How Yoga Serves Natalia
Yoga is Natalia’s way of connecting to what she calls her super-self……that part of her that knows the way and intuitively walks it, that part of her that finds surrender in deep vulnerability, that part of her soul which is perfectly at home in discomfort and ease, alike.
Through her personal and shared yoga practice, she’s on a mission to prove these three hypotheses correct:
- We are all deeply, beautifully, imperfectly and perfectly human.
- We also contain that aforementioned super-self.
- Our essence, our soul, our super-self, is only waiting for our own recognition, courage, and permission to flex, to fly, and to shine.
Natalia is also deeply passionate about voice, music, and sound healing.
She practices and shares vocal arts and vulnerable self-expression through the lense of healing arts & yogic practice.
Words of Wisdom
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
-The realest of real talk, from Theodore Roosevelt.
* This wisdom also very much applies to the inner critic.
Background
Natalia initially started practicing yoga 12 years ago, because she desperately desired what society was calling, at the time, A Hot Body.
Through this initially quite skin-deep desire, her body, mind, and spirit was drawn deeper into the practice of yoga through the realization that she could access something infinitely more fulfilling through her practice than validation, a sense of goal-accomplishment, or a respite from her inner critic…..and find a deeper sense of body awareness, self-love, and happiness at the same time.
She went on to deepen her meditative and yoga practice through studies in India and Nepal, learning from those for whom yoga was a lifelong sanctuary.
Bit by bit, and with sometimes excruciating slowness, she practices to peel her ego’s little fingers from the illusion of control, build strength and self-acceptance, hold sacred space and compassion, and extend this sacred space to others.
Her teaching practice started 6 years ago in Denver during the pandemic, doing house calls and showing up for those who were not exactly studio yogis: people recovering from strokes, families who used yoga as a vehicle for coming together at the end of a busy day, and those in their much-later years who were still avidly passionate about learning and deepening their practice.
This way of teaching blossomed into an active outdoor class, and eventually migrated here to Atlanta, where she offers both group and private meditation and yoga classes today, as well as workshops and coaching which centers around personal power, intimacy, and vulnerable self-expression.
Her journey’s greatest themes include body-positivity, self-love, self-expression, the release of control, and the transmutation of the inner critic.