ABOUT
Bio
I’ll be a student of yoga & life for as long as I’m alive!
I received my first 200 hour Yoga certification in 1998 and went on to receive a 300 hour Anusara certification in 2006 with Todd Norian and my studies still continue on.
The yoga & meditation teacher certifications and trainings that I've completed exceed 4,500 hours because of a perpetual enthusiasm for learning & being a student of life.
What's more important to me than these accumulated hours are the practices, the uplifting non-dual Śakti - Śaiva Tantric philosophy and teachings that inspire me to stay open-hearted, connected to a bigger energy, curious and in wonder & awe of this simple miracle of being alive. Being dedicated to a path of ever deepening spiritual discovery is what fuels my capacity to be of loving service as a leader, teacher, parent and partner.
Over the decades, I’ve studied with and will continue my studies with masterful scholars and yoga teachers such as Douglas Brooks, Sally Kempton, Bill Mahony, Alejandra Siroka, Sianna Sherman and Christopher Wallis....and LIFE as my greatest guru.
It gives me great joy to offer yogaALCHEMY asana & meditation classes, workshops and retreats all within an empowering, nurturing and safe space for self inquiry, acceptance and love.
I continue on this sacred journey and come to my daily practices with the alchemy of the practices that awakens within me the capacity to transform what is limiting into what's life affirming. I humbly welcome myself to practice with life as my guru & with the awareness that acceptance is needed to be fully present with all of life - with nothing excluded & everything included.
Practicing in this way, the Tantrik teaching that 'everything is happening for our awakening' reveals itself through me & around me. What comes forth then is deep abiding gratitude and an ever deepening awareness of this exquisite miracle of being alive.
My deepest desire is to serve you fully such that you thrive while awakening into the splendor of your most radiant alchemically extraordinary self.
ALCHEMY Journey ONE :
I’ve had a yearning for connection and belonging my whole life. You may think this feeling started from the time I shared a womb with my identical twin sister, in fact, that is what I thought, too.
For much of my life, connection meant safety. Safety was the sense of being accepted & confidently free.
During my younger years my family nicknamed me ‘Butterfly.” To me, a butterfly was light-hearted & joyful and beautiful. I was convinced that if I could have a light heart, display joy and beauty, this favorable image would offer me the acceptance, safety and freedom I was seeking.
My perceived butterfly identity directed me to study fashion design at Parsons School of Design in NYC where I met and later worked as a designer for
Michael Kors.
It was in this fashion design context where beauty took center stage and where questions arose in me.
What is ‘beauty’ to me?
Was I embodying an empowering sense of ‘beauty’?
What about the ‘soul beauty’ I sensed within myself and experienced in others?
And especially -
What could I do with all the parts of me that didn’t always feel light-hearted, joyful, free or beautiful?
These questions led me to explore a path of self-inquiry and discovery.
I took on meditation and the honor of motherhood in my twenties,
yoga asana practice a decade later and by 1998 I began teaching.
I studied yoga from various schools: Vinyasa, Iyengar, then primarily Anusara and Ashaya Yoga - all of which led me to eventually offer the creation of yogaALCHEMY.
Within the study of yoga my life began a metamorphosis as I became more and more immersed in the life-affirming teachings of the non-dual Śakti-Śaiva Tantrik philosophy.
One of the main teachings is that every experience, as well as all parts that make us who we are, have intrinsic beauty and are all meant for our awakening.
Really ? The stuff that was NOT light hearted, joyful and beautiful were essential to love, accept and integrate so that I could thrive as a vibrant free expression of me?
How could this be?
I will never forget my Anusara teacher training in 2006 when a story was shared about the Butterfly and the Chrysalis that made this particular Tantrik teaching accessible to my heart and my life.
It was shared that it’s within the tight uncomfortable confines of the chrysalis that the caterpillar starts decomposing itself into a messy soup to nourish the “imaginel” cells that miraculously come together to create the butterfly. All parts of the caterpillar are required. You can’t have the exquisiteness of the butterfly without the seemingly ugly mysterious goop of the caterpillar.
I finally understood that if I wanted to embody the true essence of a butterfly,
I needed to connect to the beauty revealed in ALL of the aspects of myself.
Yes, even what I thought of as the murky messy parts of me - fear, doubt, unworthiness, etc.
The Tantrik yogic path connected me to my capacity to transform self-limiting beliefs, trust my worthiness and experience true joy.
Decades of study and exploration changed not only my perception of beauty, but woke me up from the unconscious ways I related to myself, to others and to the world.
Now I live as a conscious partner of life that authentically inspires being fully engaged with ALL of life in wonder, ecstatic joy & freedom.
Every moment is an opportunity to participate with beauty as the simple miracle of being alive in a human body, in a human family, in a human life.
I cannot conceive of a more exquisite way to live my life than to be in loving service to those whose hearts long to awaken into the true beauty & joy of their own lives.
ALCHEMY Journey TWO:
I began my life sharing 9 months in a womb with my identical twin sister which nurtured the tenderness of life with the meaningful comfort of connection.
For much of my life, connection meant safety. Safety was the sense of being fully accepted, whole and confidently free.
I grew up in a male dominant Italian family. As Italians we're a gregarious and lively bunch often speaking in extreme volumes. Early on, at the age of 7 years old, I experienced a pivotal moment around one of our large family dinner tables. The table was enlivened with the usual argumentative tones. I was mimicking a loud demonstrative glass slamming action that my father had just expressed and my glass shattered. My Dad, I imagine out of fear for my safety, ran to my side from the other end of the table yelling with what seemed like anger & blame.
I remember feeling deeply scared, embarrassed and ashamed. With the shattering of the glass, my capacity to have a voice shattered as well. I developed a fear of expressing myself in life and in relationships which led to the disconnection from my heart and a paralyzing fear of speaking in public.
Jumping forward many years later as a young woman and mother I yearned for the comfort of connection, belonging & freedom that I knew from my ‘twinship’. This led me in my twenties to a meditation practice and a yoga asana practice in my thirties.
It became a relationship of recognition. Being in my body, mind and heart with awareness helped forge power and strength in me that had been shattered years earlier. I sensed a shift from being separate to being part of something bigger. It became my purpose to teach and share these practices of sacred recognition. This was the first divine nudge to reclaim my voice and despite my fear of public speaking I completed a Yoga Teacher Training program in 1998.
Already teaching for 7 years, I was in my second teacher training, an Anusara training in 2006, when I met Douglas Brooks, a Tantric philosophy scholar and professor at Rochester University. I experienced an alchemical moment when he shared a teaching that broke through my self-limiting beliefs of unworthiness.
“Yoga is an invitation to dance with life and it requires your participation. You honor life by being part of it. You can be a wallflower, hidden and disengaged or you can say yes to all of life and co-create a life that you thrive from living. Life becomes a choice, the choice to say yes to its invitation.”
I realized that I had been saying no - turning away from life. I had been playing it small by living from the perspective of my 7 year old self who had lost her voice and had been telling herself she had nothing to say and nothing to share that was worth offering. I was the wallflower! NO MORE. I was ready to deepen into the path of embodiment to clear out and heal old wounds to regain the gift of my voice, in order to speak and act with a free heart.
I have witnessed the transformational capacity of a yogic lifestyle. Yoga not only creates physical vitality and strength, but it continues to take me into my heart with ever deepening understanding of myself, others and life. Yoga is an unwavering life partner that returns me to my hearts’ deepest wisdom to access creativity, curiosity and passion for life. Yoga is a study of self-awareness and a practice of self-acceptance that awakens liberating life-affirming alchemy.
I continue on this sacred path of awakening into my life, aware of the pulse of connection that beats inside my heart, connected to a universal pulse in the heart of all beings and in the heart of all existence.
The spiritual path has revealed to me that we all experience a sense of disconnection, severed from a physical umbilical cord at birth. This is our shared human experience. Yet, we are spiritual beings having a human experience and from the Tantric perspective we are eternally connected to a spiritual umbilical cord that can never be severed.
Yoga means ‘to integrate’, and it re-integrates us into the spiritual umbilical cord of intrinsic belonging and bestows divine blessings of connection, wholeness and freedom.
It's my intention to live fully, love fully and serve fully as a conduit of life’s 'universal umbilical cord'. It's my honor to accompany others on this path of self-discovery so that they too know their capacity to experience connection, limitless joy and freedom to awaken into their lives with continuous wonder and awe.