This is what yoga is about: feeling and bleeding radiance into our very essence.

I recently returned from a weeks get away to my beloved San Francisco. I was introduced to this city as a college senior when my long term boyfriend at the time had moved there.

Idealization via romantic visits aside, I became obsessed with all that San Francisco had to offer, especially for someone in the yoga world.

Even after heartbreak cut ties to the place, I continued to be drawn there after college to start my own life. Painful as it was, I felt no regret. Unpleasant feelings became fuel, drawing my awareness to a place of intention, transformation and unarmored growth.

With every San Francisco visit, I have felt an inexplicable sense of joy, inspiration, liberation and home. Despite the growing pains I experienced when I first moved there, I had love in my heart and continued forward. I was practicing yoga and I don’t only mean the physical asana.

I felt radiant, clear and light. The definition of peace. All in a place I associated with emotional hardship.

My last day in that city, I took yoga classes with two teachers with whom I would frequently practice. For the first time in a while, I cried in Shavasana.

I was reminded of how much pain and difficulty I had faced. Simultaneously, I remembered how much love I can still hold in my heart.  Let love and light shine through in every practice. It will infiltrate the things that seem most mundane in everyday life.

And if we allow it, it can radiate off of the mat and shine on our relationships.

Suzie Blackman is from Bethesda, MD she played varsity field hockey, volleyball and gymnastics. In her time outside of studying and athletics, Suzie also took part in a preprofessional dance company, mostly focusing on modern, lyrical, hip-hop, and African  dance genres.

Having dreamt of a career in clinical psychology or psychiatric social work, and having an extensive background in athletics training and in dance, Suzie became intrigued by pursuing a career that would combine her desire to improve our mental, emotional, and physical well being, both individually and as a collective, a community, a kula. What better way to combine interests and make tangible differences than to become a personal trainer and a yoga teacher.

Join Suzie in an elevating, joy filled, detoxifying practice that will ultimately help you to actualize and achieve your full potential: a still and stable mind, and an expansive, receptive and strong, loving heart.

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Editor: Olga Feingold

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