A Magical Container for Our Body Prayers

Hey Galaxy, I am late (yet again) to this Dispatch, but I had a fantastic Thanksgiving, celebrated my 47th birthday, and took a little trip to the high southwestern desert to scout some retreat locations, so I think I have a valid excuse.

This month, sort of by accident, is a month where we celebrate gratitude and prayer. It was supposed to be last month, but I mixed it up. I’ve been thinking a lot about how grateful I feel to still be running the studio, having recently re-signed my lease, scheduled in new floors to be installed, and hired a studio manager (the fabulous Mary Steskal, who I’m grateful for every single day). That took me back to the first days of opening the studio, and how much I really wasn’t prepared for, how much I learned on the job, how many things surprised me (in both good ways and bad ways), and just how far this journey of small business ownership has taken me in three short years.

Soren Kierkegaard says that “The nature of prayer is not to influence God, but to change the nature of one who prays.” And there are many people who talk about the practice of yoga as a way of praying with your whole being - body, mind, spirit, heart, breathing… all of it. I like that. When I roll out my mat, I rarely, if ever, have some sort of goal or thing that I want to accomplish. But I often have the intention to simply pay attention, absorb myself in the magic of mindful movement, and see where I end up. And I always end up somewhere quite different and wonderful from where I started. I’m not sure if that would happen if I rolled out my mat and demanded that the universe serve up serenity to me, or said that practice couldn’t end until I stuck a handstand.

One perk of studio ownership is that I can use the space late into the night, early in the morning, and in the down times between classes. And I take hearty advantage of that perk. From late night decorating sessions to mid-day meetings, I love spending time in the studio when I’m not leading classes.

And those late nights, after I finish teaching a 5:45 class, or after I wrap a teacher training at 9:30 pm… those are the times where I often roll out my mat and just let myself practice, with a wide open floor, a favorite playlist, and all the warm, sweet vibes of this magical studio.

I’ve practiced in a lot of different head spaces. 

I’ve practiced when I was worried about just exactly what I had committed to and whether this was a project that would even last for six months.

I’ve practiced when I had to figure out how to explore new divisions of labor within my home life, as I took on the additional emotional labor of holding space for my students and my employees/teachers.

I’ve practiced when I wanted to celebrate the amazing people who come together and keep coming back to keep practicing together.

I’ve practiced when I wanted to celebrate a newfound source of physical strength of skill that I felt proud to have cultivated.

I’ve practiced in overwhelm, when I’ve had to cancel projects, end professional relationships, and stretch thin budgets to just a little bit thinner.

I’ve practiced when feeling sad, happy, depleted, exhilarated, and feeling emotions so complex that I could never name them.

I’ve sung to these walls. I’ve handstanded to these walls. I’ve breathed and laid on these floors in sweet euphoric surrender and in puddles of tears.

And the spirit of this magical space, and the spirit beyond this magical space that I’m in conversation with during these moments of body prayer - whatever you want to call it: big-G-God or something else - it’s heard all these prayers.

Like a really good friend who you can sit down with and just tell what you’re struggling with, there were never solutions that came back to me through the ether. But there was a whole lot of compassionate space to let me be, to let me express, with great attention and intention, what was in my heart… and it changed me. It changes me everytime I do it.

It’s changed me so I can trust that the studio is something that will be here for a long time.

My home life has settled into a new rhythm that supports my new responsibilities (hello to my daughter Helen, who cooks dinner almost every night).

We are growing as a studio community, in ways that I never expected. We had an extraordinary year of growth in 2025.

My body is slowly pulling itself together after a little temper tantrum earlier in the year.

I’m getting better at strategic planning, holding firm to my vision for big studio projects, and being clear, kind, truthful and holding boundaries in challenging professional moments.

This studio space that holds the body prayers of my solo studio time practices - it is the container for my continued metamorphosis and becoming, and it, in turn, continues to grow, evolve, and become. There’s so much magic here - from the body prayers of all of us, as we practice and continue to fill this space up.

What a gift. I can’t ever express how grateful I am for this Galaxy. And what is the definition of a galaxy? It’s a collection of brilliant objects, held together by gravity - in the case of this particular Galaxy, I think it’s held by the gravity of our collective attention, intention, gratitude and… yes… our prayers. Let’s keep this conversation going and see where we go.