A bit more:

I began daily ashtanga practice in June of 2009 under the radiant, disciplined tutelage of Catherine Shaddix at The Mindful Body in San Francisco. About a decade earlier, as a teenager wanting to learn yoga, the yellow pages revealed that the closest studio to our house happened to be The Mindful Body, and so twice a week I went for vinyasa and hatha classes taught by long time students of Richard Freeman, amazed by all the various people standing on their heads and moving their bodies with so much control and so little pretension.

Down the road some, in a yoga studio in North Carolina, I saw someone practicing ashtanga and felt a tug of recognition. There was no teacher where I lived, so I followed along to a DVD of Sharathji doing the primary series in my living room in Providence. When I returned to San Francisco in 2009 and looked up The Mindful Body, they were running a truly excellent Mysore program. I spent the next 11 years in the clarifying silence of the Mysore room, first with Catherine Shaddix, and then with Noah Williams at Ashtanga Yoga Nilayam in Los Angeles.

In 2022, I received Sharathji blessing to teach. Traveling to Mysore also put me in the orbit of the tremendous Angela Jamison, whose rigor in stewarding ashtanga is unparalled. To borrow her language, practice has put a lot of energy into my system, and teaching is a form of service that naturally follows that influx of energy.