Today’s guest post comes from local yoga instructor Jessica Lazar. She is a prana flow teacher at Flow Yoga Center and has trained with Shiva Rea for many years. Shiva will be making a stop in DC on her Fall Mandala Tour on Sunday, November 14 to lead three different workshops at St. Francis Hall at the Franciscan Monastary (its BEAUTIFUL!!). Sign up for one, two, or all three sessions (and save!) through Flow Yoga Center’s website. In the mean time, enjoy Jess’ story about how she met, and continues to be inspired by, Shiva Rea.
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I met Shiva seven years ago at a Yoga Journal Conference in Estes Park, Colorado. My youngest daughter was still nursing, and I had taken a weekend off of full-time mothering to attend a yoga conference away from the dynamic fray of my home, which, it seemed to me, was filled with diapers, and yowling babies, and piles of laundry that kept multiplying miraculously in the night.
Asana practice was already a routine part of my day, but while I was still faithful to my time on the mat, it had begun to feel less like an oasis and more like another obligation to be checked off my crazy-long to-do lists; in short, I was no longer certain how edifying or useful was the whole thing.
Estes Park sits at the foot of the Rockies, and in late September when the YJ Conference is held, aspen trees, with their tiny quaking leaves line the avenues and paths in copses of brilliant yellow. Elk amble down from the summits to breed (and bugle) in the valleys, and you are likely to meet one, rack lowered menacingly, if you exit your room around sunrise or sunset on the grounds of the park. It’s a surreal environment, and for me, starved as I was for quietude and natural beauty, it was a real respite from the dynamism of my home life back in Washington, DC.
Shiva fit right into this other-worldly picture. We gathered in one of the larger halls, unrolled mats and waited for the Queen of Vinyasa to arrive. She swept in moments later, diaphanously arrayed in white and what seemed to me an aura of sparkles and sequins suspended around her towhead and trailing out from behind her tiny, taut frame, I was immediately intrigued. She picked up the microphone and made a joke about how cold it was at that time of year, which it indeed was. So before we practiced, we huddled together at the center of the room and gave each other warming backrubs. Then we did some beautiful, undulating flows on our mats that were, I now know, introduced by the Chandra Namaskar (moon salutation), and offered in a Sringara Rasa style, with plenty of rhythmic and body vinyasas sprinkled in to illustrate the key actions of the familiar shapes.
It was like I had never practiced yoga before. I loved the feeling of all the sequences that drew on classical poses, deconstructed versions of the same, lyrical asymmetrical backbends and movement meditations that invoked what seemed to me the spirit of Indian art forms, hinting at the mystical roots of yoga that I had always known about, but which had seemed buried deep beneath the iterations of modern practice such as, to date, I had experienced them. It was rich. I knew I had found my teacher.
Jess Lazar and Shiva Rea
Seven years later, after hundreds of hours of training, traveling, and dancing on and off our mats, I can say Shiva is still my most influential teacher in the practice of living yoga. She has taught me to embody and teach with evolution and creativity at the heart of each class, as well as encouraged me to live yoga in every moment. We are so lucky to have her come and light up our community yet again, the reverberations of which we can feel for days and weeks after she’s gone. For now I know it wasn’t sparkles and sequins that floated around her head that first day we met: it was the Sri. Love to you Shiva-ji.
Welcome back and welcome home!
