I teach yoga, meditation, and Ayurveda as awareness practices, paths of inquiry, that lead to greater sensitivity, tolerance, understanding, and transformation. This approach is informed by forty years’ of practice and study, synthesizing my professional training in psychology, movement, and health science with these wisdom practices. My teaching is also influenced by my study and participation in racial, social, and environmental justice.
These practices involve deep listening—attuning to sensations, thoughts, feelings, ancestral, and cultural bias. Our body holds layers of habitual patterning and programming, which we experience as feelings of contraction and tension. When we listen deeply to the body, we expand our capacity to notice, release, and re-pattern. Then we can allow the arising and subsiding of moment-to-moment experience to be a pathway to the subtle energy flow and awareness, which is the ground of being, within and around us, and the essential center of our personal and collective universe. This has powerful implications for personal and global healing.
Our layers of programming and tension are often deep-seated, even chronic, and their release takes time and a commitment to consciously observe and change patterns; to pause from constant stimulation. Through the legacy of inspired texts, particularly those of nondual Shaiva Tantra, we are supported and reminded the deepest part of ourselves is always accessible and available in the moment, and that regular practice over the long term will support subtle and nuanced change. Practice will build and refine a capacity for resilience. Our willingness to pause and observe ourselves is the heart of inner work and transformation. This inner healing work is our birthright and allows aging to be a continual process of growth and adventure. Transforming our world requires that each of us transform ourselves.
I have been a certified Iyengar teacher and inspired by the Anusara method, having completed study and internships under Patricia Walden, Peentz Dubble, Deb Neubauer, and John Friend. I continue ongoing study in yoga, somatic, and body mind centering with Donna Farhi, Tias Little, Doug Keller, and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen; in Shaiva tantra meditation with Christopher Wallis and Sally Kempton; and in the intersection of racial/social justice and spirituality with rev angel kyodo williams. I have studied and continue ongoing Ayurveda education with Kumudini Shoba.
I currently live in Seattle, where I teach online classes, intensives, and regularly see clients for one-on-one consultations, online and in-person. For seventeen years, I was the steward of The Yoga Lodge, a teaching and retreat destination on Whidbey Island.
The mat is a place for me to practice how I can be kind, curious, and compassionate with myself. Wendy teaches me this and how to (always) listen, in each moment, to what is there for me. As someone who cares for others in my profession, I find that it’s a profound gift to have Wendy support me in coming back to myself.
Anastasia Brencick, Anacortes, WA – massage therapist, teacher