ONLINE SESSIONS!
A NOTE FROM SUSAN
MY GRATITUDE, MISSION, AND OFFERING
As a young child my mother taught me to notice and ground my breath as way for me to manage anxiety and sleep disturbance. Little did my mother know she was gently treating my earliest childhood traumas with gentleness and compassion. This was my first introduction to pranayama. I took that mindfulness of breath and breath control she taught me and applied it countless times as a young person both in sport and moments of stress. However, as my western scientific mind and stressors of the modern lifestyle took over, I lost my connection to my breath and for a while, myself.
After a difficult divorce, I found my second teacher, Kate, who over 20 years ago brought me on a journey to find my way home and again to meet my breath utilizing her system of body alignment. From that very first day, the very first meeting, that first glimpse of the breath, it was love at first sight. I landed there in my heart with my breath and my Source and found a home there. I've made it home every day since. No matter what path I followed, how far I wandered, who I worked for, what I was teaching or tools I was using, the breath was always my silent companion carrying me home to Source. It was there for me through heartbreak, loss, single parenthood, financial challenges, sickness, and day to day stressors of this modern chaotic life. My breath supported and carried me all the way to a place of physical, mental, emotional, and most of all, spiritual health and joy. I long ago left the studio of my teacher Kate, but her essence, her presence, and her teachings, have remained close, always, through all these years. She lit a guiding light for me whose oil has never run out.
More recently, as I transitioned into another phase of life, another teacher, Kathleen came to me. Kathleen's system of Restorative Breathwork was so strikingly similar to the foundation of Kate's work, I was immediately drawn back into the Rumi like trance of the breath. I didn't know before I met Kathleen that it was possible to fall more deeply in love. Of course, there are differences in the work, and I have enjoyed getting to know them; two different lineages, two different people, but the essence of Kathleen's work is pure, feminine, and of a similar vibration to Kate's. Again, so grateful to have a guide and witness to my dance with the breath drawing me closer to the Divine Source. Kathleen has reminded me we can dive ever deeper into the relationship with the breath, that it is always new, always evolving, always revealing, always supporting and always transforming itself and us.
My mission is to honor both systems of work, to meet the breath with you moment by moment, to awaken it, heed ITS call, to be witness to it, to yield to it, support it, and follow it wherever it leads us.
Most of all however, My offering to you is My Presence and the nurturing and gentle work of Source as it moves through me. I am simply a vessel for Divine Grace and Healing in what ever form it comes.