I’m teaching pole and aerial yoga in Utica, NY!

Hi friends, very long time, very no see.

A lot has happened the past few years. Since I’ve posted, I got married, moved back to hometown, somehow made it through this entire pandemic without getting covid (???), took up ballet and yoga in a shockingly serious way, quit my job, started a SAAS business with my husband, and fell ass backwards into teaching aerial yoga and pole!

To be perfectly honest, I’d be happy just to *take* classes around here. But since the nearest studio is in Syracuse and my local yoga studio decided to invest in poles, I’m now absolutely thrilled to be recruiting fresh young things into the cult of pole. muhahaha.

Anyway, just to get us all up to speed here, my old ass is now 36 years old. Life looks very different now than it did when we last spoke.

In 2020, I got married under a bridge in 20 degrees. But, like, it worked out because it was February 29th and just a few days before all hell started breaking loose in New York City. Probably better that we didn’t wait for warm weather/complete lock down!

When all hell DID break loose, we eventually moved back to Utica (my home town) to get a little more space and be closer to family.

Thanks to a lower cost of living and being unbelievably burnt out at my full time job, I quit and focused on side hustles, and reader, I did two things I swore I would never do: yoga and running. I ran the Boilermaker 15K twice, which was on my “I could never do that” list my entire life. We’re training for a third in July!

And as for the yoga, it started with a “lol maybe we could try this insane 5:30am yoga class just to be crazy crays” and turned into a “we do this twice a week now, for 6 months straight and counting,” and escalated to “now I teach at this studio!” I’m sticking to aerial hammock and pole classes for now, but definitely eyeing my 200-hr yoga instructor certification like the basic white girl I apparently truly am in my heart.

I also got back into ballet this past year or so, which helped me through a lot. My mom became terminally ill out of the clear blue sky in late 2021 (though we didn’t know it yet), and when they told us in late February 2022 what it was (CJD) and projected a few months for her, I knew I had to keep busy and yoga was just not… noisy enough? There’s something about a constant flow of instructions in ballet that keeps you from ruminating too much.

But yeah. It was an awful time, and shockingly, it didn’t last very long in hindsight, though it felt like years at the time. My mom was moved into hospice just shy of two weeks after her official diagnosis that February, and died on April 1st 2022.

That’s not easy to write, but, that was 2022 in a nutshell for me, and everything has now kind of been divided into “before” and “after” all this. So yeah. Do me a favor and go call your mom right now!

Anyway. Our three beautiful children have done a lot to get get us through. They’re not… the smartest, but they are adorable. Check them out: Charlie, Midnight, and Teddy. Aka “medium good,” “extremely good,” and “jerk.” See if you can guess which is which by their photos.

So, all this is to say: I’m back, I’m still dancing, I’m starting teaching again, and I want to talk about it!

I’m planning to use this blog as a way to catalogue music I like, approaches to class planning, cues, and what I’m teaching, and share studio news.

As of right now, I’m teaching an intro to pole class this Saturday at In Bloom Yoga Studio, though I think there’s only one spot open at the moment. And starting Saturdays in June, we’re running a 4-week series in beginner pole, which will cover new spins, transitions, holds, and more each week. I’m truly doing my part to churn out some new pole freaks in my little city, so, if you’re local, join us!