Teacher Spotlight: Clare Kelley

Teacher Spotlight - Clare Kelley!

We love everything Clare brings to Flow! Her passion for experimentation, knowledge, and experience is palpable and contagious. Thanks for your dedication to your craft - you are one of a kind! <3

What inspires you to practice at Flow?

The community. When I look at my life, I'm astonished by the richness and support of the amazing people around us.

What is your current practice like?

Innovation. I went through a traumatic brain injury from an environmental poisoning, which turned me into what's known as neuroatypical -- my brain works fundamentally different from most people. Going through neurocognitive rehab opened a flood of learning that the mind-body connection is very literal. So I include a lot of somatic work and things that challenge my brain and body to adapt to new movement patterns.

What is a typical day like for you, and how does practice fit into your daily routine?

Ha! I don't have typical days; they vary radically from day to day. This is what today looked like: I woke up at 5:45 to meditate before I taught a 7 AM class. I came home and had private clients. Sometimes I see clients from my home studio, sometimes at a studio, and lots of time out in the woods -- I'm also a forest therapy guide and a health and wellness educator. I worked on my side project -- creating a massive coalition between several federal agencies, medical groups, non-profits, community organizations, researchers, and policymakers to make nature therapy a regular part of the public health system prescribed by doctors. (You know you live in DC when that's your side project ;) ). I filmed a video for the social media project I'm working on for progressive movement education. Tonight I'll teach another class and then try to sneak over to Mimi's class. Then I'll go home and paint watercolors with my cats. I hope I'm making teaching look as incredibly unglamorous as it is. Don't let the cat leggings fool you.

I fit practice wherever I can. What's most important to me is that throughout the day, I'm moving, never static for very long. I sit on the floor and don't use my hands to get up, which gets my legs strong. Try a no-hands day sometime -- it's illuminating. I have yoga/fitness props all over my apartment so I can play with new moves when they pop in my head. I When I need a break from work, I go do some pull-ups or flip upside down on my hanging bar. I walk everywhere. I love using my body as a laboratory.

As important to me as my yoga practice is my nature connection practice -- which is just another form of yoga, union. Every day I sit with nature for at least 20 minutes, just soaking in the sensory experience of this world that reminds me I belong to it.

What are some of your favorite things to do/places to go, pre- and post practice?

I have a TreeFF in Dumbarton Oaks Parks Conservancy, the woods in Georgetown that connect to Rock Creek. It's my happy place. Sometimes I'll go and sit on the roots of the big tulip tree in Logan Circle. I know I should put something here about mindful eating and smickety smackety, but a lot of times I dash into CVS to snag a Larabar to get some blood sugar. Meh, we can't all be perfect wellness fairies all the time.

Who are some of your most influential teachers?

That list would go on forever! My primary teacher is Greg Marzullo, whom I apprentice with -- we talk a few times a month. He's has taught me nothing about asana and everything about yoga. Other influential teachers in no particular order: Trina Altman, Jenni Rawlings, Carol Collins, Alicia Moyer, Caroline Weaver, Christina Sell, Ariele Foster, Cory Bryan, Tim Feldman, Krista Shirley, Kevin Waldorf-Cruz, Mariska Breland -- there's so many more. What makes me an educator is that I'm a voracious learner.

What is something the Flow community may not know about you?

I moved to DC to work in the photo archives of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Oh, and I spent a big chunk of my childhood in Ireland, which is why sometimes I have a bit of an accent.

Instructor Spotlight: Alicia Moyer

Alicia Moyer has been teaching yoga at Flow since 2015. Join Alicia on the mat on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1230 for a creative vinyasa flow! 

Get to know Alicia! 

How did you come to your yoga practice?  

I started yoga in 1998 in Austin, TX at a local community center. The class cost $7 and the teacher had taught himself the poses from Iyengar's Light on Yoga. He was incredible and I will be forever indebted to him for opening the door to this path for my life. At the time I was very stiff from running and riding my bike a lot and I try to remember the feeling of not being able to touch the floor in a forward bend when I work with newer students. The world opened up for me when I discovered vinyasa flow after years of hatha and Bikram and now I find creative flow sequencing to be one of the most nourishing ways to awaken and liberate the body and mind. 

What are your favorite asanas? 

Two of my favorite poses have always been Utthita Parsvakonasana and Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana. They were poses I could do from the start but I find them endlessly refinable and love all of the variations you can play with when teaching a group class.

What is your favorite music to listen to while you practice?

Lately at home I have just been practicing to a recording of Nina Rao chanting the Hanuman Chalisa. It's really lovely and repetitive and therefore quite meditative. In my group classes I play music mainly to keep myself on track with the time since we usually only have 60 or 75 minutes together! There was a time when I used to spend hours creating playlists but now I kind of like the music to be more in the background just keeping a little beat to keep the energy lifted or to signal that it's time to ground down. 

Anything else you'd like to share with the Flow community? 

I am so honored and grateful to be a part of the 300-hour Advanced Teacher Training at Flow beginning this fall. Working with teachers is one of my greatest joys and I am so excited about the unique program we have put together for the participants. Flow has some of the most dedicated yoga practitioners in the city and I am humbled to pass down the teachings to such amazing students. 

Learn more about Flow's 300 Hour Teacher Training here.  

Instructor Highlight: Lisa Marie Thalhammer

Yoga has transformed my life in so many ways. The practice has given me the skills to heal my concussion, beat depression and let go of unhealthy relationships. Currently, I feel more expressive with my movements and more comfortable in my body than ever before. I’m now capable of objectively observing negative thoughts and processing them using the tools of meditation, mindfulness and asana. I feel my spirit uplifted through the practice of yoga and when I’m on my mat I use that time to give gratitude. 

As a visual artist who is most known for painting rainbow color networks and portraits of empowered humans, recently I received a 2017 D.C. Commission on the Arts and Humanities Fellowship. My drawings can be seen at Flow’s neighboring art gallery, Transformer, located at 1404 P Street. Additionally, my murals can be seen in multiple locations around the district including Local 16 roof bar and 926 N St rear NW (Blagden Alley). You can check out my art online at lisamariestudio.com

As an artist, I like to bring creativity and interesting uplifting music to my yoga classes. We touch upon the fundamentals of meditation and yoga theory, in addition to moving through a well rounded physical asana practice. In my classes you’ll always have a moment to set an intention for your practice and give thanks for the day while also moving through a dynamic physical practice. 

Lisa Marie Thalhammer at the 2017 Capital Pride Parade standing in Star Pose in front of her LOVE artwork on a vintage VW truck.

The Mind Body Connection

Flow asked Angela Cerkevich, a Doctor of Psychology and a long time yoga teacher at Flow some questions about the mind body connection and some self-care tips.  Check out her answers below!

What is something about the mind body connection that you find helpful to your student's experiences?

We can't do two things at one time. So when we are feeling into our bodies, thinking subsides. This means that the body is an infinite resource and a direct conduit to what IS. This is the great thing about the early stages of an asana practice: it feels great because we get a break from the bouncing around of the mind. Unfortunately, we become habituated to the asana and unless we are willing to dive into more subtle sensations and link the breath with the movement, we may eventually find ourselves disappointed in our asana practice because it doesn't feel as revolutionary as it first did. The trick is to return to feeling and sensation again and again and again. The sensation of the eyes, the feeling of the tongue, the sensation of the webbing of the toes. The mind is a time traveler, but the body exists only in the present. Eventually, we expand our capacity to experience thinking and sensing at the same time, but we are no longer engaging in the thinking as much because we are abiding in what IS. To sum: when in doubt, feel and feel and feel again. Feeling into the sensations of the body, changes patterns in the brain and results in greater ease, calm, and increased awareness of both the more subtle emotions and thought patterns and the more easily felt gross sensations of the body.  

What are some of your favorite self care tips?

Variety. I don't get to rigid about a particular routine or practice. Sometimes that means I go to a spin class, other times that means I go for a walk in the woods and other times that means laying on the couch with my cats. Having flexibility and variety in my self care means I'm more likely to be really present enough to enjoy it. 

What is your one piece of advice for folks for folks who are seeking a deeper connection to understand themselves?

There is nothing to fix. There is only recognizing what you already are. There is only recognizing what already IS. There is no need to "cultivate" more gratitude or to practice a particular niayama to purify. Gratitude is already present. Just like loving-kindness, peace, and open-ness, gratitude is what we already are made of. We just misperceive that something is wrong and that we need to be better, fix ourselves, or do something  different like have more gratitude to be happy. This is a great problem with practices: having a practice that we are attached to may cause us to forget that we are actually already complete and that there is nothing about us that needs fixing. Similarly, we don't need to purify to experience our perfection. Cleansing practices may assist in the process of recognizing our true nature,  but they are not a magic bullet; they are not guaranteed. All practices work sometimes and maybe they even work for years, but they don't work all the time and because the practices of niyamas or asana or japa don't work all the time it's even more important that we don't rely on them.  The only thing we can really know is our perfection in this moment and that particular form of  KNOWING is a felt sense rather than a thinking process. As for practices, if they bring you joy, enhance your life, give you hope, change your mood, then there is no reason not to do them either. Just remember the practices a have a purpose and once that purpose is met, there is no longer a need for them.

Meet Angela on the mat Mondays for Hatha Yoga at 6pm and Yoga Nidra at 715.