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Building a safe(r) container

A student stopped me one day after class and told me this, seven or eight years ago at YoYoYogi in Portland. I’ve never forgotten it.

Isn’t that what we all want for our yoga students? For them to feel safe? 

Last night I taught the B. Yoga Basel TT cohort all about Yoga & Trauma Sensitivity. We covered everything from the basics of trauma theory to Bessel Van Der Kolk and Resmaa Menakem to Gabor Maté to reptilian brains to creating a culture of consent and how to offer quality hands-on assists and trauma-informed savasana options to guru power dynamics to the most burning question of all: whether yoga teachers should even be touching students in the first place. 

Whew!! It was a rich, nuanced, complicated, inspiring conversation — and it made me fall in love with teaching yoga all over again.

From San Francisco/Oakland to Portland to Boston to Basel, I feel grateful to have been a fly on the wall for some of the most thoughtful and progressive trauma-informed developments of the last decade.

Here in 2024, we are serving students more wholeheartedly and creating a safe(r) container for them at the same time. If that’s not ahimsa, I don’t know what is. 

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Morning light at B. Yoga

January is my favorite time of year in the yoga studio.

Brave newbies nervously unroll their mats in the back row. Packed classes pulse with eager bodies ready to (re)build a practice. There’s a childlike, not-yet-disillusioned sense of hope.

I teach in this radiant B. Yoga Basel space every Friday at 9:30am.

Join me for a little 🧘🏽‍♀️ and 🎶 and 🫁 and mostly ✨.

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Belly

I use this word a lot in my yoga classes — purposely.

BELLY. 🪷

Because it’s a great one to make friends with. Normalize. Welcome.

“Soften your belly like a nice loose Buddha belly.”

“Bend your knees so much you can press your belly into your thighs.”

“Hug your belly toward your spine to stabilize.”

“I like to move my foot to the right a few centimeters in this pose to make room for my belly.”

And so on.

BELLY. 🪷

Say it. Love it. Embrace it.

Twice a week I teach yoga to my kid’s soccer team. The other night I had them lie back on the turf in Supta Baddha Konasana and place both hands on their bellies, and say “Thank you, belly.”

They giggled. A lot.

It was so sweet and silly. And gentle.

Can you be a little more sweet, and silly, and gentle with yours? ✨

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Just notice

I say this about a million times per class. It’s the key to everything. 

Yoga and meditation are all about learning how to FEEL. Staying with discomfort — whether that’s an emotion or a tricky pose — without freaking out or running away. Making friends with all the very human feelings that arise within the course of an hour or a day or a lifetime.

Which is hard in a culture where, from little on up, we’re told things like “Stop crying!!” or “Nice girls don’t get angry!” or “Why so serious? Put on a smile.”

Your anxious thoughts or difficult moods aren’t good or bad; they just ARE.

See what happens if you can start to just notice them (“Huh, isn’t that interesting, I feel completely pissed off right now”) and stay with them without judging (“Oof, my hamstrings are SCREAMING in this pose!! I’m gonna DIE!!”).

Sit tenderly, and turn toward the discomfort. Breathe into it. 

Over time, slowly, surely, you’ll be less likely to get tangled up in your thoughts and feelings — realizing they’re temporary, and you’re steady, and spacious, like the sky.

It’s deeply psychological. We’re re-wiring, re-learning what it means to be fully human. (So much more than just poses.)

And that’s only a good thing. 

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You understand suffering. That’s why you should teach.

Like many of my colleagues, I’ve been reading (and loving) Susan Cain’s new book, Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole.

In one chapter, Cain tells the story of how renowned meditation teacher Sharon Salzberg helped to bring Buddhism to the West, finding refuge in meditation practice after suffering profoundly in her youth.

The young Salzberg’s teacher in India, Dipa Ma, tells her she’s ready to teach — not because she’s done some 200 hour training, but because she deeply understands suffering.

I love this and believe it to be so true. 

Sure, there are countless 22-year-old Instagram yoga teachers performing all kinds of athleisure-clad stunts while spouting New Age clichés about positive thinking and the Law of Attraction.

But the only teachers I am really drawn to these days are those who have truly known suffering and loss and have come out the other side. People who have been *through it*.

Who cares what they look like in yoga pants, or whether they can touch their toes?! 

Yoga and mindfulness colleagues, this is where we really have something to offer; a reminder that can keep us grounded when the pressure to do superficial bullshit (like making those cringe-worthy reels to keep up with the algorithm) feels overwhelming.

This practice is all about relieving mental and physical suffering. We can dress it up in athletic poses and expensive mala beads, but those are just trappings of the profound soul lessons — and potential for true ease, relief, and liberation — that all lie underneath.

So don’t worry about the damn reels or the washboard abs. Stay true to the teachings and just say real things that help people deal with their toughest shit. That’s what folks need the most right now, anyway. ✨

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Six Yoga Poses For Gardeners

(studio BE)

Spending hours outside in the hot sun with your hands in the dirt? All that digging, planting, and weeding might mean that your shoulders, hips, and wrists need a little love.

That’s why we’ve created this series of six yoga poses for gardeners.

Move through this gentle, beginner-friendly sequence to unravel any lingering tension you might feel in your body or mind. Hold each pose for 5-10 full breaths.

As always, feel free to modify anything that doesn’t feel safe in your body today. Most importantly, remember to be gentle with yourself — and don’t take yourself (or your yoga practice) too seriously.

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