Five Minute Yoga? It’s a start.

I teach yoga, so I meet people who want to make yoga a part of their lives. The ones who succeed find space in their homes and time in their days for practice, even if it begins with a kitchen counter and five minutes. Others never quite manage it, and drop off before they can build a self-sustaining practice.

I am an Iyengar yoga teacher in Vancouver Canada. My gratitude for the work goes to BKS Iyengar, his daughter Geeta Iyengar and to the teachers they have trained. My deepest gratitude is to Wende Davis, my first teacher, then Gioia Irwin and Claudia MacDonald, and now Louie Ettling. Gabriella Giubilaro, who comes to Vancouver once a year, and inspires us all. Donald Moyer, Birju Mehta, Orit Sen Gupta, and the teachers at the Iyengar Yoga Centre of Victoria, especially for Shirley Daventry French, Ann Kilbertus, Leslie Hogya and Marlene Miller.

Practice is a big topic for me, because there is no progress without it, and no independent learning. My own experience of just deciding to do one simple pose every day revolutionized my yoga practice and my life. Ever since then I’ve been fascinated by how we learn to practice, what the conditions for practice are, how we learn the discipline, and how do we understand it.

I believe that the answer to “how do we live well?” is to cultivate a practice, of yoga, or anything else. As long as it’s “cultivated uninterruptedly and with devotion over a prolonged period of time” as my current favorite sutra translation has it, a practice not only helps us live well, but will help us die well too. With asana and pranayama, we can stay physically alive in an aging body, instead of withering into a wheelchair.

My practice means a lot to me because it is also a way to stay clear. And I’m interested in all kinds of research about yoga and aging, and yoga and mental clarity.

I used to be a journalist, first as an arts reporter, then, starting in 1987, the same year that yoga truly entered my life, as a food writer and as editor of the food pages for the Vancouver Sun. Ten years ago, I stopped wanting to do that. When a friend couldn’t find a sub for a class and asked me to teach it, I realized I’d found the next thing that I wanted to do.

I certified in 2007, studied in Pune for a month in 2008. With my Mary Balomenos, I’ve been co-directing Yoga on 7th since 2003.