Experience informing service: The Mindful Movers origin story

A Yogaworks class community, where I found my dharma one weekend night

The lights were low, sweat was pouring down my back, and my yoga instructor was giving out cues over the loud music. I was in one of my favorite weeknight yoga classes. The instructor asked us if there was anything or any one to whom we could offer up our practice. To lay a bit of groundwork here, for the first time since I was twelve years old, I hadn’t danced in months. My body, mind, and spirit were grappling with the impacts of being a tunnel-vision focused dancer for years upon years.

With a membership to a Yogaworks studio, with unlimited available classes, I was in a yoga class almost daily instead. I was learning so many new things about my body and myself, as a person, more broadly. I still identified as a dancer, and remained connected to that world through my work as a dance writer, yet my future in dance remained unclear for me.

The genesis of a mission

Encouraged to offer up my practice to someone or something, I thought about all of the dancers in pain -- in physical pain, surviving the trauma of emotional abuse, financially strapped, and that list goes on. I want to be clear: there are so many wonderful people in the dance world who consistently lift while they climb. I personally have been blessed to know many of them. Yet I’ve also experienced many who’ve been hurtful, demeaning, and found a threat in other’s success.

Many people find light, freedom, healing, empowerment, community, and more in dance. Many also find pain, trauma, and life-long limitations on who they can be and what they can experience. In that class that night, it didn’t take long. It happened in under a minute, I’d say -- I offered up my practice to all of those dancers in pain. They’re in pain, but the love of the artform -- of that incomparable rush of moving freely and connected within themselves -- keeps them committed.

Flowing through yoga asana, my practice offered up for those dancers experiencing pain as a result of something they dearly love, my practice became a prayer and a dedication. As it deepened, I lost all sense of my body’s limitations and I left behind that nagging self-critical voice. It came to me at one point -- I had found my life’s unique and true purpose, in yoga called dharma. I would bring healing and empowerment to dancers through yoga and mindfulness.

Life went on, and I was as busy as ever with teaching, writing, and everything else I had going on. I thought back to this dharma from time to time, but bills kept coming and I had to keep the “hustle” going. I wasn’t exactly sure how I could put this mission to work in a way that would be marketable and sustainable for me personally.

The evolution of a mission….and a program

Fast forward to Spring of 2020 -- my good friend and yoga instructor colleague Lara Hocheiser was starting a virtual 95-hour Kids Yoga Teacher Training. She offered me a Work Study position, allowing me to work off the balance by doing social media and other writing work for her company. I agreed, and to this day I’m so very glad I did. My training cohort was full of kind, interesting, and multi-talented people. Lara was a skilled, generous, and warm teacher.

In the last course of the training, The Business of Kids Yoga, Lara asked us to design a plan for our business in yoga and mindfulness for children, tweens, and/or tweens. She pressed us to reflect on how our business, and how we would execute it, would be uniquely ours -- how our stories and life experiences would make it something that only we, as individuals, could offer. That passion to improve the holistic well-being of dancers rose back up on me. And what better time to offer these tools than in the younger years of dancers’ lives, bringing the potential for them to implement them for years and years to come? There was only one option for me -- my business would offer yoga and mindfulness for young dancers.

My Flow and Grow Kids Yoga Teacher Training Cohort -- learning and having fun!

My business would be aimed at bringing greater holistic health to dedicated young movers, as well as kinder, more harmonious studio atmospheres (having experienced studio bullying personally as a young dancer, I know the harm that the lack of kindness and harmony in studios can cause).

Part of the work for this kids’ yoga teacher training were lesson plans, and that sparked an idea to create lesson plans for studio owners and teaching artists -- allowing them, professionals who know their students best, to lead yoga and mindfulness classes. I would provide classes taught by yours truly and consulting as well, to keep flexible options open for various studios, dancers, and teaching artists -- and thus give the mission the potential for greater reach and impact.

Over the following months, I designed the lesson plans, website, and all the various pieces necessary to build the business. As a result of changes in my personal life and work schedule due to COVID, I finally had the time, energy, and mental space to begin creating this mission. I believe Lara would smile and say that the product is uniquely me. My experience with yoga, dance, dance/movement therapy, teaching yoga and dance in various contexts and social-justice oriented political organizing have given the work various important characteristics: trauma-informed, embodiment-focused, inclusive, and aligned with science of mental, physical, spiritual, and emotional development.

It’s truly been a journey to get to this place, and I can’t wait to share with you what has grown out of it. I can’t wait to mindfully move with you and your students -- whether through classes or even through consulting or my lesson plans! I can’t wait to hear from you. Until then!