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It’s Okay to be Still: Allison McGuigan
“Ever since I was asked for this interview about how yoga played a role in my life, I’ve been pondering that question. I think yoga is evolutionary for me, in the sense that the role it plays is constantly changing. At this point in my life as a new mom, it’s playing a different role […]
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Reiki, Energy Healing and Angels. A Life of Pain Reveals her Life Purpose: Alison Pulito
From a really young age, I had a hip problem; a problem I didn’t know I had until I fell and was badly hurt while skiing. I was 24 years old and it was only then that I found out I had congenital dysplasia, which means your hips are “open”, so they’re easily dislocated -they […]
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Step Out in Faith: Julie Hruska
“I originally came to my mat nearly fifteen years ago when I was struggling with anxiety attacks. I had two little kids and quit my full time job to stay at home with them. I was convinced I was having a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t eat or sleep and was losing tons of weight. I […]
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You Can’t Muscle Through Breath: Ryan Brady
“I’m considerably different because of yoga. I’ve always been good under pressure, but I’ve done it by holding my breath and biting my lip to muscle through whatever life threw at me. The best lesson yoga taught me was in my second class ever. My instructor told me to try less. It took six months […]
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Fire on the Mountain. Internal passions and holding space: Elise Sunday
“The name of my store here in Leadville, CO is Fire on the Mountain. I didn’t name it; I inherited the name, but I like it because the “fire” to me is passion; finding passion. Passion has everything to do with creativity, which is what this whole business is based around: my passions of providing […]
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Be Comfortable with Uncertainty: Laura Rust
“I’m not going to lie, sometimes it’s challenging to remember why I started doing yoga. I’m in a completely different place now than when I started. If you ask me at any given moment, “How has yoga transformed your life?”, lately that’s been less clear than it’s been in the past, but stopping to reflect […]
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Modern Music, Faster Flow & Zero Ohms: Noga Sydney Yoga with Chiara Pelizzari
“Let’s get one thing straight. Yoga saved me. At a time when my life was in turmoil, I turned to Yoga to calm my mind, relax my body and remind me that I am worthy. I was good at Yoga. Thanks to a background in gymnastics, I could contort my limbs and hold complex inversions, […]
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Live Music, Yoga and Mindfulness: Rob Drabkin
“I’m a full-time singer-songwriter-guitarist. I write, record, and I perform my songs all over the world. My latest EP, Beautiful Day, is out now and a full-length album is on it’s way later this summer! So, that sums up my life right now. Mindfulness is a huge part of my career, especially in live shows, […]
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The Messy Beauty of YOU- Through Recovery & Clearing Space for Miracle Moments: Teri Benge
“I am in recovery from the disease of Alcoholism with 11 years remission/sobriety. It’s not just about getting the alcohol out of my system, it’s about starting the journey into discovering who I am, authentically. Before my sobriety, alcohol was the escape from myself; a chance to numb my mind from all the self-hate. When […]
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Boston Children’s Hospital – Yoga Reaches Out: Emily J. Davidson
My introduction to yoga and meditation was at age 31 in a cardiac rehabilitation. I was the sole young woman with coronary artery disease in a group of mainly middle-aged men. We practiced body scan meditations, talked about nutrition, and walked on treadmills. One day, a yoga instructor came in to teach us. After years […]
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The Big Picture. Finding Your Confidence and Creativity: Angie Dornier
“I’m a big believer in creativity, and that’s why I love teaching photography and now, beginning to teach yoga. It provides me the opportunity to instill that creative spark in someone else; to provide a new way of looking at things. It gives me the opportunity to provide others something that they can have as […]
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There is Beauty in Motion; Embrace the Shake: Dawnelle Arthur
“My story might take the direction that at first you don’t embrace to tell you the honest truth. After college I moved to from Denver to Alaska to be a director of fitness for a lot of their major health clubs. When I experienced my first Alaskan winter, I thought I was dying. It was […]
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Being you IS a Choice: Raven Brown
“When you see yourself in a way that you never have before it’s transformative. My name is Raven and I see transformation as: the possibility that everything you thought to be true in your life, who you are, or what you believe in could very well be wrong. I’ve been living my life for 24 […]
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Take Time to Breathe: Kayla Pohlabel
“My kindergarteners are incredibly stressed. They’re anxious, just like me and it’s sad that at such a young age they feel so much anxiety and worry. Looking at what has helped me cope with stress and anxiety- being yoga asana and breath work, I came up with the idea to do yoga with my students. […]
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Yoga as a Means of Transformation: Megan Williams
“I started going to yoga as an access to free my mind from the extremely stressful and “below the line” life I was living. I actually thought it would be a good way to escape my own reality. My roommate at the time practiced regularly and really enjoyed it and this played a big role […]
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Boston Children’s Hospital- Patient Mother: Jaime MacDonald
“Anabelle has been a patient at Boston Children’s Hospital since she was a baby. She had multiple issues at birth with most of them revolving around a chromosome duplication that was extremely rare. There’s no one in the world who is known to have her chromosome abnormality, so she’s always been under a microscope and […]
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Boston Children’s Hospital – Yoga Reaches Out: Lauren Pecoraro
“Believe it or not, my first day working at Boston Children’s Hospital was at the Yoga Reaches Out event last year! I could instantly feel the high energy when I entered Gillette Stadium. Coming from someone who has done yoga enough times to count on one hand, the energy gave me an instinctive feeling to […]
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Boston Children’s Hospital- Yoga Reaches Out: Nanci Winterhalter
“This is where I’ve had the challenge and privilege of spending a lot of time in our son’s early life—at Boston Children’s Hospital. His journey began here with what appeared to be a small problem when he was six, which grew into something much bigger and very unusual. The quality of the care, and the […]
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Boston Children’s Hospital- Yoga Reaches Out: Dianne Cella
“For the past 41 years and counting, I’ve been working at Boston Children’s Hospital as a nurse in both inpatient and ambulatory. I’m also a reiki master and yoga instructor and for the past three years, I’ve had the opportunity to run the hospital’s Family Wellness Center, since its start in 2016. It began as […]
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Boston Children’s Hospital- Yoga Reaches Out Founder: Sarah Gardner
“I was driving down Route 128 and had the epiphany: I want to have a yogathon at Gillette Stadium and I want to help Boston Children’s Hospital. I shared the idea with my family and a few close friends who thought it was awesome. But, some people thought I was crazy: “What about your local […]
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Boston Children’s Hospital- Yoga Reaches Out: Mark ElBach
“My name is Mark ElBach, and I work on the Corporate Development and Special Events team at Boston Children’s Hospital. I’ve spent my career working on Brookline Avenue, and I feel lucky that I’ve had the opportunity to work for three world class organizations in Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the Boston Red Sox, and Boston Children’s […]
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Boston Children’s Hospital- Yoga Reaches Out: Andrea Marlar
“I’ve been fundraising for Boston Children’s Hospital for 15 years. I remember the day I met Sarah Gardner and she told us about her vision of hosting an all-day yoga event that would become Yoga Reaches Out. Sarah has heard me say it many times…..why I didn’t think of that since I practice yoga too. […]
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Grant Yourself Permission to Thrive: Holly Baier
“What I’m getting present to right now is community. I’m at a radically different place that I was in even a year ago- and that’s because of my community. I started yoga so long ago! I took my first teacher training about 12 years ago. My mom had just passed away and my world was […]
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Begin Again: Brian Dillon
“Going through a divorce, you think the world is going to end. I remember thinking “I’m going to die alone. I’m going to be an old man dying alone.” It’s of one of the first thoughts I had. The whole process; the negativity, the animosity, the break down and finally, the end of my marriage […]
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Doubt Your Doubts and Love Yourself First: Caitlin Bedford
“My parents divorced when I was 20. In the long run it turned out to be for the best, but there was a whole lot of anger and angst and other emotions built up that came up from that. A couple years ago I started really taking yoga seriously, as more than just the physical […]
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Feel it to Heal it: Claire Bowen Congdon
“Years back, I witnessed my good friend’s transformation through yoga. As she dove deeper into the self-inquiry part of the practice, her life changed for the better. That’s not what yoga was for me…at first, at least. When I first walked into Yoga Body Shop, all I really wanted to do was stretch out my […]
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Be Your own Warrior of Knowledge, Expression and Self: Tai Dorn
“I started out as a dancer. I felt very fortunate because my whole life I always knew what I wanted to be. When I was young I would see ballet dancers on TV and it really spoke to me, so I dedicated my whole childhood; really my whole life to it. I found dance as […]
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Stop Waiting for Life to Begin, Make Sh*t Happen: Chelsea Williams
“When my family knew the end was near, I flew home to be with my mom for her last week before she passed away. It was in those moments at Hospice where I couldn’t do anything but sit and be with her. During this time, I had my first tangible experience with the power of […]
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Timing is Perfect in all Things: Abby Rosmarin
“My yoga journey did not have the most profound start in the world. I started doing yoga because I was a runner and had really tight hamstrings… I couldn’t physically touch my knees and so I’d start doing yoga to get a “good stretch”. I vaguely knew that there was a spiritual element to it, […]
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Uniting all in Yoga, Anywhere: Alexis Comardo
“A few months before I started my yoga practice, I had been studying abroad in Italy and Austria where I gained 20lbs. As someone who always identified with being athletic and had grown up playing basketball and running track, I felt like my identity was at stake. So, my yoga journey then began when my […]
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Disregard Fear, Keep Listening, and Trust Your Intuition: Aisha Jasper
“I started my yoga journey when I was in high school. At first, my practice was supplemental exercise to my classical dance training, which at the time was my entire world. By the time I was 16, I was already positive that I wanted to become a professional ballet dancer. I spent my summers alone […]
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Strength Comes From Overcoming Things You Once Thought You Couldn’t: Rich Adams
“I was a reasonably active guy in my twenties, but became more sedentary as I got into my 30’s and time went on, naturally putting on some weight. Life happened! It really came at me during this time – I changed jobs and got married, and exercise wasn’t at the forefront of my mind. Jump […]
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Create an Atmosphere of Love: Olympia Clark
“People are always surprised when they hear my story because where I am now is not anywhere near where I started. From the time I was in elementary school, up until college and even after, I was training as a competitive athlete. I played field hockey, volleyball, and did gymnastics. But, what I was most […]
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Joy is The Goal of One’s Existence: Angela Amoroso
“This part of my life story began 4 years ago. I was working as a practice manager at a medical office, I had a home, and was supporting myself by working three jobs. I found New Hampshire Power Yoga, and it quickly became this really amazing place for me and for my life. When I […]
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You Are Your Own Change: Shawna Santi
“My yoga practice just started as this workout to get in shape, and the gradually became my happy place – evolving into a practice that is the best of both worlds for me. The physical part of it is wonderful, but it ultimately became my coping mechanism. I’ve gone off and on to therapy and […]
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Find Joy in The Journey: Chris Watt
“When I was 10 years old I had cancer. I’m 36 now, so it seems like forever ago, but it still affects me. It was a harrowing experience, more so for family and friends than for myself, but there was still suffering. It was my first brush with death, and mortality is hard to process […]
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Faith. Transcending Fear with Love: Steph Temple
“I was born in the Philippines and raised in Alaska. It wasn’t until I moved to New Hampshire – where I currently live, that I discovered yoga. During this time, I was training for a bodybuilding contest and was so focused on the physicalness and what I looked like. I got buried in a ton […]
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Radiate Love From the Inside Out: LT
“I have this limiting belief that until I can sit cross-legged, I’m not a real yogi. I’ve convinced myself that because my hips are so tight, they’ll never open up. Recently in a class an instructor explained to me that, your hips and how tight they are correspond to not only how you treat others, […]
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I Am Free to be Myself: Cory Rusin
“I got into yoga in 2013 – very untraditionally. I was studying abroad in New Zealand and wanted an exercise I could do in my apartment. I ran across DDP yoga, which is a program created by a professional wrestler, Diamond Dallas Page. Looking back on it, DDP is truly, a one-of-a-kind experience, which awakened […]
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Learn, Then Serve: Dave Dyer
“I’ve always struggled with depression and anxiety. I’ve treated both with medication on and off since my mid-30’s while also seeing a handful of therapists with minimal progress. As a registered nurse and someone who’s knowledgeable in psychology, I still don’t know why clinical treatments didn’t work for me. All I do know, is that […]
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Manifest Your Own Change: Lauren Dyer
“I was born with spina bifida, and have had a walking disability my entire life. When I was younger, I was constantly having surgeries, but none of this stopped my parents from treating me like any other kid. I still had to do my own laundry and help around the house like my younger brothers. […]
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Tap Into Your Power: Lo Myrick
“I wasn’t ever very comfortable in my own skin, so when I started yoga in college, I’d go in and compete with everyone because it was what I knew and what I was comfortable doing. I was stuck in a total athlete’s mindset. Michael Plasha was the first instructor who really got me excited about my […]
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Live in the Present. Time is Fleeting: Bret Pomeroy
“My mind wanders a lot. I’m always thinking about work – focusing on whatever happens there, and if not there, then in every other aspect of my life. I felt like here, in my first yoga class, I was finally in the moment. Yoga wasn’t something I would have typically tried in the past, but […]
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We are all Connected: Carey Sims
“Even though I’m not a young person, I’m a fairly young teacher – I’ve only been teaching a few years. Right after I graduated from yoga teacher training, I received a phone call from a friend asking me to take over several chair yoga classes at a senior center. When I was called to do […]
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Let go. Move Forward With an Empty Slate: Karen Stelmak
“I’m now looking forward instead of back because there’s nothing I can change or do differently that’s happened. I just need to move forward. The fact that I have a blank canvas is exhilarating. I’m cleaning out the old and I’m moving in the new. It’s a huge sense of comfort knowing I have this […]
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You Are Valuable; Who You Are is Enough: Brittany Bennett
“I was never very happy or confident in myself and had always struggled with being healthy overall. I’ve spent money on all these workouts and supplements over the years and nothing ever really stuck until I started doing yoga consistently. Once we hit the 40 Days to Personal Revolution (Baptiste Yoga program) and began doing […]
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Initiate Action. We Are Limitless: Christina Dussault
“I see myself as being limitless. I feel empowered to make moves in my life. Don’t get me wrong, I still definitely get that feeling of being stuck sometimes, but now I know there’s a reason for it. Feeling stuck; going through what I’ve gone through emotionally – it’s all led me to the place […]
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Trust Your Intuition: Mary Williams
“My daughter got me into doing yoga 14 or 15 years ago. Before that, I never really trusted my intuition, and wasn’t confident in many aspects of my life. Those are a couple things that yoga helped a lot with: being more comfortable in my skin, and trusting my intuition. My husband noticed a change […]
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Step Into YOUR Authenticity: Jenn King
“My yoga journey started purely in the realm of the physical to get in shape and push myself to a different level. It was like that for the first two years of my practice, and then I began to see the shift to something more. I was in a high stress job and began […]
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Find Your Voice; Speak Your Truth: Ashley Mastronardi
“When I first started practicing at Yoga Body Shop, I remember I couldn’t focus in class. My eyes would be looking all around the room at the other people, or just, anything. It was during the time I was taking my hardest classes, I was stressed, didn’t know what the future held for me, and […]
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