Summer

Summer is a teacher and body worker with extensive training in various yoga traditions and healing arts. Summer's focus is to help her students embody their spiritual practice. Her teaching is based on the natural universal movement principles that underlie all yoga practice. Yoga Yoga is very happy to have her on our schedule teaching Hatha and Prenatal classes.

Summer apprenticed with Shannon Potts for two years in Prenatal, Postnatal, and Hatha Yoga, and was certified to teach by Shannon in 1997. She became a licensed massage therapist in 1999, and has continued her studies in Shiatsu and Acupressure, Myofacial release and Neuromuscular Therapy, Reiki (level 3), and Bodywork for the Childbearing Year. In 2004 Summer was certified by the Star Institute as a peri-natal massage specialist and Doula, and an Infant Massage Instructor through the International Institute of Infant Massage. In 2006 she completed Donna Farhi's Advanced Yoga Certification, based in developmental movement repatterning and yoga. In 2007 she became certified as a Massage Therapy Instructor. Summer now assists Kate Jordan in a course called Bodywork For the Childbearing Year, and Donna Farhi when she is teaching in Austin.

Currently Summer's professional development goal is to become a BodyMindCentering practitioner. This practice is bringing together all of her previous learning and experience in a profound way. Through BMC work Summer is learning to better serve herself, her massage and yoga students, and her bodywork clients by exploring embodied awareness , experiential anatomy, and accessing the resilient, regenerative capacity within us that allows us to continue the growth that we began as an embryo in our mothers womb.

Prior to having her children, Summer lived for 3 years in National Forests around the country with no money and only a backpack, traveling by foot with her dog and her partner. "That direct experience of living in the open with nature is the root of my yoga experience." Nature is a big influence in Summer's personal yoga practice, and her teaching.

In her Hatha Yoga classes, students will explore movement therapy in yoga. Repatterning in yoga practice can unveil stability and ease in asana, relieve strain, strengthen and nourish all of the body systems, and increase awareness and illumination of the mind, heart, and spirit. Summer believes that Journeying though the whole self in yoga practice can be as refreshing and enjoyable as exploring and communing with nature. She uses mantra and readings to ground the class in practical everyday applications of the eight fold path of yoga and the yoga sutras. Summer is dedicated to teaching according to the pedagogic model as taught by Donna Farhi. What this means is that in Summer's classes you will be led to discover for yourself the pathway of greatest ease and stability in your own structure which best serves your individual needs in daily life.

In Summer's class your are led to find your own answers, strengthening your home practice and your ability to intelligently find answers which best serve your personal needs. It is an active learning process which is an even exchange between student and teacher, rather than a passive model of learning where the answers are given to you. We all have access to a greater mind through yoga practice and embodied awareness, just as in communing with nature.

In Summer's Prenatal Yoga classes, her intention is to give students the opportunity to connect with themselves and their baby, with an appreciation for the sacred time of pregnancy.

Summer was called to yoga from a very young age, and had a profound experience that has kept her close to this work for as long as she can remember. She had an abstract vision as a child, accompanied by a strong feeling that she had to build her life around this spiritual center. After she attended her first yoga class as a teenager Summer recalled the vision, and knew she had found her calling.

Summer underwent a shift in her yoga teaching and practice when she began studying with Donna Farhi. "I became a complete beginner," Summer says. Donna helped Summer become reeducated about yoga, in ways that she had never picked up on before, despite having been involved in yoga for many years already.

It was Donna Farhi who pointed Summer toward BodyMindCentering and the teaching of Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen. BMC and Bonnie's work have continued to enrich Summer's life and her teaching. Whenever Summer practices or teaches a class she considers herself a beginner. "What we're doing in yoga is practicing the ancient art of becoming a new person every day."

Other teachers that have influenced Summer are Patrice Sullivan- "we practiced yoga outside together for many years." And T.K.V. Desikachar, "I had an opportunity to learn mantra from him in a group setting once and that experience still informs my mantra practice today." She is also gratefull for the experieence of learning from Tias Little, Doug Swenson, Amrita Choudroy, Charles Mackenerny, Camilla Figeroa, and of course her friends, family and students who help her continue her growth and evolution everyday.

Summer was born and raised in Austin. She has two children, Felix, 13 and Kendra, 3 and two dogs, Teddy and Spike. She loves being outside, being at home, dancing, bike riding, swimming, and playing with her kids.

Click here to see when Summer teaches.

"The first mudra is a smile." - Amrita Choudhury

"Any change into a new state of being is the result of Nature unfolding inherent potential." - The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali

Summer Recommends:
Yoga Mind, Body, and Spirit by Donna Farhi
The Breathing Book by Donna Farhi
Bringing Yoga to Life by Donna Farhi
The Tao of Motherhood by Vilama Mclure
Sensing, Feeling and Action by Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen