Catskills Yoga House

It’s my last morning teaching in the Catskills! What a sweet reunion with the land and the water, the community and the practice. Thank you to all for the joyous welcome and for bringing so much love, energy, effort and spirit to my life these last weeks.

A few spots left for class this morning! 9:30-11 AM in Chichester, NY. Come and remember your true heart of compassion, the joy of movement, the freedom of conscious breath.

536 route 214.

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Equanimity is the wisdom element that acknowledges whatever comes and goes on an emotional level is workable… has a wisdom… it holds the medicine for awakening…

we don’t have to pretend, repress or make a big deal out of it… we can simply and compassionately relate to the arising and passing of each internal state. Humor helps. Supportive friends and teachers help. The mountains in their steadiness help. Dogs with their unapologetic natures help. Kids, in my experience, are the best teachers of all!!

My last week in the Catskills! Teaching at 8:30 AM on Tuesday and 9:30 AM on Saturday, the 20th. Come on out. Let’s feel and breathe and move and laugh together!

How does the practice of yoga consider and relate to the element of water in the body? How do honor and care for the whole eco-system of body/heart/mind just as we might care for the ecosystem of a creek or river?

The AWSMP is sponsoring so many cool events this summer to help us wake up to and relate more thoughtfully to the waters that support, nourish and move us in our daily lives here in the Catskill Mountains. River Yoga class I sone of those events! The second and last installment of the class is happening tomorrow July 13th at 4:00. It involves presence with the creek and a beautiful, easeful practice in Catskills Yoga Studio in Chichester. Spread the word and come on out! Register here!
https://www.cceevents.org/e/river-yoga-awc2024

Rest is more than a stolen pleasure that we get to sn**ch here and there. It is a state of being that we can sense into, that can inform all that we do, think and say. It is our birthright. Our inner treasure. It is always here and available, this quiet ease in the midst of turbulence and wild weather. Let's cultivate it together!

I am teaching in person for two more Saturdays and one more Tuesday! Both Saturdays have just a few spots available. If you're planning to come - and I so hope you do! - please write me to sign up or if you have any questions!

All class at 536 Route 214 in Chichester.

Saturdays, July 13th and 20th from 9:30-11
Tuesday, July 16th from 8:30-9:40
Saturday, July 13th River Yoga (more on that in another post. :))

So happy to be back home in the studio! Today was a gorgeous packed room with strong breath, strong presence, strong sweat, strong effort. Each person opening, expanding and feeling into the truth that freedom is a choice we make from within. And, as Iyengar writes, it is a choice we make again and again in tiny ways.

Every time we choose to hold our seat in the midst of challenge… to pause rather than react in our habitual, conditioned ways… we strengthen the seed of liberation within us and we allow for the liberation of others as well.

Come on out to the studio for two more weeks of classes and inspire yourself… remember your goodness and your aspiration… and open that beautiful heart and body for the liberation of all beings!

Saturdays, July 13 and 20 from 9:30-11 ( open level vinyasa)

Monday, July 8 from 10-11:30 (river yoga with a restorative, water theme)

Tuesdays, July 9 and 16 from 8:30-9:40 (movement and meditation)

Write me here to register!

6 AM creek dunk with tired eyes. Oh, Lordy, it’s good to be reunited with these waters after a 10.5 hour drive and many months away.

Practice in the studio tomorrow in Chichester! Come and move and sweat and release and welcome all the feelings of summer connection and abundance! You are not alone. It’s good to remember together.

Saturday, June 22 from 9:30-11 AM
$25

Drop in or write me to let me know you’re coming.

536 route 214, Chichester, NY

Hey, Everyone! I'll be teaching for five weeks in the Catskills! Come take class at the old studio, now called Catskills Yoga Studio. I can't wait to move and breathe and rest and connect! First class in less than a week.

Saturdays: June 22, June 29, July 6, July 13 and July 20
9:30-11

Tuesdays: July 2, July 9, and July 16

Write me for more details and to sign up... classes are over half full. xoxoxo

I wrote a tribute to the good dads out there... my dad, foremost among them! Khaki pants and predictable haircuts and a whole lotta love! Check it out here and please pass along if it moves you!

Like a Patch of Green Grass On the goodness of fathers who show up, solid and true

It’s new moon yoga nidra time! Thursday night 8-9 pm est.

Get settled into your cozy nest, tune in and then let go. When we practice conscious est - letting our awareness - that wise, witnessing nature in us - effort for us we allow healing of looooooong standing patterns and old wounds. We allow medicine to to tend to our weary spirits. We remember who we are in the depths of ourselves. Grace holds us and replenishes us. That’s right, we recollect. We are Whole and beloved, just as we are!

Write me for zoom details or if you’re in Fort Wayne, Indiana, come in person! $5-$25 sliding scale.

Notes from the Heartland this week celebrates Walt Whitman's 205th birthday! Please read, share widely, and subscribe to my weekly letters of love, inspiration, exploration and encouragement. They're available for all, but this is one way I make my living and I would be so honored and grateful if you would consider becoming a paid subscriber. THANK YOU!!

Take My Hand On Walt Whitman's birthday, the road before us, and the call of the soul

Catskills, 2019… throwing down some with my brother and sister… and I’ll be helping you do the same in June and July!

Join me for 4 Saturday classes and 3 Tuesday classes in Chichester, NY at my old studio. I’m also offering in person private classes and coaching sessions! Can’t wait to see you all!!!

June 29, July 6, July 13, and July 20 from 9:30-11 AM. $25

July 2, July 9 and July 16 from 8:30-9:35 AM. $25

Reserve your spot here or by writing me at [email protected]

It has been a tough week here in the heartland. My recent substack -Notes from the Heartland - covers it: On sickness and health and enduring/trusting the relentless hours that slip and slide to and have the potential to open us more to grace.

Please read and share and donate if you are called! Thank you to all of you who already subscribe and support my work... it means SO much!

https://open.substack.com/pub/sarabeck/p/trust-the-hours?r=1fi74&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

Mutual delight is a glue that holds us together. Thanks to dear friend and amazing writer for teaching me that.

I’m Tuning into the small, good things this Mother’s Day. Thanks to freddi for making me a mom and breaking my heart open to all that is possible in this life. Thanks to my mom for modeling the delight of motherhood. May all the mothers know we are enough. May we celebrate the physical, spiritual and earth mothers who gave and give us life. May we turn towards the small, good things of this life with love and appreciation, knowing that that is enough!

Read more on delight and mothering on this week’s substack Notes from the Heartland! (Sarabeck.substack.com. )

Thanks to all you subscribers out there!! 💚💚💚

This week's Notes from the Heartland newsletter. On loving or not loving your face, beauty routines, youth-enhancing interventions, being called old-looking by your child, and staying true to living a whole-hearted life that doesn't hide, mask, deny or repress.... please check it out, pass it on, and donate if you're inspired!

Don't Erase those Smile Lines On beauty interventions, aging faces, and coming to terms with your inner teenager

How regularly do you invite a moment (or 30) of rest into your day?

What feels restful to you?

What thoughts, habits, daily life activities or concepts get in the way of intentionally pausing?

Who or what taught you how to rest (if you were lucky enough to have that modeled!!)?

Yoga nidra - the yoga of sleep - the coherence and alignment that comes from intentional rest - is one incredible practice that invites rest into our lives. It works like a medicine, a balm, that finds the parts of us that need opening, softening and healing.

This was the nest I created for myself for 25 minutes. It was transformative in the kindest ways.

Tonight! April 24th. 8-9 pm est. join me online as I offer this powerful rest practice in service of your highest good and deepest healing.

Write me for details and the link… or the recording!

What’s your relationship to balance? Do you believe it exists? Are you often striving for it? Gripping on it (toes, jaw, brow!) Do you often feel out of balance? What does your body experience when you feel ‘balanced’ or ‘unbalanced’?

We all have big stories about what this means and what it SHOULD mean… But are we aware of these stories? And how they operate in us and drive us towards unconscious expectations, actions and reactions?

Yesterday’s full moon lunar eclipse might have agitated into the open these stories about balance, justice, rightness, and stability. How are you feeling?! What is coming up?

I’m offering my full moon yoga nidra tonight (Tuesday) as a medicine in service to the holiness of rest, the sacredness of silence. Without a conscious practice of turning inward, stillness and rest, we cannot wake up to the stories that drive us. Rest, stillness and a willing open heart allow us to see what is at work in us and allow us to choose to remember who we are in our infinite nature. In this state, we get to choose joy, warmth, flexibility and freedom over the old stories that have kept us frozen, gripping and stuck.

Online practice 8-9 pm est. $5-$25 donation. Write me for the link or the recording.

Loving you in my in and out of toppling over and on the way to somewhere state,
Sara

My substack is here!

Notes from the Heartland is a weekly newsletter that draws on my everyday experience to explore the mystical in the mundane, the joy in the sorrow, the sacred in the everyday tedium of life and living in this human body.

With story, humor, self-inquiry and practice techniques offered, I I hope it serves as encouragement and inspiration on your path of liberation, transformation and presence. Please check it out! Subscribe and share widely! 💚💚💚

Happy Spring! I’m breathing in and out, touching the earth, the oak outside my window, my own skin… and doing all I know to do to stay here. To not abandon this moment and myself in it.

We don’t have to accomplish anything. Or be/do complicated things. Simple actions, many times. Being with all the tender places. Soooo many tender places in myself! Fragile blooms coming through the earth as well as wounds still healing, still open.

How are you doing, staying awake and loving within it all? How are you doing keeping it simple?

Let me know. And come see me! A few openings still in my Catskills classes. March 30th (9:30-11) and April 2nd (8:30-9:35). Write me here or at [email protected] to sign up.

With love and the illumination of the sun,
Sara

Hello from the heartland! It’s old shaggy-head carrot-top here after a winter-spring cold plunge - so freezing and so good! - letting you all know I’ll be back in the Catskills to teach in the old studio on March 30 and April 2.

These are hard times. These are letting go times. These are deep awareness times. We are being called to stay connected to our hearts, to tenderness, to fierce and loving honesty. To stay awake! Connecting with each other in breath, movement, and vulnerable open-heartedness is deep medicine. I can’t wait to share in it with you!

Write me here or at info@catskillsyoga to sign up for class or to schedule a private. Both classes held in Chichester, ny.

Details:
March 30: 9:30-11 ($25)
April 2: 8:30-9:35 ($25)
Classes also offered online and will be recorded.

Well, I got a serious haircut. I’m sliding around in many emotions and perspectives. So, in this week’s Notes from the Heartland, I wrote about that, change, shock, desire, wim wenders’ new movie, and the joy that is here always, in the now.

Want to subscribe? Let me know!! Or stay tuned for my new substack coming out soon!

Plus, I’m teaching in the Catskills!!! March 30th and April 2nd! Write me to sign up!

Just back from Florida! In my latest newsletter ‘Notes from the Heartland’ I write about the preciousness of life. Sudden close brushes with death. Grief and awe in a single breath. Crying and laughing from the deep feeling-ness of it all. Not adding suffering to the pain of existence. Crying throughout a 90 minute asana practice. The tender imperfect attempts to be with impermanence. How to stay with it, humble, honest and connected to what is here, breath by breath.

Not on my newsletter and want to be? Write me here!

With love and gratitude…

Freddi’s most recent Valentine to himself. 😂🥰😂

Full moon in Leo today invites us to shine! In all our awesomeness!

To clear out what muddies, blurs, and hides that shine so that we can BE in the world as our awesome radiant selves. Rooted in love. Unapologetically bright and clear as the sun.

Yoga nidra on the full moon tonight! Thursday! 8-9 pm EST

together, we rest and in that intentional egoic accomplishing/proving/striving self kind of a rest rest we dissolve those clouds that hide our light and renew ourselves in the illumination of divine glowing source. Come and remember your awesomeness!

$5-25 sliding scale donation. Recording available. Write me for details. 💚💚💚

My sis and I have been best friends for life and on the yoga path as devoted seekers and students and teachers for decades. We offered our first weekend retreat in 2019 and it was so sweet to be in the energy of yoga together with so many amazing women. The pandemic and unexpected life challenges derailed our desire to make it an annual offering, so five years later we’re reuniting in a retreat offering. We can’t wait to share our love with you!

When: April 5-7

What: A nourishing, restorative, uplifting yoga and meditation retreat for women

Where: .space in beautiful Gardiner, NY

Includes: yoga, meditation, yoga nidra, nature, nourishing food, hot tub, sauna, solitude, connection, play and so much more!

How to sign up: write me here or at [email protected]

Early bird pricing ends Jan 31.

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My sister and I are thrilled to be offering our second yoga retreat for women together!

We invite you to gather with us in the beautiful Shawangunk Mountains just north of NYC at the amazing .space for a weekend of yoga, restoration, meditation, yoga nidra, nature, self-inquiry, nourishing food, hot tubbing and sauna - ing, and deep connection.

The practice of yoga helps us remember our true nature and return to a state of clarity, fluidity and restful awareness that is always present but sometimes (okay, a lot of times! :) ) obscured. A weekend of these practices is an amazing gift to give to yourself! A true game changer in how we relate to ourselves, to others, and to this very moment.

We'd love to have you! Please write here or at [email protected] with questions or to sign up.

Happy new moon! It’s time for yoga nidra tonight! Dreaming deeply, resting from striving and opening into a bigger, deeper vision.

It’s a potent time… a time that invites us to commit to our deepest, truest calling from a place of devotion… for the benefit of all.. and to begin sustainable action towards that calling in concrete, small, practical ways.

What are you willing to commit to with your whole, tender heart?

What skills do you need to develop, what support people do you need, what resources would help for you to set forth on this soul’s path?

Speak into the center of your heart! In that place beyond doubt, this calling is already realized!

*Yoga nidra rest meditation on Jan 11th from 8-9 PM est

*$5-$25 sliding scale donation

*Recording available

*write me for the zoom link

All are welcome!!

2023 tenderized many of us into deeply challenging and beautiful states of softness, grief, humility and openness.

Not easy! And also… thank you, Life! Thank you while I’m on the ground with my head bent toward the earth. Sometimes laughing and sometimes crying and sometimes just sorta neutral.
And thank you while I’m leaping, teaching, making dinner, tucking my son into bed, feeling bored, feeling annoyed, feeling alive, feeling pretty, feeling blah, and feeling all of it at once!!!

Thank you Because as we open into 2024 there is, for me and for many of us, a heightened awareness of just this moment and its precious existence. The small delights, intimate and in-the-moment blessings, and the liberating truth that life is not as solid as we believed, and therefore there is SO MUCH more space to move, play, feel, create, and love. Just as we are. In this very moment. Which is fresh and has never been lived before.

I mean… to be fully awake!! It’s a lot to hold and also the possibilities!! Wow.

So, may we keep waking up into greater resilience and capacity. May we be honest and clear seeing and loving in this seeing. May we be open to this moment as one that is fresh. May we know that we are not separate and solid, a story that is already written. May we recognize emergence! May we feel and see our interdependence in thought, word and deed. May we laugh and feel into this moment just as it is.. with body, heart and mind.. with the curiosity and the clear experiencing insight of any beginner. May this fresh, restful, awake presence give rise to peace.

With much love from my family and me… and the belief that making and wearing fancy, silly hats might be the way toward peace in this very moment, I offer new year’s blessings to us all!!

A moment of loving reminder from the Fort Wayne, IN MLK bridge on an otherwise very bleak, blah, cold day here in the Midwest.

I love how love does that… turns up everywhere and often in places and from people we least expect or have been indifferent towards.

Love never stops loving. That is its nature.

How can we build capacity in our bodies for that level of presence and connection?

Small moments of presence and practice, again and again.

I’m offering yoga nidra tonight on this expansive new moon. Yoga nidra is a meditation practice that wakes us up to the presence of this loving witness… the awareness that reminds us that we have a body… but we are not our bodies. We have a mind with thoughts… but we are not our minds or thoughts.

This loving spaciousness is what can hold all the tough stuff. As we expand into it, otherwise painful construction is eased, opened and loved on.

As loving awareness holds us we feel its power in us, its constancy, its re-membering us back to our true, divine and liberated nature.

Truly, it must be experienced to be known. Language can never do these practices justice!

So please join me tonight -Tuesday- from 8-9 pm est for a guided rest meditation practice and we can feel into what is here together!

Please write here for the link!

I love the joy of gathering in ritual, practice, movement, self inquiry, laughter and breath. Thank you to all who came for classes in the Catskills! The studio was full and alive with love, warmth, and so much light, and freddi and I had an incredible time of connection with family and dear, soul tribe friends.

And thank you to all who continue to practice online with me, who show up to support yourself, each other and me. In sangha - community - we are held!

All are welcome in my classes! Sunday and Tuesday mornings plus bi-monthly yoga nidra offerings. And if you’re not on my ‘notes from the heartland’ newsletter list and want to be, let me know!
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Gratitude arises without striving when we tune into and consciously receive moments of delight. Delight-spotting and absorbing is a muscle we develop with time and practice. And when we do, the scales tip from living mostly in a painful clench of despair into living from the soft open palm of joy-receiving.

My classes at my home studio in Chichester have included many many many layered, loving moments of delight. I am so grateful for the way we all hold each other in movement, breath and presence.

I’m teaching one more class while I’m here! Saturday morning, 9:30-11 AM. There are still a few slots left. I’d love to see you! Write me to register or just come … we’ll make room!

New Moon! A sky that is open, a hovering space, a return, a refresh, an emptiness, a start again, a space between breaths, a pause.

Yoga Nidra is a practice that allows us to fully embody the pause, the in-between. In the weightless, timeless bliss we are held in infinite Love.

Our brains, nervous systems and bodies literally shift, open, rearrange, heal, settle, quiet, and exhale.

Honor this new moon moment and practice by joining me tonight online. 8-9 pm est. $5-$25 sliding scale.

A cozy, quiet setting preferred… a willingness to receive and rest all that is required!

Write here for zoom details. Or [email protected].

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