Featured Alumni: Darby Canessa
Yoga is the underlying current of every moment in my life. Yoga has taught me presence, discernment, and surrender. The practice has awakened me to the spaciousness, abundance, and harmony of my being and surroundings. Every breath is a dedication to the life force that flows through me, through you, through the earth, the sky, and all beings. Yoga has allowed me to be, to be empowered by just being, and accepting of that being. Just simply be. That’s what the Yoga asks me. We are human ‘beings’, not human ‘doings.’ Yoga is a practice that has taken me closer to my essence and further from construct. Closer to union and further from separation. Closer to truth and further from illusion. It is everything.
Yoga Teacher Training at Sonic Yoga changed my life. In the training I found my voice, my passion, and a loving community that forever has a place in my heart. I have been teaching and practicing yoga in California for the past two and a half years, and everyday I am reminded of how fortunate I am for the teacher training at Sonic Yoga. The training encouraged me to teach and practice in a way that is most authentic to me. To teach from the heart, embracing love over fear, learn from our ancestors, and become a good ancestor. The training has taught me to be a faucet, a channel for change and transformation that simply provides and shares without attachment, without ego. The class is not about me, it is about something beyond the physical, beyond what our bodies and minds allow us to comprehend. It is a practice where surrender is empowerment, movement is stillness, and breath is the bowl holding these ingredients together.
The first yoga class I took was with my sister at a small gym in Orange County, CA. I had no idea what was going on. Even coming from a dance background that gave me decent body awareness, I had no idea what was happening. I did not know the depth of the practice, and at the time, my mind, body, and channel were not open to receive it. A couple years later, my college dance professors told me to practice yoga to release tension in my body. I started taking the free summer classes at Bryant park and started to get familiar with the physical asana practice, and felt the calmness in my mind and bones after each class. Little did I know an awakening was slowly unfurling. My friend Grace was completing her teacher training at Sonic Yoga and asked me to meet her at the studio. I stepped inside and felt the energy of the space. It was powerful, proud, light, loving, and welcoming. I signed up to be a Karmi right away. I had not taken a class at the studio yet, but knew something lit up inside me being in that space. I found home.