Find Your Voice

Move beyond body positivity and focus on finding your true self. This sequence, designed as a vehicle to help you turn your gaze inward and identify the instrument of authenticity inside you, will leave a lasting impression.

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When I first started teaching, I had no idea what I was supposed to do. I’d spend the whole class trying to pretend to be someone else. I remember something Kathryn Budig once said. She said that in the beginning of her practice she was doing “a bad Maty Ezraty” (her teacher). And I felt like I was doing the poor man’s Joe Taft, another yoga teacher who’s had a huge influence on me—to the point where a student actually asked me, “Is Joe Taft your teacher?”

So, you go from this feeling of, I must emulate somebody else, to thinking, I just gotta figure out how to be myself. I’m just going to try to be me in this practice and see what happens. That evolution, really looking within myself and digging deeper into my own practice, has had such a positive impact on my teaching. I think that’s all teaching is, ultimately: It’s just finding yourself, living your own practice, and then reflecting that to other people. It’s as if in finding my own practice and finding a linking of the light and the dark, I found an instrument inside me. I actually think of it like a trumpet.

To access it, I reach inside of my body. (It’s very Walking Dead.) I reach in and I find my trumpet. I pull it out and I clean it off. I get all the gunk and guts off of it, and then I put it to my lips, and I start trying to play it. I’ve never played this instrument before. I don’t know how to play the trumpet. So, I’m just experimenting randomly, making sounds. But I’m having fun ’cause it’s my instrument, and it seems natural to play it.