When we last checked in, I let you know I had completed my first barre teacher training, and am still so grateful I did! Those small isometric movements done with a quick pace strengthened and kept my back healthy, heart dancing, and all the happiness that goes along with that. After a year of integrating the information and accruing additional trainings in other barre and Pilates methodology, it’s more clear to me how to design my own classes based on the contemporary ballet barre classes I had been used to teaching prior to 2015, with kinesthetic influence from these new fitness trainings!!! Y’all know I love a good fusion — especially with a great playlist. Click to go to my Spotify account.
Ever learning, ever changing, ever developing. Otherwise, there’s a kind of dying happening.
I had the wonderful opportunity last Memorial Day Weekend to teach the Kundalini portion of Kripalu’s Spring Yoga Fusion for the second year in a row, I was joined by several amazing teachers.
I also, after a couple years of setbacks and challenges, finally completed my 200-hour from YogaWorks in alignment-centered hatha/vinyasa yoga!!! Woohoo! It also greatly healed my back, but beyond that… I was reignited with confidence by my teachers Jess and Jodie who lead the training. Since then, teaching asana in addition to the Kundalini practices has been extremely fulfilling and rewarding to someone who has been a student of asana practice for 16 years now. I finally get to preach what I practice! Full circle.
On a personal note, last February on Valentine’s Day (the three-year anniversary of the exchanging of our first “I love yous”), Billy, my beloved, officially proposed. In October, we were wed in the Redwood Grove in Berkeley, with an intimate group of friends and family who traveled cross-country to be at our side. It was one of the most emotional and gratifying days of my life, and I was also just simply relieved after all the months of “planning” that everything went off without a hitch! Magic and faith in motion.
Simultaneous to all this, my husband and I had taken almost an entire year to muster up the courage to move across the country and settle in the Bay Area while I finish my master’s in Somatic Psychology at an established, reputable, and connected institution. We officially did so in July! My program at California Institute of Integral Studies is the best in the nation, and I’m so proud to be here- challenged and growing, each and every day.
If you didn’t know, for the next 2.5 years we will reside here as I finish the in-depth program and therapist internship requirements. It is definitely not a chore for us to be here as many of you have intuited from our presence on social media! Besides the gorgeousness of California, so many of my passions and aesthetics are the mainstream here, and so I am easily immersed in the conversations and dialogues I want to be a part of daily.
So yes yes, of course, it will be hard to leave for some reasons, but alas… our families and close friends are forever our roots, and I miss my students and teachers on the East Coast. We will return happily when it is time for the next phase of our lives in Summer 2018. I’m sure by that point I will have some anchors in place on the West Coast that will allow me to practice nationally, with grace and ease.
Live your life by DESIGN, not default, I say 🙂
I’m forever grateful to the practices that sustain and support me, the love of my family and friends, and those souls who I am privileged to guide in their own spiritual processes. Hope to speak soon. Please email me at nicole@thepowerwithinhealing — let’s catch up or start a new conversation.
