About Susan

Since I was a child I have been sensitive to energy within and around me. This seemed unfortunate for a long time. Despite taking more than 10 years of dance and gymnastics that work with the body and expression, I felt too small and uncomfortable inside my own body. Because of the disconnect I experienced between my emotions, thoughts and body (mind/body), symptoms of this began to appear with greater and greater force letting me know something was wrong. I finally sought to change my approach to my life and what I thought defined success.

Inspired to create a healing link between my mind and body, I began karma yoga service cutting vegetables in the ashram’s kitchen in exchange for yoga instruction at Sri Swami Satchidananda’s Integral Yoga Institute in New York City.  The classes, body work, community service and therapy I experienced there instilled the value of deep cleansing, healing and inquiry that I am passionate about today.

I am continuing to deepen my appreciation and awe for the power yoga brings to unlocking and processing blocked and repetitive energy patterns (traumas, self-defeating thoughts and habits, tension, and symptoms of mental and physical illness). The quality of my life has been transformed beyond my greatest expectations. My improved energy has impacted my family, friends and students’ lives for the better and in turn mine. As living beings, with our consent or without, we share energies with those around us. As we become more conscious of our actions and their real results on ourselves and others, we become better able to be responsible because we are no longer hiding or buried in our blocked energies. Then, sensitivity transforms into the gift we intuit in children in mature form.

After several years of witnessing how yoga released me from toxic patterns, I decided to learn more with formal teacher training at the North Carolina School of Yoga, the first Yoga Alliance certified school founded in Raleigh, NC that focuses on the deep, inward Classical teachings and philosophy of ancient India. I studied exclusively with Chandra Om, Founder of the school and senior disciple of Sri Dharma Mittra of NYC.  The respect and seriousness for the science of yoga taught and lived there is the root of my intention. In Classical teachings there is a traveling within that leads away from interaction in the world, allowing the stillness and space for inner transformations.

After a time, though, I began to thirst for a philosophy of yoga that enabled me to reach out more to the world around me and share my growing enthusiasm for how anyone can cultivate the ability to unlock their inner Light.

Anusara Yoga, developed by John Friend and grounded in specific anatomical alignment and heart-centered, community engagement, cultivates the intention to flow with Univeral Change individually and collectively. In other words, ‘life is innately good, you’re innately good, live that truth and reveal the innate goodness woven into the Universe’. I study with John Friend personally when possible and continuously with Anusara Certified teachers Lila Pierce Brown of Gateway Yoga, and Paul and Sommer Sobin, extensively trained and eloquent teachers in the Triangle area.

I have sought to widen my perspective by attending lectures, workshops and intensives led by renowned Master teachers:

Studies with Annie Carpenter, a senior level teacher with YogaWorks International, and Doug Keller, one of the first Anusara Certified teachers and life-long devotee of Gurudev Siddha Peeth in India are on the calendar.

I currently teach at Triangle Yoga in Chapel Hill, the oldest yoga studio in the area where a lot of these great workshops are presented, Hillsborough Yoga and Healing Arts that offers acupuncture and massage as well as in Raleigh’s Downtown at Blue Lotus the area’s first “green” yoga studio and Gold’s Gym at North Hills.

My class styles are inspiration from experience in Hatha-Raja, Ashtanga, Anusara, Viniyoga, Yin Yoga, Vinyasa Flow, Bikram, Restorative Yoga, and Meditation.   I am currently deepening my practice in the Anusara principles of heart-centered living and anatomically-based alignment that allows energy to flow smoothly and evenly through the body, unlocking, healing, and integrating all levels of the body/mind.

There is no limit to the light that may be brought into a life lived in the deepening awareness Yoga brings.

Om Shanti… Shanti… Shanti…

Susan