I hope your Sunday is starting well and that you're beginning a beautifully restful day.

About a week ago, I returned to Nice, France from a really wonderful work trip to the States. I loved being back in the states hosting a Yoga Nidra training as well as other classes, projects, and workshops as well as spending time with my twin brother and friends.

That said, I’m still working through the jet lag. Mon Dieu!

I wanted to jot off a quick note to keep you au currant of one or two things that are happening TODAY and also about some beautiful adventures going down this summer which I hope you’ll seriously consider joining.

Lately, I’ve had many students ask me where they can join my classes online and whether or not I'm planning any retreats this summer.

Here are a few options you may consider …

Gentle Yoga and Meditation: A Foundation for Wellness
While I was in the States I had the pleasure of filming a gentle yoga and Yoga Nidra class with one of my favorite yoga studios in NYC, Kula Yoga Project. This was a particular pleasure for me because I resonate deeply with Kula Yoga and the founders Schuyler Grant and Nikki Vilella have been very influential. The class I filmed is a 65-minute class called Gentle Yoga and and Meditation: A Foundation for Wellness. We start seated on the mat and basically stay on the mat as we explore an intelligent seated yoga sequence of mobilization and stretching along with breathing exercises before landing in a luxurious Yoga Nidra practice. If you’d like to take this class, Kula will be offering this today, Sun. March 27th at 10 am Eastern (7 am Pacific, 8 am Mountain, 9 am Central, 3 pm UK, 4 pm Central European). I loved teaching this class and Kula does a great job filming classes. Check it out!

Weekly Yoga Nidra Class
Next, today I’ll be hosting my weekly Yoga Nidra class at 9 am Mountain (8 am Pacific, 10 am Central, 11 am Eastern, 4 pm UK, and 5 pm Central European). Each week we explore a theme related to Waking Up with the Yoga of Sleep. We explore what it means to wake up to your ultimate potential through this relaxing and illuminating practice of Yoga Nidra. Today, we’ll explore the idea of disentangling yourself from your ego so you can realize your true identity as Awareness which empowers you to remarry your every-day life in a way that turns the colors of your life up to 11. As always, we’ll do a few gentle poses and some breathing exercises before we settle into a nice and extended Yoga Nidra practice. Each participant will get access to both the live class as well as the replay. You can either pay for a drop-in, buy a pass, begin your monthly subscription.

Yoga Retreat in Bordeaux of Tuscany This Summer
Lastly, never before in the last 2 years has traveling to Europe been so accessible. Yes, Covid still lingers and the crisis happening in Ukraine is worrisome, yet despite all of that, travel is still the easiest it's been in a long time. Perhaps this is the year to join me for one of my European yoga adventures, either to Bordeaux, France (June 5–11), or to Tuscany, Italy (October 8–15). I've even planned extra days to tack onto the retreat in case you want to join me for some spectacular walking tours through some of Europe's most historic and beautiful cities, Paris and Florence, respectively.

In truth, I already sold out retreats to both Bordeaux and Tuscany so I booked additional dates to both locations. Currently, there are still spots in each retreat but they are expected to fill up so please grab your bestie and make your deposit to reserve your spot. Airfare prices may go up soon so you might want to book your spot soon. I'd love to have you join me!

Show Me More Retreats!

So, whatever you may or may not have planned for today, I hope you have a wonderful Sunday! If it works for you to connect with me for my class with Kula, my weekly Yoga Nidra class, or for a retreat this summer, I'd be absolutely thrilled.

Sen and I have spent most of our lives living in Utah. In 2017, we were looking for something new. We wanted a challenge.

Right about April of 2017, Sen was offered a job to work in NYC. That seemed to fit the bill perfectly for a challenge and the we decided to move, despite the fact that we’d just moved into a new house (new for us, and the first one we’d bought together), we decided to say goodbye to Salt Lake City and head east.

This decision was very deliberate. I mean, I would be giving up my 15-year career teaching yoga in Salt Lake City, a place where I’ve been rewarded with scores of friends, loyal clients, and more teaching opportunities than I can accept. Regardless, I was hungry to know if what I did in Salt Lake City could translate to New York.

It did. But it was more complicated than that . . .

NYC was much more challenging than we thought. After about 9 months, Seneca was starting to wonder if we’d made the right decision. I’m the kinda guy who will stick out even a bad sitch long enough to play it all the way out to the end, for better or worse. I wanted to stick it out for a while, mostly because I was just starting to get some traction in the yoga world.

One of the studios I practiced at and audition for was Kula. Their commitment to a solid yoga practice with good, smart alignment added to a solid structure but dedicated to fun, creative sequencing was perfect for my personal style of practice and teaching. I particularly loved going to Nikki Vilella’s classes. She offered a no-bullshit, solid class that showcased her expert teaching, great assists, but without any showboating or diva vibes.

I asked to if I could possible get onto their sub list. Nikki arranged an audition for me and after gave me some really solid feedback. I’ve been teaching for so many years, and even giving feedback to other teachers regularly with my Teacher Mentor Program but it had been a while since I’d received good feedback about my own teaching from someone who is an expert teacher. Nikki said that while I was a great teacher, that my assists were very strong, but that I simply needed to learn the “Kula Way.” She suggested that I take the 30-hour “Kula Way” training they offer periodically, simply to understand the branded way in which the studio likes to their teachers to format classes.

Not long after this I went to Costa Rica for a retreat and had an incredible revelation that if NYC wasn’t happening for my woman, it just wasn’t happening. Don’t get so attached to NYC and try something new. I’d have to put the Kula training on hold.

Once we decided that New York wasn’t the right fit for us, we took a trip to L.A. Seneca spent a good part of her childhood in L. A. and has always considered herself a Californian at heart. We found that L. A. really fit us well—it seemed exciting and available to us. As per Nikki’s suggestion I found the sister-studio to Kula called Wanderlust in Hollywood and fell in love with it, not surprisingly because it was opened with, Schuyler Grant, the woman who opened Kula. I took class from Matt Phippen who was again right up my alley. I introduced myself to him and said there’s a good chance I’d be coming to L. A. He suggested I do the Wanderlust equivalent to the “Kula Way” training, a 75-hour, week-long training that shows how it’s done at Wanderlust.

So we liked L. A. And especially due to the fact that Seneca’s job dried up, the purpose for us moving to NYC in the first place, and that it’s just SOOOOOOO damn expensive there, we decided to forgo the obligatory 2 years of ass-kicking by “the system,” the NYC hazing period, and just move to L. A. And why not stop off in Salt Lake City for a while to have a summer with family, to reconnect to my old studio, and to offer some classes, workshops, and retreats.

Well after a great summer in Salt Lake City, we made the move. While in SLC, people would ask me repeatedly, “Now why are you moving to L. A.?” and when I told them simply because it’s on our adventure map, they would simply stare at me blankly. That’s fine, I don’t need people to understand my life for it to make sense to me.

I decided to take the Wanderlust training and was frankly thrilled to be doing a training again as a student instead of the teacher. I was hungry to get more of that fantastic feedback like I received from Nikki at Kula. I was eager to change things up and learn instead of teach— to sharpen the axe. And I knew that I wanted to do this as Wanderlust.

Plus, one great way to teach at a studio you like is to show up and pick up what they are puttin’ down. If it so happens that I can get onto the sub list at Wanderlust and someday be on the schedule, I’d be thrilled. But it’s good enough just to be learning the stuff.

So, with the training in mind, we moved to L. A., rented and Air B&B, and drove out.

The training started today and I’m so thrilled to be doing it. It’s exactly what I was hoping for and more. I’ll tell you more about the training tomorrow!