Autumn Needles, RYT, began practicing yoga at age 12 in order to avoid a back brace for a spinal curvature. She ended up in the brace anyway, but was hooked on yoga for its calming and centering effects, and for its integrative life philosophy. Dance had always been, and continues to be, her favored form of outward expression, but yoga began her on her more private inner journey. That yoga journey has now spanned over 30 years and has included both home practice and classroom training, purely restorative to physically challenging practices, and has encompassed many different styles and philosophies of yoga. She is a dancer, with a love for many different techniques, and has studied various forms of martial arts, Feldenkrais®, and Alexander Technique®. Living fully and physically within her body, and moving with joy and gratitude and pleasure, have been the foundation of her whole being. With her eclectic movement and yoga background, she decided to do her teacher training in Interdisciplinary® Yoga, a style that emphasizes listening to the body as teacher and draws from many traditional yoga practices, as well as from other body awareness techniques. She completed her 200-hour teacher training and certification at Nosara Yoga Institute in July 2006, is currently working towards her 500-hour certification, and is a Registered Yoga Teacher with Yoga Alliance®. She is very grateful to all of her teachers all along the way. About the intention and philosophy of Home Body Yoga, Autumn says: "Any body is a perfect body when it is fully inhabited by the being within it. Any pose is a perfect pose when you bring all of your awareness into the moment with that pose and observe it with kindness. I really want you to have a home in your body; a place to feel at ease and comfortable. Yoga is one possible framework with which to discover that ease. In class, using traditional yoga practices such as asana (physical postures), pranayama (breath control), meditation and chanting, together with conditioning movements and body awareness techniques, grounding to the earth and feeling the energy running through your energy centers, and how they connect with everything and everyone around you, you can hold that particular space in that particular moment for yourself with compassion, allowing your experience to be exactly as it is and be completely present with it. The paradox is that, in that moment, you can see and expand out into the field of possibilities of what you can become." If you would like information on classes, or if you would like to be added to the mailing list for HomeBodyYoga, please contact us.