Meet our March Teacher of the Month, the lovely Shannon Paige! Shannon is not only a master yoga teacher, but an author, activist, and an avid horseback rider! Read on to learn why Shannon believes yoga is so powerful, and to become inspired by her advice for yoga students.
When did you start practicing yoga?
I began seriously practicing yoga in 1994 when it was kinda still a little weird!
What has yoga brought to your life?
I came to yoga after a battle with cancer, upon a doctor's amazing recommendation that I get back into my body. I had no idea how much, not the cancer had riddled my body, but how its corresponding depression had taken its toll. Getting back into my body has actually become a practice since then of really owning the fact that I HAVE a body and that this life is a radical invitation into the health and wellness of that sweet and temporal space. Perhaps cancer came along to help me learn the very lesson that I get to be, because one never HAS to be, in love with my life.
Why did you become a yoga instructor?
I actually planned on NEVER teaching yoga. I took trainings and workshops and intensives and delved deeper and deeper but actually planned on JUST owning a studio and yoga shop. I was content taking classes and letting my practice be the one place in life I was not in control. One day, early in the first days of om time, a teacher called in sick, I "taught" the class, and I have been on our schedule ever since. Since then, I have learned and continued to learn that a practice of teaching yoga is just that, another element of practice, and that one need to fear little about being in control over ANYTHING; for just when you think you have a plan in place, a challenge arises. I love teaching. It inspires me to be creative on the fly and own my ability to be dextrous and adaptive to all that rises in myself and others.
What impact can a regular yoga practice have on a person's life?
Wow. Let me be very clear and say that yoga is life changing, altering really, since it jacks up EVERYTHING! Yoga is a huge accountability practice. It holds one accountable to oneself. It reflects all of the bits of ourselves that are just half truths and "half rights" and "halfway living out loud." Yoga breaks down all the walls of self limitation and these coming down can be terrifying. Often, we get comfortable in the uncomfortable, cramped places of living just outside our gifts. Yoga holds us accountable to the person we are at the core and are truly desiring to become, rather than letting us sit comfortably in the recesses of the old story we once were.
What advice would you give to someone that is just starting yoga?
Showing up is 99% of any practice and yoga is just that, a practice. Once you get there, can you stay there? Can you stay with yourself the entire time? Can you recognize and realize that it is yoga practice and not yoga pretty? Can you understand and be in the wobbles of not being instantly excellent at something and source the "pushing back" of the experience as yoga practice and not yoga preference? Further, one who is "tighter" or, as I like to refer, "more stable" is BETTER at knowing where he or she is in time and space than a bending being. So get yourself there and stay with it: my overall advice is exactly a mirror to the first line, SHOW UP!
What is special about the style of yoga you teach?
I am an avid student of the flow, anatomy, comparative philosophy, and mystic poetry. I have been blessed to have had several of the most respected and amazing teachers across the time of my studies. I count Shiva Rea as my Maha teacher: she has taught me to move with great respect and awareness of the flow of life and love, a curiosity around where movement and transitions come from, and how those transitions serve as the pouring of attention into the actual shapes of the asana. She has taught me to move as Osho inspires, "the way that love moves," as it does not know any other way to move.
My other main teachers are: Rod Stryker, who has given me a love and a language to empower myself and others as to the mission of my life and the aiming of my unique gifts; Gary Kraftsow, who raises the stakes continually around what is more powerful, my intentions or my habits; and Douglas Brooks, who inspired my great love in mythology, comparative philosophy, and symbology.
I like to refer to myself as a "yoga geek," as it is genuinely the greatest love of my life and I study all the time. Students who hang out with me generally know that they are getting the fruits of serious study and playful curiosity and that I am interested in staying fresh and evolutionary for a raised collective conversation. I would label, if I have to, my style of yoga as a fully Integrative, Conscious Flow, moving physical alignment in connection and context with the emotional body to create a state of soulful empowerment and radical self-participation.
What is your favorite yoga posture to teach, and why?
Change. All poses aside, I am now forty and have been studying a longtime. I feel that the postures are incredible place cards for the prana, the energy of life, but that it is the transitions and the spaces in between that hold my attention and my great love. At this point, I am finally learning to line up to change, transformation, and transition. I love to inspire that same "aha" in others! Yoga then becomes less accomplishment based and more alive. As change is our one constant and poses, postures, embodied circumstance, transform all the time; perhaps our most empowered state of being and becoming on any level is to be in relationship with change itself.
Please share some words of wisdom or advice for your yogadownload.com yoga students.
Be with yourself the whole time. Words to live by. I aspire. We are it together.
What do you like to do "off the mat"?
I spend as much time as I can with my horse, Ziffarah. She is a young Polish Arabian. Her grandfather was a great and inspired race horse who truly ran like the wind towards countless victories. She inherited a love of the run and she is fastest creature I have ever been on in my life. I plan to endurance race her in 25 and 50 miles races beginning this spring. Her tenacity, grace and speed are humbling as she runs not for a prize or the winner's circle, but seeming for the perfumed scent of her own heart. I love her. She loves me. Our connection is a great source of love and inspiration.
Do you have a favorite quote you'd like to share?
"Separately, we can do little. Together, we can do much." - Helen Keller
Living fully as a student, author, sacred activist, motivational speaker, and dedicated teacher of integrated, expressive flow yoga, Shannon a respected teacher and mentor of teachers. She is the founder of Anjali Restorative Yoga, Bala Therapeutic Yoga, and Bhava Yoga for Depression and Anxiety. Moved by the power of words, stories, myths, the symbolic nature of Tantra and mystic poetry, she interweaves her student’s unique purpose driven inspiration into the divine play of body and breath to unlock the secret wisdom held within the heart. Her classes and trainings are dedicated to a sense of mystery and wonder within a vinyasa of self-honoring, self-cultivation, and radical self-participation. Shannon is the founder and director of om time yoga centers, tours, teaches and speaks nationally and internationally. Read more about Shannon at EmbodiedPoetry.com.
Download or stream one of Shannon's inspiring classes today:
Side Plank Play
Upper and Lower Back Radiant Release
