Ava is a devoted practitioner and teacher of hatha yoga. She first dipped her toes into the ocean of yoga in 1999 and began her journey as a teacher in 2003. She bows with deepest gratitude to all of her students and teachers, and to her teacher’s teacher’s teachers.
Ava’s teaching focuses on the connection between breath and movement, emphasizing breath awareness at the core of practice. Classes are offered with attention to alignment, safe sequencing, and personal attention. Her in-person teaching is hands-on, with physical assists and direct communication with students. In her on-line classes, Ava provides personal attention through clear verbal cues.
Ava practices primarily in the classical Ashtanga system (learn more here), which provides the foundation for her teaching style – with specific attention on pranayama (breath), bhandas (internal energy valves), and dristi (eye gaze). To support meditation-in-motion, as well as simplicity and steadiness in practice, she does not play music in class. While classes are steadily paced and vigorous, students are always supported in honoring the wisdom of their own bodies, and are encouraged to rest and modify as needed.
Ava has trained and taught in California, Massachusetts, India, Greece, and Mexico. She was a teacher with Namaste Yoga since 2005.
Off the mat, Ava is the Founding Artistic Director of We Players, the San Francisco Bay Area’s premiere place-based theatre company. Her immersive, multi-sensory performances help connect people with place through site-integrated theatre. Meet We at: www.weplayers.org
Some thoughts on the WHY and the HOW of practice
Perhaps you are challenged to make it to your mat on a regular basis.
Perhaps you forget to close your eyes and take deep, slow breaths throughout the day…
It’s okay.
This is a practice.
It is unfolding, developing, emerging, evolving over time.
You don’t have to get it right. You can’t really get it “right”. You just show up to your practice and move and breathe and try to focus your attention on your actual sensory experience in the moment. You take time to be present with your breath - and the practice leads you towards a deeper sense of yourself. Your awareness becomes heightened. You connect with the part of you that is unchanging, timeless, interconnected.
Wowie! What a promise!
Plus, extra bonus prizes abound! You develop great physical strength and flexibility, you tone your organs and expand your lung capacity, you develop stamina and balance.
The practice is a journey, full of twists and binds - it is not a straight line. Sometimes we are challenged by injury or heartache. Sometimes we are uplifted by good sleep and good fortune. Everything affects our practice - how we slept, what we ate, what is happening in our lives to make our hearts heavy or light, to make our minds busy or calm. The point is to practice anyway - when we feel good and when we feel sad. To practice when we feel energetic and strong and when we feel tired and weak. We learn to practice with kindness to ourselves, to pay attention to how we are feeling from day to day, from moment to moment, and we learn to discern when to challenge ourselves and when to relax and pull back, when to modify and rest, when to reach and strive for our edge. The important thing is to make the time, some time, any time, to notice that you are breathing, and through the awareness of the breath to connect with your inner steadiness. Some days your practice may be 2 hours long, another day 30 minutes. Some days you rest in a child’s pose (balasana) for 10 breaths, or maybe you stand in an active, attentive standing pose (samasthitihi) and take 5 slow, conscious breaths.
Regardless of the duration and physical intensity of your practice, HOW you practice is most important.
Ask yourself these questions to help you monitor the effects and quality of your practice:
Is your yoga helping you to become more generous, patient, and kind?
Is your yoga helping you to connect with more joy and peace?
Is your yoga bringing you steadiness and greater self-acceptance?
These qualities and experiences may emerge gradually. You are ever-changing as are your circumstances and the world around you, thus the practice is constantly shifting and perpetually unfolding. But if your yoga is making you more competitive, with yourself or others, or otherwise more constricted in body, mind, or heart - then the shift to make is in HOW you are practicing, not what poses you’re doing, or where you practice, or what you wear when you step onto your mat. The practice of yoga is not just about doing a prescribed sequence of physical postures - it is about how you show up, the quality of your presence and your breathing.