More interviews with our teaching and subbing staff

This week you I’d like to introduce to you some of our awesome subs that we are privileged to have teaching for us this summer. They come from various traditions and backgrounds and we encourage you to come take their class and make them feel at home at Mala.
Also, our lovely Kristen (who teaches the prenatal class on Sunday) gives us some insight to her practice!

KRISTEN BOWER
What’s your favorite yoga pose?
Tree pose.  I always feel taller and stronger in tree pose.  I love playing with the sway that happens as I’m balancing, leaning into it a little.  I sometimes just find myself moving into tree pose especially in my kitchen while cooking or washing dishes and it makes me laugh (I imagine I look pretty funny standing at the sink
with one foot hiked up).

What was your most embarrassing yoga moment?
During an advanced class with Angela a few years ago I found myself in pincha myurasana and suddenly realized I wasn’t at the wall, I was in the middle of the room and I was UP–I’m awesome, then my face hit the floor!  Not to worry, no neck injury, only a bruised ego.

A one-liner to describe teaching style (this is the hardest one!)
Classes weave together flowing yoga asana, breathwork and meditation with the intention of strengthening the body and calming the mind. — I suppose this is what we all try to do!

ANYA PORTER
What’s your favorite yoga pose?
My favorite yoga pose right now is agni stambasana or firelog/ankle to knee pose.  I think this pose is hugely effective for those of us with tight hips, particularly in cases where those tight hips can affect the surrounding less stable areas, specifically the low back.  I like to use this pose in two very different situations, the first being near the end of practice when your body is warm and open, perhaps directly following backbending.  The other time is in a more passive, yin-like fashion, holding for 5-10 minutes or more each side, either before a more active practice or on its own as a sequence of longer, cooler yin poses when the body is not necessarily warm.

What was your most embarrassing yoga moment?
When I was doing my first training, we were learning to teach the ashtanga primary series and I would practice it quite often.  I was very aggressive at the time with my practice and my asana, and one day in class I was practicing prasarita padattonasana A (wide legged standing forward bend with hands on the floor), and I was literally trying to get my head directly under my pelvis, and my sit bones high to the sky.  Next thing I know I am losing my balance forward and I do a huge forward somersault and land sitting up with my legs straddled.  The teacher and I both laughed, but it was a good beginning lesson for me in the balance of action and surrender.

What is your teaching (teacher) inspiration?
It is really hard to pinpoint all the things that inspire me to teach because they are always evolving.  For now I am deeply inspired by many things:  My teachers, past and present.  Asana as a gateway to self study.  Sunsets in the NYC summer.  George Feuerstein’s The Deeper Dimension of Yoga. The breath and all of its facets.  Music of every kind, but particularly funk and soul.  Alignment on a more and more subtle level and how ultimately the breath can create that alignment.  Surrender of the mind and body to a practice, whatever that practice may be.  The relationship of humans to their surroundings and vice-versa.  Being in the moment and how fleeting and sweet that can be.

MARISA SAKO
What’s your favorite yoga pose?
My practice tends to veer toward the firey: arm-balances, inversions, deep twists, and backbends. But strangely enough, I’m going to have to say my favorite right now is halasana. I’ve always been on the backbendy side and for years I played to my strengths without spending a significant amount of time in halasana on a regular basis. I developed an aversion to halasana and avoided it. Carnipidasana was even worse for me!  But the longer I practice, the more I realize it’s the poses that did not come easily for quite some time that I have wound up having the greatest appreciation for. Those are the poses that end up being the most balancing and healing for me, both physically and spiritually. Earlier this year, I began taking a class in which halasana is included every single time. I think it is because it is such a firey class that it needs something quieting to counter it. Now I cannot practice without a nice long halasana into carnipidasana at the end, and when I roll my back down super-slowly onto the mat, it feels like I’m ironing out the physical kinks in my back and smoothing out the energetic lumps.

What was your most embarrassing yoga moment?
About five years ago, I was going through a particularly exhausting time, and my asana practice was all that was keeping me relatively functional. One day, I was sitting toward the front in one of those super-crowded classes in Manhattan, and the pranayama at the end of class was so lovely that I drifted off into a deep savasana—or so I had thought. I had actually fallen asleep! I awoke to the sound of 30 people om-ing! I scrambled to sit up, and I was mortified.

What is your teaching (teacher) inspiration?
Please don’t roll your eyes, but I’m honestly going to say that I am inspired by my students. I feel that I’m learning just as much from them as I am from my own teachers. Seeing their dedication, watching their practices evolve, being asked an amazingly insightful question about yoga after class, and learning about their lives and how their yoga practice helps them do what they do with less stress and more enjoyment–all of this is incredibly inspiring.

STEPHANIE SANDLEBEN
What’s your favorite yoga pose?
My favorite yoga pose is Adho Mukha Svanasana (downward facing dog pose).  It’s my go-to pose on those days when I only have 15 minutes to practice—being upside down for a few minutes changes everything.

What was your most embarrassing yoga moment?
My most embarrassing yoga moment is probably too inappropriate to post on this blog.  Let’s just say it involved baddha konasana (seated bound angle pose) and a trial run on a new pair of yoga shorts that were a little too short to be wearing outside of the apartment.

What is your teaching (teacher) inspiration?
My teaching inspiration often changes but currently it’s the healing aspect of the practice.  During a recent teacher training intensive I was bordering on fatigue brought on by insomnia and the intensity of the work.  One of the teachers swooped down and gave me a practice that brought me back into my body and completely restored me.  The experience showed me the transformative potential of the practice (and the importance of hanging upside down!).

SIRI PETERSON
What’s your favorite yoga pose?
Ardha chandrasana.

What was your most embarrassing yoga moment?
I tend to make up interesting words in the process of articulating my thoughts during class…some examples: “connectiveness”, “fractalizing”, “symmetricality”, stuff like that.  Another time, I got an allergy attack during class, and I literally didn’t stop sneezing for 20 minutes. Finally, there’s always that great moment when my voice cracks while chanting the opening invocation!

What is your teaching (teacher) inspiration?
Wow. What a question…
I try to teach from my experience, from a desire to share and express different states that I participate in. There are so many inspiring yoga teachers in New York, and I am amazed by their capacity to transmit energy and uplift their students.  After one particularly transformative class with a well-renowned teacher, I thought, “I want to do that!”.  When I reconnected with with my primary yoga teacher, John Friend, in 2004, I knew that I had found a thread that was weaving the various aspects of my past and future together: my many years exploring the body as a dancer as well as a life filled with spiritual inquiry and practice.  Teaching yoga is a way for me to offer my inner life back out into the world.  As a yoga teacher, I am simply sharing my own process with the hope that others might benefit from the time I’ve spent exploring this beautiful practice.  I also teach to learn from my students. For me, teaching is just a different way of practicing yoga.

If life is a gift (that we didn’t earn, can’t return, and can’t pay back) then how do we honor that gift? I think it’s by cultivating gratitude, a sense of humor, and, most importantly, by creating beauty. This is what I hope to impart to my students.