Returning to Familiar Ground

What five years of loss, change, and unexpected grace have taught me about faith and yoga.

Do you remember the year the world shut down? Sometimes it feels both impossibly far away and as though it happened yesterday.

My yoga studio closed, my husband died, and I left my lifelong home in Georgia for the desert of Arizona. My faith was challenged in a way I wouldn’t have thought possible. I lived with doubt, questions, anger, and loneliness. My first year in Arizona didn’t really even count.

In Georgia, I taught yoga from a Christ-centered perspective. My goal was to help my Christian friends understand that they could do yoga and still maintain their spiritual journey within that Christian framework. I think I did a good job.

Then there was so much loss. We all lost things in that season.

In Arizona, I had a hard time finding a church community, finding a yoga community. I depended on my family, especially my daughters who were both here.

When Jeanetta, my younger daughter, opened a yoga studio here, I joined her in teaching classes. This beautiful eclectic group of humans became a place of community for me. I learned to teach without the Christian words. At first I wondered whether something essential had been lost. But over time I discovered that the absence of familiar language didn't mean the absence of God. Instead, I found myself trusting silence, breath, compassion, and deep listening. I learned that people approach the divine from many different places, and my work wasn't to tell them where to meet God. My work was simply to create enough space for them to listen. I think I did a good job.

It has been a year since that studio closed. A year of rest and reflection, a year of questions, growth, travel, and wondering what doors will open next. I’ve learned to waltz, two-step, and rhumba. I walk with a new bestie who lives near a local park. I play Wingspan about once a month with three precious friends. I drive 30 minutes to get downtown to a sweet friend’s yoga class about once a month. I substitute occasionally as a yoga teacher. I went to the rock climbing gym yesterday with my daughter and grandson. There is still community. It’s just a lot more spread out than before.

Then when I wasn’t looking for it, a new door opened. I was invited to teach with five other women from the Christian Yoga Association in a continuing education class designed to help Christian yoga teachers learn to integrate their faith into a yoga class. It’s been five years since I taught from this perspective and a lot of water under the bridge.

Even though I lived most of my life in an evangelical church setting, I was never very evangelical myself. It’s just not my personality. I'm an Enneagram Nine, someone who instinctively looks for common ground. I've rarely been interested in drawing hard lines. I've always been more curious about what connects us than what separates us. It also means I tend to see both sides of things, which can be annoyingly problematic at times.

So stepping back into teaching from a Christ-centered perspective carries with it a real desire to help my very dear Christian yoga teacher friends integrate their faith in a way that offers grace for those students who need room for their own doubts and questions.

Five years ago, I probably would have approached this opportunity very differently. I might have felt responsible for having the right answers. Today, I’m much more interested in making room for honest questions.

If my years in Arizona have taught me anything, it’s that faith can survive uncertainty. Sometimes it even grows there.

So I step back into this work not as the woman I was before everything changed, but as someone shaped by grief, by silence, by community in unexpected places, and by the quiet conviction that God is not afraid of our questions.

For My Christian Yoga Teacher Friends

If this course feels like a good fit for you, I'd love to have you join us. I teach the anatomy portion, several sequencing and cueing lessons, and some of the meditation content. Here is the link. If you enroll, there should be a place to let them know you came through my recommendation. I receive a commission at no additional cost to you. Thank you for supporting my teaching.

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Living Yoga at Soma Moon Wellness

I keep forgetting to tell you that I am also blogging over at Soma Moon Wellness on Substack. I’m posting the content from our Living Yoga Course.

Yoga is more than movement—it‘s a way of living, a deeper relationship with yourself, and a way to navigate the world with clarity and grace. Living Yoga is a journey into the non-asana side of yoga, where you’ll explore who you are and how you contribute—not by adding more to your to-do list, but by shifting how you engage with yourself and your life.

Instead of memorizing postures or chasing perfection, you’ll explore yoga as a path of self-study, nervous system awareness, and purposeful self-alignment. This program helps you embody yoga’s wisdom off the mat, bringing clarity, presence, and intention to the way you live, love, and lead.

I would love for you to join me there.

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Thanks for being here with me. I appreciate your time, your comments, and your love.