One of the reasons that I wrote Demystifying American Yoga is an attempt to make yoga more accessible amidst a sea of flashy promises, inaccessible images, and dangerous myths.
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Pretty much every yoga teacher has heard the myths and excuses people make about why they can’t do yoga: I’m not flexible, it’s too slow (or too boring), I don’t have time, it’s too expensive—and many more reasons that I explore in my book.
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Because there are many different kinds of yoga—many different approaches, different practices, different goals—yoga’s diversity quickly squashes pretty much any excuse. But, we have to find the right kind of yoga, and that’s often the hardest part.

It’s easy to make excuses and sometimes these excuses reveal what’s under the surface, which are even better reasons to try yoga. Here are some of the most common excuses:

I’m not flexible—while flexibility is not a requirement for yoga, this excuse reveals more mental inflexibility than physical. Yoga can help foster both of these kinds of flexibility.

it’s too slow (or too boring)—I took Imke’s Vinyasa Flow Yoga class after not doing this style of yoga for a long time and it was neither slow nor boring!

But this excuse also reveals our inability to be in stillness, to be with ourselves without all of the distractions that our culture provides. Yoga helps us cultivate a relationship with our self and when we slow down, we help to renew and rejuvenate our mind/body/spirit.

We can choose a slow flow, like my Spiral Flow Yoga, or we can choose a yoga workout—both bring a variety of benefits. And there's so much more to discover at Spiral Goddess, and beyond!

I don’t have time—this is not untrue for many of us. We are expected to always be on the go, to be productive, to not waste time on things that don’t have an immediate, measurable impact. We spend time doing things for other people, sacrificing time for ourselves.

But yoga doesn’t have to take a lot of time and when we make time for ourselves to practice yoga, we might find that our ideas about time, our perceptions of time, and our priorities of our time shift. We might find that we make better use of our time and enjoy our time more.

It’s too expensive—again, not untrue. Some yoga is very expensive, perpetuating many other myths about who belongs in a yoga studio. But there are many affordable outlets for yoga, including online videos and other resources.

And at The Spiral Goddess Collective we offer Accessible Pricing options as well as scholarships. So, here, yoga is not too expensive.

However, this excuse also reveals the edge of what we value—what we choose to spend our money on speaks to what we value in ourselves and in our world. When we choose to invest in ourselves by buying (and attending!) yoga classes, we reap many rewards in the short and long term. When we practice regularly--on and off the mat, in and out of the studio--the benefits are even more profound and impactful.

When you choose to invest in classes and workshops at The Spiral Goddess Collective, you are also investing in your community and providing the opportunity for others to benefit from yoga as well.

Strength, flexibility, balance, emotional regulation, pain management, better sleep, a nervous system reset, better circulation, authenticity and so many more benefits can be found through a regular yoga practice. If you aren’t sure where to begin, just reach out and we’ll help you find the kind of yoga that will inspire you to keep investing in your self-care and wellbeing.

Stepping into a new space and/or a new activity is scary, stepping into a new life—a new version of you—is seemingly impossible. Until it’s not.
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We are each on our own healing journey, and to heal—and thrive—we need to be with ourselves. But lasting, transformative healing is bolstered, supported, and sustained by, and in, community.

On my own journey, as an introvert, and from amidst a sea of shame and fear, the need to ask for help and the need to connect to a community felt impossible. It was difficult to face the truth that connections with other people are key to healing, let alone embrace this fact.

What I have learned about trauma and healing is that we have to move our bodies and learn practical tools for emotional regulation. And we need to participate in mind/body, somatic, embodied practices consistently—yoga and dance are the most impactful practices for me.

There is no magical pill or one and done miracles; there is only hard work. And it’s worth it.

While there are many approaches to healing, to movement, to embodiment—the practices that we offer at The Spiral Goddess Collective are thoughtfully designed and curated toward sustaining healing and transformation. Our community—and the classes and workshops that we offer—welcome each individual just as they are, providing tools and resources and a brave space for exploration.

​But you have to be willing to take that leap...

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I survived for decades using yoga and dance as a way to mitigate my trauma and attempt to stay sane, but it wasn’t until I started to better understand trauma and embodiment that I was able to actually start to heal and transform—to stop using these practices as a way to avoid myself and to use them as a way to connect to myself.

The way I practiced and taught dance and yoga transformed as well.

Talk therapy helped and daily yoga and dance practices helped, but JourneyDance was a game changer in so many ways. Training to be a JourneyDance facilitator was something that I did for myself, but now it is something that I am driven to share with others, especially those who don’t know that they need this kind of medicine or those who fear what embodiment might bring.

We need practices designed to help us ground, center, explore, and release.

We need a brave container and a supportive community—space and support.

And we need consistency. We need to return to the dance floor or the yoga mat (or, ideally, both!) over and over again. We return to ourselves again and again, finding love and compassion for ourselves.

And each time we do, we not only experience the benefits of these somatic, embodied practices, we also build resilience, access joy, flex our muscle memory, and create new pathways in our brains. We become mentally and physically stronger, more embodied, more self-regulated, and more able to respond rather than react to the stress in our lives and the chaos in our world.

The path toward healing and transformation is long and winding. There is no magical destination, but there is comfort and ease and a better quality of life.

So, if you are standing at the edge of the precipice—frozen and frazzled and fearful and insecure, numbing your senses (with alcohol or drugs or social media scrolling or shopping or whatever) because you don’t know what else to do (and because this is the norm of our culture)—maybe it’s time to take that leap. It feels impossible, but once we do, we find that it’s just what we didn’t know we were looking for.