C A R Y L U N A

I utilize the yoga practice, somatic meditation, daily journaling, and both language- and sound-based modes of creation to expand my awareness of myself in the world, and hold as a mutable truth (while claiming zero authority on the truth) that each day we collaboratively make the world. Using the preternaturally wise words of Grace Lee Boggs “transform yourself to transform the world” as point of departure and return, I work to embody my trust in the possibility of a world wherein everyone gets what they need, lives long and prospers, and counts all of life in the spirality of time as one’s kith and kin.

I have endless gratitude for these practices and all of the teachers I’ve been fortunate to study with along the way. Since taking my first class as an aging teen in the library of my high school, the various lineages of these practices and the currents of my life have lead me to the Shadow School of Yoga, to which I am humbled and grateful. From 2012-2021 I owned, operated, and stewarded one of Portland’s premier yoga studios, North Portland Yoga. I have studied in great detail for many years with Sarah Trelease; I have studied the Shadow Yoga practice with Mandy Kruger; and credit the school of Body Mind Centering with greatly facilitating the opening of the portal to my own somatic curiosity.  To borrow a wise teaching from one of the yogis interviewed in the film Agni Yogana (made by Emma Balnaves): the yoga makes the yogi. The yoga practice, as I understand and transmit, is an indigenous practice containing everything already, and every time we come to the mat/blanket/floor is an opportunity to deepen into the aliveness of time. There isn’t anything or anyone from whom we are separate, that is the ultimate realization.  Thank you for being here, let’s practice.