I’ve been practicing at the Hammock for about four (five?) years now, though I remember being introduced to yoga at about age 5 in Ann Arbor through my hippie mother. We took classes together for a while in my late 20s from Carolyn Hines in Grand Rapids when I was diagnosed with MS and developed balance challenges.
My husband and I moved to the area in 2004, and I joined the Hammock as a way to reduce/counteract/cope with stress at my job, and a way to celebrate quitting smoking (yay… finally!) and to resume treating my body with honor attention and kindness.
For me, the breathing techniques have been helpful in everything from staff meetings to kidney stones to accidentally reading comments anywhere online, and the physical benefits of strength, balance and flexibility are more and more important as I age.
I convinced my husband to come with me to class about two years ago, and he too has seen the value of paying attention to breath and to being bendy-er. He’s the guy with the airplane on the studio walls.
I’m very grateful to Sarah and Liz for their expertise and their ability to roll with my dorky sense of humor, and it’s a pleasure every week to practice with all of you. Also, I would absolutely not freak out if anyone else took the corner spot. Absolute Zen here.
John and I have no children — that we know of … ha! — and spend most of our not-working time traveling, on tubes or a pontoon on our stretch of the Flat River, and plotting places to fly for those hundred-dollar hamburgers. We have two indoor cats, Wookie and Sansa, and one outdoor adoptee, Parker.
