Hi. I'm Mary Beth.
I'm passionate about sharing my love of yoga as a tool for transformation, especially with beginners. From my first yoga class in 1997, I knew that yoga needed to be part of my life. The calm, grounded feeling I had at the end of class was something I didn't experience anywhere else in my life at the time.
I began my pursuit of yoga at Kirpalu Center for Yoga and Health in Massachusetts. When I moved to Kalamazoo in 1999, I studied with Kathe Bowman, Melissa Spamer, Kara Aubin, Karina Mirsky and others. I completed my 200-hour teacher training through Sangha Yoga in 2015. In 2021, I completed my 500-hour teacher training at the Himalayan Institute.
I am also a certified facilitator of the Trauma Informed Mind Body Program (TIMBo) and a Level 1 trained IFS Pracitioner.
To explain why I teach, I'll turn to the words of Rolf Gates in his wonderful book, Meditations from the Mat. He states it much more articulately than I could.
The word "educator" comes from the Latin verb educere, which means to lead forth or draw out. The Latin term was used by midwives, with the meaning "to be present at the birth of." Teaching yoga is first and foremost about drawing forth that which is already in a student...If education is really the art of helping to develop each individual's innate capabilities, then teaching yoga becomes much more than a rote litany of poses and explanations. I became a teacher in the true sense when I recognized my teaching as a divine opportunity to be present at the birth of an individual's authentic self. The real payoff of a yoga practice...is not a perfect handstand or a deeper forward bend, it is the newly born self that each day steps off the yoga mat and back into life.
I consider it an honor and a privilege to participate in such a sacred endeavor.
Why I'm Passionate About Yoga
When I was 19 years old, my father was dying of cancer. I was not coping well. I didn’t have any tools for handling extreme emotional distress so I just shut down. I didn’t feel anything. I developed TMJ and was hardly able to open my mouth for months because my jaw muscles were so tightly locked from clenching my teeth, in what I later learned was an effort to hold back the flood of emotion that was engulfing me. Fifteen years later, I was married and had a two-year old son, but my marriage was falling apart. I developed severe back spasms. I’d wake up in the middle of the night after the pain meds had worn off in so much pain that I could hardly breathe much less sit up to take more meds. I was the poster child for not understanding how my mental/emotional state was impacting my body.
Yoga was the bridge that helped me make that connection and taught me to notice things I was denying by the way they would show up in my body. Years later, after another painful break up, I was feeling pretty numb about it. I got on my mat, and started doing cat/cow. First cat, arching the back up, then cow, lifting the chest to open the heart…I started sobbing. The numbness melted and the floodgates opened. Over the years I’ve had many occasions when I’ve been moved to tears (interesting use of the word move!) during my practice. Sometimes, like right after my break up, it was obvious to me what was going on and other times the release happened without me knowing the source.
Through yoga, I began to understand how repressed emotions show up in the body. Even before my mind is ready to admit or accept some emotional impact, it plays itself out in my body. The more I allowed myself space and time in my yoga practice to notice what was going on in my body, the more aware I was of the subtle messages my body was sending. The more I paid attention to the subtle, the less likely I was to end up with crippling pain. Over time, I've gradually come to a place where I am able to feel what I’m feeling in the moment as it’s happening and allow it to move through me rather than trapping it with tension inside my body.
Have you ever had a hard day at work and ended up with a headache? Or been so nervous or anxious about something that your stomach felt like it was in knots? Perhaps you’ve experienced the long term stress of a seriously ill child, spouse or parent? Or persistent, overwhelming stress at work or in a significant relationship? How did that show up for you in your body?
If you’re already aware of the ways that stress is impacting you physically, what are things that you’re doing to take of yourself? What is your stress reliever and how often do you do it? Ask yourself how effective is your stress reliever at making you feel better? If your stress reliever is eating a pint of ice cream, is that really helping? What are some ways that you could support your body and mind that you can fit into your everyday life? Because that’s part of it, right? You’ve got a family, a job and commitments. So how do you make time for it all? Well, you don’t. You make choices. You choose how to spend your time. What choices can you make today to support yourself better so that you have more to give to the people you love? Perhaps yoga is one of those choices.
Connect with me to learn more about my classes, private coaching and retreats.