Where This Work Comes From

My sisters and I spent our childhood in the mountains surrounding Crested Butte, Colorado. Some of my earliest memories are from the first few summers we lived in a tipi. I can still feel the cool earth beneath my bare feet. The smell of aspens after rain. Wildflowers. Skunk cabbage.

Walking to kindergarten with my sister through snow taller than I was. Losing one of my boots somewhere beneath the drifts. Spending what felt like an eternity digging for it so I could make it to school. Even getting there was an adventure.

Hiking peaks in flip-flops because we could. Teaching ourselves to kayak. Bareback riding through the mountains. Tubing icy snowmelt rivers until our lips turned purple and our feet were too numb to walk.

Falling asleep on the trampoline, counting shooting stars. Camping alone or with friends, sung to sleep by frogs. Waking beneath skies that never seemed to end.

When the night sky becomes part of your childhood, wonder starts to feel ordinary.

Our community looked after one another like family.

Those experiences shaped me. I felt incredibly lucky to grow up that way.

Nature wasn't somewhere we visited.

It was home.

It gave me—

resilience.

curiosity.

joy.

respect.

wonder.

Fear softens when you develop that kind of relationship with the living world.

My parents deepened that relationship through practice. My mom, Brenda Flemming, taught Iyengar throughout Crested Butte, Gunnison, and Western Colorado University for more than thirty years.

I grew up inside her classes. Standing on students' legs as a prop. Sitting on their feet. Demonstrating poses. Staying a little longer. Reaching a little further.

By thirteen, I was assisting my mom in her youth and teen classes. By sixteen, I was teaching children, teens, and adults. I've been teaching ever since.

One of the greatest gifts my mom gave me was expanding what I believed was possible. Again and again, I discovered that what I thought was my limit was often the beginning of a deeper conversation with myself.

My parents also gave me something much quieter. A way of seeing.

Nature quietly reveals the patterns that sustain life. Everything participates. Nothing exists in isolation. Health. Relationship. Community. A forest. A family. A human body. Different expressions of the same living patterns.

I grew up inside those patterns long before I had language for them. Later, I simply began recognizing them everywhere.

The body became the doorway.

Over the years, the practice has continued to deepen.

As a teenager, it strengthened my athletics, coordination, creativity, and resilience. As an adult, it shaped the way I approached leadership, business, design, relationships, and living systems.

Today, it continues to shape one of the roles I cherish most.

Motherhood.

Showing up for my practice helps me show up for my daughter with more presence, patience, love, curiosity, and joy.

Since I was a little girl, I've been fascinated by one question: what becomes possible when we learn to participate fully in life?

I've watched that question unfold in bodies. In families. In communities. In nature. Again and again, I've seen people discover that they are far more capable than they've been taught to believe. Not because they became someone new. Because they began participating in themselves more fully.

That's why I teach. To help people cultivate a relationship with themselves. A relationship rooted in trust. Trust in their body. Trust in life. Trust in the quiet intelligence that has been there all along.

From there, something beautiful begins to return.

Wonder. Joy. Curiosity. Awe. A freer version of ourselves.

The body is simply where we begin.