, and spirit is simple: nurture your body, nurture your soul.

Find more delicious recipes and more Tram on her blog Nutrition to Kitchen.

CONTRIBUTORS

Kelly Larkin Conway

Recent post: Frustration and Radical Compassion

“And though in your winter you deny your spring, Yet spring reposing within you, smiles in her drowsiness, and is not offended.” ~ Kahlil Gibran

Kelly Larkin Conway lives in Toronto, Canada. A strong advocate for voracious love Kelly is a student, activist, performer, singer, chef, yogi, writer, conversationalist, and poet. She currently works with documentary film makers on the socia media campaign Operation Maple.

Cathy L

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Fresh off the press yoga teacher Cathy L is currently bringing down the house after her yoga classes with Ben Harper, Blessed To Be a Witness during shavasana. “It makes me cry, which, uh, can make it tough to wrap up, but I use it anyway,” she says. That’s right, real yoga.

Meg Claire

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Meg Claire is a vegetarian cook and yogini, and by day she handles PR for a nonprofit social services organization. Among her particular interests are seasonal recipes made with local Delaware Valley produce; Ayurveda and internationally-inspired foods; and tracking down gourmet vegetarian cuisine from Paterson, NJ to Paris, France. She writes about the dark side of life and the light side of yoga at Yoga Saves the Day.

Cygnus Jones

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“What should I be but just what I am?” ~Edna St. Vincent Millay

I think my current philosophy is “Do not believe everything you
think.” Credit for which, originally, I know not, but it’s hanging on
the wall of my therapist’s office, which I find positively deliciously
ironic somehow.

Follow the further adventures of Cygnus on the blog Looking For Beach Glass

Aja Blanc

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“Am I willing to give up what I have in order to be what I am not yet? Am I able to follow the spirit of love into the desert? It is a frightening and sacred moment. There is no return. One’s life is charged forever. It is the fire that gives us our shape.” – Mary Caroline Richards

I love to see the sun and the moon each day, they are like book ends – everything that happens in between their sightings is my practice.

Follow Aja on her blog AjaBlanc.com

Alison Rogers

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“Before you put a root- bound plant in the ground, you must cut the matted roots with a knife and tease them apart. Only then will the plant thrive in its new home.”

Alison Rogers is thriving in her new hometown of Boulder, Colorado where she will joyfully continue her work as a counselor and coach for women, young children and their families. Her practice has expanded to include yoga on and off the mat. You can find more information soon at www.alisonrogerscounseling.com and www.theyogaofparenting.com

Miss Menighan

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If your everyday yoga includes the language of the mysterious beauty and the mischievous sly winks of life, Miss Menighan has got her lens pointed over your shoulder. We love her willingness to look, as she shares the “further exploration of the environments where I find myself…finding myself.”

Photo: Miss Menighan

Julie Konrad

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Favorite quote: “Supported by the past, seated in the present, open to what the future brings” -Patricia Walden

My philosophy: When you breath into each moment of your life with patience and awareness, the weight of your worries lifts and you are free!

Find Julie at Luna Presence Yoga

Photo: Kim Long Photography

Michelle Myhre

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Michelle teaches yoga internationally in Hawaii, Vancouver & Southeast Asia. She’s directing a 200-Hour Teacher Training at the Vancouver Yoga Institute, Sept 21 – Oct 20th, 2010 & calls San Francisco home.

Follow her @michellemyhre on twitter or facebook.
Read more Michelle at: The Devil Wears Prana

Quote: Ahuwale ka po’okela I kāu hana iā ha’i. (It is through the way that you serve others that your greatness will be felt.)