Hello beautiful souls!!
First, I want to say THANK YOU. Thank you for joining me for such a peaceful, breathtaking yoga practice outdoors with our friends at Koteewi Stable & Trails! To practice yoga outdoors, and absorb the sun against our skin, is perfect as is, but then you add in the cool morning breezes, the birds singing, trees begin to sway, clouds roll in and out framing the stables, the smell of leather and fresh dew on the grass, not a car sound in the distance, only a few warm neighs and nickers from our horse friends nearby! It is pure BLISS!! Those of us who've been around horses, ridden them, and cared for them, know the magic they possess. Magic is the best word I can think of to describe their incredible quality of strength, loyalty, compassion, goofiness, serenity, and the unlocking of the soul they do when I'm around them. My heart rate just begins to lower, and everything heavy in life just seems to melt away the moment my hand strokes a horse's neck. Nothing else seems to matter. The same energy is embodied when I’m on my mat, whether in an inviting studio or the mat kisses grass. So today, the marriage of the two, horses + yoga…. Nothing else will matter! We will be truly present!! Absorbing the magic surrounding us! The moment I captured this photo below, I knew the magic had rolled in to welcome us! ☀️
My daughter and I have been riding at Koteewi for maybe 2-3 years now, right when the world turned back on after Covid. We delight in the early morning quiet, riding our friends through beautiful trails in the forest nearby, adding in laughter when our friends constantly reach for snacks of vegetation, knowing they're not supposed to, thinking they can convince us each time for just one more bite. We pull their massive heads and necks back through center to continue on, lending a loving pat on the side of the neck to reassure them we love them. The horses at Koteewi are all incredibly beautiful, gentle, some mischievous in the best way, some very calm, and we adore this stable!
When a new manager came on board, she noticed my recent likes and heart taps on instagram and facebook, and peered over to my profile, seeing that I was a yoga instructor. I had been yearning to contact Koteewi for summer & fall outdoor yoga classes for a year, so when Jenni sent a message asking if I'd be interested in yoga at the stable, I responded in 1.3 seconds with an enormous YES!!! I knew this sacred land, and these sacred animals would be the perfect hosts for our somatic, healing-focused class. And so here we are today!
Saturday, August 17 at 9:00 am, it was sunny, with beautiful clouds rolling in, bright blue sky, ad 72 degrees! Absolutely perfect! It had rained the morning before, sending a bit of nerves my way, crossing my fingers we wouldn't have to reschedule. But it held off, and even the soil beneath my feet had dried right in time! My daughter asked a week before if she could come too, one more chance to play with the horses, and wrangle her new friends while I did my thing. She is 17, and has been volunteering on Sundays at the stable, so she now knows every horse very well. Of course I said yes! She walked in to do her thing, and I laid down my mat in the dewy pasture, captured the sunrise in a few photos, and anxiously awaited for friends to arrive, old and new!
One by one fellow yogis arrived, big squeezes for old friends, fellow instructors, friends I didn't remember their name but we were recently at a sound bath together, and brand new friends! All 16 of us began to settle into our mats. Only one new friend had never practiced yoga before, but I assured Jim that we would be moving very slowly and intentionally for our hour together, and he did beautifully!
We connected to the body, to our breath, delighting in the breeze against the skin, the sun on our face, let go of everything heavy we were carrying, and letting that roll off our back, no longer needed for this beautiful hour we have taken for ourselves. We regulated our breathing with Nadi Shodhana, Alternate Nostril breath work, expanding the lungs, calming the heart rate and blood pressure. We began to gently open up the body, warming it up for bigger movements to prevent and pain or pinching in later postures. We self-healed with Reiki, sending healing energy to the mind, quieting the busyness and constant chatter in the mind. We shed our to do lists, sent them back into the earth to be refined for something better. We became present with our body, because the mind can quickly travel to the past, ruminating over things that have been, and the mind can travel to the future with worry, so we calmed this down, and stayed present with the breath and with our body.
We moved into our standing poses, reaching our crowns to the sky, our feet firmly connected to the earth, her soil, and all of her living beings. We are never separate. We created space and time for balance, flexibility, and strength. It was so peaceful, the warm air washing over us, birds song, and the occasional neigh and nicker from our friends who were getting saddled up for their trail rides soon after our practice. I created an intentional playlist of mostly Holloway, Garth Stevenson, and my current favorite St. Finnikin. I didn't want to completely drown out the surrounding sounds of nature and our majestic friends, but it is a working stable, and trail rides were scheduled, so just a few voices were around, and I think the music added a healing ambience to our practice, with notes of cello, hums, vocalizations, and drums. A perfect little addition for those of us whose minds tend to wander more in silence. The music can help us stay a bit more present.
Listen to the Yoga @Koteewi playlist here if you'd like! I've been listening to it everywhere, in the car, while writing, taking walks, everywhere! It will keep you calm for sure!
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Rvs7dQySZI67bt7gXDXNw?si=bMoxyQjmT9a36qGlxw9fsA&pi=u-4Pyh_va6Sfmv
As we began to close our practice, we made time for our somatic work, as in all my classes, moving from a crown massage, to a temple and jaw massage, neck brush strokes, clavicle taps, sternum taps, bee breath humming, shoulder and arm squeezes, and a few arm sways to stimulate our vagus nerve at the base of the brain to communicate that the body is now safe, it is not under threat, so we do not need the body to exist in a stress state of fight, flight, or freeze. We can actually tell the brain to send signals to the body to move it into a state of calm, so we can move fluidly between states when they are appropriately needed in our life. Both are, but we do not want to become stuck in one state for too long and cause harm and lasting trauma. We learned to shed the armor life has created, the layers melted away, and we came back home, to our purest selves. In this silence, our horse friend, Buttercup began to happily nicker at us, sending us love! It was so perfect, and made me smile so big! We cooled down, seated on our mats, eventually finding our peak pose: Savasana! Buttercup looked concerned as we all began to lie down flat, she kept her gaze upon us as we began to move again. She was very much connected to us, her kind soul radiating from her gaze. She nickered once more as we rose into a final seated position. Sweet girl!!
A beautiful surprise happened next! I knew Max, a gorgeous Foxtrotter + Irish Cob horse, would be the one we would all get to pet, stroke, and love on after our practice. What I didn't know, was that my daughter would be the one to lead him out to us in our pasture! It was another incredible moment as I connected not only with this tranquil land, the beautiful horses, but with my own daughter, and our love for this amazing planet and her abundant life. What a gift! I smiled so big as she walked him toward us! I refrained from crying, shocking, just simply smiled, with so much gratitude in my heart for this healing time together with so many beautiful souls, human and equine. What an honor it was to hold this healing space.
We all loved big time on Max, sharing stories of Max, and Buttercup who was nearby, neck strokes, nose strokes, and gratitude for our yoga practice at Koteewi! We shared bits of our lives, connected to one another, and to our beaituful maned friends, and laughed with grateful hearts. The stable cat, Taylor Swift, even ventured onto a mat! A little cat yoga for us! Many had never known Koteewi was there! So hopefully we brought some love to both yoga outdoors, and to the horses at Koteewi!
This practice was a donation event, I donated my time as an instructor, and every penny raised went straight to Koteewi, the stable, the horses' care, and to Ben's Ranch, who operates Koteewi, a 501c3 charitable foundation that provides life-changing care, and opportunities working at stables, on ranches, and on farms, to help young adults thrive while living with mental health challenges. We raised nearly $400 for Ben's Ranch and Koteewi Stable & Trails! Amazing!! Thank you so much, you darling souls!!
Read more about booking a trail ride with Koteewi's horses here! Especially as Fall comes, the trails and changing tree leaves will be beautiful!
Read more about the mission of Ben's Ranch here!
THANK YOU again, beautiful souls for joining me for your practice!! Everyone loved it so much that we've already booked our next class!
Mark your calendars for Saturday, September 14 @ 9:00am!! It will be cooler, and hopefully some leaves will be changing colors for us! I'll see you on your mat soon!!
