Integrate & Chill

Did you hear the amazing news that Katie Presley is joining the Luminous Recovery Yoga teaching schedule? 🥳

I can’t tell you how happy this makes me. Wait, yes I can (this is my newsletter 🤣)!

Katie and I started practicing and teaching yoga together years ago. She has huge compassion and love for students.

One of Katie’s greatest teacher strengths is how radically inclusive her teaching style is. 

She provides an experience that skillfully harnesses rigor, kindness, and choice.

If you walked into class and said your legs and ass were broken, Katie would find you a pose that didn’t include butts or knees. It’s one of her superpowers.

It’s my goal to grow Luminous Recovery Yoga. One of the things I’m learning about growth, is that I can grow without having to do all the work myself.

Integrating others into the growth process creates opportunity for us all. Asking for help and support creates space for people to give and generate an offering. 

This week’s episode of Baptiste Power Vinyasa Flow Yoga, a continuation of this month's practice theme of integration, is called integrate and chill.

Integration is an invitation to create yourself as whole. One way I like to envision integration is through the imagery of an open hand.

An open hand is neither grasping (think of a closed fist ✊) or averting (the hand that pushes away✋). 

An open hand is neither attaching to the experience or shunning it away.

The open hand is simply welcoming what is. It is an invitation to integrate all of the pieces. Some pieces I would rather hold onto closely. Other pieces I would rather push away and pretend it never happened.

Maybe you can relate—sometimes I talk myself into the idea that I need to do this whole life shebang by myself (grasping ✊).

I get confused and think that accepting help makes me weak (averting ✋).

Greeting life with an open hand is seeing myself as an interdependent being that is part of a much larger picture.

I am one piece of the puzzle, not the puzzle. I am greeting life on life’s terms.

This gives me the opportunity to call all the parts of myself and integrate.

I love taking this principle to the mat. Yoga can help you to become more aware of your body, thoughts, and emotions, and to learn how to work with them in a constructive way. The practice teaches you to cultivate being present in the moment and being aware of your thoughts, feelings, and surroundings. A connection with inner self is the path to integration. When you integrate, you can chill and let yourself be, just as you are.

I created an interactive PDF to get your juices flowing about integration. You can use this guide on its own or as an accompaniment to the episode. It contains some thoughtful questions for consideration you might find helpful.

Download your FREE guide here.

This Week’s Episode

If you’re seeking a kind and compassionate place to practice yoga, consider joining us in the Luminous Recovery Yoga studio. 

You can attend in-person, online, through the library archive, or a combination of all the ways. 

If there’s a class time you’re seeking that isn’t being offered, hit reply and let me know what you need. This will help me consider the needs of the community when creating a new class time.

I wrote you a haiku on integration:

I think you are cute. 

Integrate and chill, my friend.

Today, life on life’s terms.

With love,

~Kari