Greetings and salutations,

I hope that you are at least half as comfortable as River Bader Ginsburg is pictured above in a blissful Happy Baby shape. Settle in. Make yourself a cup of tea. Pour a cup of coffee. I can wait. Ready? Ok.

Once upon a pandemic...

Here it is, the inaugural blog. That's right: among many firsts in this Season of COVID -19, I am now adding "blogger" to my list of recently acquired hats. Why not? If you told me at New Year's 2020 that I would be teaching yoga online and on May 4th, launching virtual yoga, I would have laughed. As a card carrying introvert with extrovert capabilities, I love teaching and far prefer to do it in person when possible. As a social-health psychologist, I am grateful that I get to help people by sharing things that I love: Research Methods, Health Psychology, Yoga, to name a few. Life pre-March was pretty good.

Then a pandemic happened.

As typical life ground to a halt, one thing was clear: I wanted to be of use. I needed to be of use. While my training as a research psychologist studying chronic illness management may make me useful, I'm far from immediately essential. While my psychology courses shifted online -- I needed to find a way to continue to hold space for my yoga classes.

My yoga teacher journey started at Fitness Yoga Studios and I want to thank Laura Bonanni for opening the door to this path. Your 200 HR teacher training helped me plant my feet firmly so I could root down, lift up, and breathe. Being able to connect with my home studio Fitness Yoga Studios and sister studio Experience Yoga Studios during this time and see familiar faces was and is a joy.

I grateful to the Accessible Yoga community who were pioneers in moving yoga online equitably. They began thoughtful conversations on how, when, and why yoga could be shared while preserving safety and integrity.

The initial goal to going virtual was to continue offering yoga to my Tuesday night Yoga for Cancer Club. We had been meeting face to face every Tuesday since March 2019 -- we didn't want to lose connection or momentum. Several hours, a few phone calls, and emails later, just in time for our Tuesday class, we made it happen. Thanks to their curiosity, willingness to try new things, patience, and eagerness to keep our thriving community going, we found our way online began to explore what is possible.

Kudos also go to Tari Prinster and the Y4C: Yoga for Cancer Community for providing encouragement and advice on how we can adapt and best serve our students in these times. Tari recently reminded us of these wise words:

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain."

Vivian Greene

Hearing that helped me realize while the setting changed, my goals remain the same:

• To hold space for folks so they can catch their breath, get a good stretch, and find community.
• To create a safe place where folks can experiment and explore as they build strength, balance, and resilience.
• To share tools and practices that help both body and mind quiet down, inviting peace.

GOOD NEWS:

To do that we don't need perfect lighting/music/well placed ferns. We just need ourselves to show up and breathe.

Adapting, adjusting, and accommodating is the very essence of yoga. The current situation is the perfect time to live our yoga and rely on the teachings to help guide us through.

After that first class on 3/17, I realized that with so many of us hOMe, an opportunity was presenting itself. An email or so later and daily Adaptive Hatha Yoga was born. Thanks to my teacher Satya Greenstone, I knew that cultivating a hOMe yoga practice need not be fancy or complicated to have the power to orient and restore in the darkest of times. In that spirit, we started connecting across time and space each morning to bring adaptive yoga to California, Maryland, New York, Pennsylvania, South, North, and even Central NJ ;)

From there, as our stay at home order was extended in NJ, it was clear that we might benefit from a "yoga treat"-- and Adventure Yoga was born. Here, we use our imagination/magic muscles to travel to far off lands [e.g., Hogwarts, Gallifrey, Oz, Rivendell, Tatooine, Dagobah, Endor...] and enjoy a practice suitable for any age, any yoga level. No experience required -- all from the comfort of our hOMe.

For the month of March, I taught from home "by donation" and through virtual yoga raised: $1,035 for The Community FoodBank of NJ and $1280 for Living Beyond Breast Cancer's: Reach and Raise.

Beginning with 4/5, I adopted a PWYC Model: Pay What You Can. I'm saying "Pay What You Can" because I would like to honor the following facts:

• This isn't an easy time for anyone.

• I want the class(es) to be accessible in every sense of the word and so, you will set the price--Pay what you can.

• Times are uncertain. Now, more than ever, a yoga practice may help bring peace of mind.

"Necessity is the mother of invention."

Hearth Yoga was born of the need to organize my yoga offerings in one place. This is my first business and I am grateful to everyone who has had a hand in shaping this journey. A very special thank you to my adventure buddy and thought partner Lászlό Szabó -- from suggesting I check out the 200 HR Yoga Teacher Training Info Session to proofreading this post...I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Let the adventure begin!

I send you peace, joy, love, light, laughter, and magic.

May the force be with you.

Tami, [a.k.a., Professor Yogini*]

*That professor who didn't make it into the original 7 books but is 1 part Trelawny/Lovegood, 1 part Mrs. Weasley, 2 parts McGonagall/Granger and clearly offered yoga as stress prevention before OWLS, and asana for a strong Quidditch practice.

P.S. For those concerned that doing yoga at hOMe requires fancy props, check this out (Spoiler Alert: It doesn't):

https://youtu.be/4IIkNAYYO9I