Teacher Feature: Nancy Fox, C-IAYT

Get to know Nancy Fox, formerly DL Hearty!

Nancy is a certified yoga therapist and author with more than 17 years of experience. She is trained in therapeutic and restorative yoga, focusing on the spine and its care.

Since 2010, Nancy has focused on helping people with scoliosis and back issues to avoid surgery, find relief from pain, and learn to manage their own back care.

 She co-authored the book, “Yoga for Scoliosis, a Path for Teachers and Students” with Elise Miller.  

Nancy Fox offers classes and workshops across the Chicagoland area for those with Scoliosis. She has trained extensively with renowned master teacher Gabriel Halpern of Yoga Circle in Chicago since 2006.

Her personal practice is based on the teachings of B.K.S. Iyengar. She continues to study with senior teachers to maintain a current, informed and fresh approach to yoga. Nancy is an artist, a former potter, and that creativity shines throughout her teaching.

Here are some fun facts about Nancy Fox in her own words:

If you could pick one song to play every time you entered a room it would be...
“Laugh and Be Happy” by Randy Newman – delightful!

My favorite animal is.. the white snowy owl, it is my spirit animal

Guilty Pleasure…dark chocolate peanut butter cups! Can’t get enough of them…

Pigout food…popcorn with olive oil, garlic powder, salt, and pecorino romano cheese on top

Last show I binge watched….Downton Abby

Good book I’m reading…Outlander series for the 4th time!

Best Movie I’ve seen lately…Pirate Radio - I’ve seen it many times

Favorite place...Sedona, Arizona and my apartment/home

If I could do anything for the next 30 minutes, I would ...REST

What would you like to do more of? …Meditate and practice yoga

What would you like to do less of? …Drive in my car

People would be surprised that… I do not like my computer and devices

Greatest inspiration…Gabriel Halpern

In a perfect world, we would communicate via…conversation face to face as it was back in the olden days…remember when you would knock on someone’s door to see them? Now we make text appointments to even talk on the phone!!! Absurd.

Who is/are your yoga role models? Elise Browning Miller creator of Yoga for Scoliosis - a remarkable woman living in Palo Alto, CA. She is my friend and mentor and co-author of our book “Yoga for Scoliosis, a path for students and teachers”. I love working with her at Kripalu and host her workshops in Chicago every two years.

Gabriel Halpern, my first teacher and mentor, a true mensch! I owe my vocation to him, he showed me the ropes – literally! I am a certified yoga therapist because of his teachings and mentorship! May they both live for a very long time!

A pose I struggle with…headstand, I just won’t do it unless I am hanging in a sling :)

A pose I love and why…Ardha Chandrasana, I’M FLYING! Once you can nail the balance and elongation without leaning into a wall, or on a chair, there is freedom and a feeling of empowerment. I love to do it anywhere!

What is the biggest reason you teach yoga? ..I love to help others with the struggles I can relate with, namely anything to do with the spine! Gabriel taught me to teach from what I know. I have gotten to know my own spine quite well! I love to build community and encourage my students to talk to each other and share their stories about their scoliosis and back pain. We have also traded success stories and medical professionals who have helped. It truly has become community!

I want my students to...LOVE to come to classes and workshops to learn more! I also encourage them to practice at home, and to think about yoga positioning when moving through daily life, standing and sitting for example, with alignment in mind.

What 3 words best describe you…Compassionate, silly, passionate.

Find Nancy Fox on the drop-in schedule on Wednesdays at 7:30pm for Yoga for Scoliosis. You can learn more about Nancy on her website fineline.yoga.

Midwest Yoga & Oneness Festival Discount

We proudly announce that we’re a sponsor of the 5th annual Midwest Yoga & Oneness Festival! Join Laura Jane November 15-17, 2019 at the Grand River Center in Dubuque, Iowa.

The festival’s mission is to create an embodied experience of oneness, release of the spirit, an exploration of yoga for all levels, shapes, and sizes as expressions of life and joy, and to radiate transformational vibrations of love and light to the world.

This year’s festival headliner is Laura’s teacher, Pandit Rajmani Tigunait, the renowned teacher, author, visionary and spiritual head of the Himalayan Insititute.

He will be sharing the system of meditation as taught by the great masters Patanjali and Buddha and will lead participants in a 30-minute meditation in support of Himalayan Institute's YEAR LONG MEDITATION (YLM).

Register now to reserve your spot for intensive training and other sessions with worldwide, and nationally known, teachers. See the Festival schedule and teachers/presenters.

Plus, connect with others. Whether its mingling in the vendor marketplace, sharing space in the on-going meditation vigil, or sharing the collective “OM” in the morning sangha gatherings, all are welcome and encouraged to be with others who share a bond in their practice, their belief in oneness, and their desire to feel at home.

Use our Teacher/Student discount code LMTS1920 to get 20% off your registration! To learn more and register: https://www.midwestyogaandonenessfestival.com.

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YAF Supports Year Long Meditation

Because we too are passionate about global peace and transformation, we are participating in the Himalayan Institute's YLM project. And while many of our classes include a meditation piece, here are some dedicated classes and workshops that support the practice and participation in the YLM. Click the photos below to learn more and how to register.

To Name It is to Lose It

I always say in my teachings of yoga, “to name it is to lose IT .”

What is this IT that I refer to? It’s my deepest desire to communicate something that is beyond intellect and reason of thought, but has a quality of IT that arises into a pure felt experience. An experience that loses the little mind of reason and words into an empty space of pure being.

The confines of language and words limits my unlimited space of pure existence. I get in my own way by trying to ever explain to the intellect. How difficult teaching yoga becomes without the gift of feeling the somatic experience of just being present. My words only create an imagination or memory linked to what my little mind knows.

In other words, my limits are learned through my living in this body and mind. I have no understanding of what might be possible without the practice of letting go of words.

Try to sit and relax. The mind will wander into conversation of words. There always exists an inner communication that holds the mind from falling into the focus of simply being present to the feeling of the breath. There’s no outcome to the conversation. We think too much. We need to feel more.

To name it is to lose it. When teaching yoga, we must use the physical body, asana, to bring the mind into feeling. Then, by adding breath to the movement refines the focus, and bringing in sound allows thought to drop into pure awareness. A sound that the mind can purely feel. Vibration has no language; energy has no limits.

Language has great power. Watch the frustration of a baby without words. To misuse words can be harmful and yet to speak the truth can cut like a sword.

Where does thought arise from? Does it arise from my fear and inner need for survival to preserve my life? Or is something greater tapping into some inner landscape? Without words, there arises within the invisible space a beckoning, a pulsation that awakens IT, a pure inner knowing that has no words to give definition to it.

My role as teacher is to share these ancient tools. I must use communication skills that I have learned; and yet, it is my vibration of energy communicating love. My heartfelt enthusiasm is not to change anyone, but to inspire the possibility that we might be prisoners of our learned habits, thoughts, patterns of family blood, and beliefs. These are the walls created and formed to hide and protect our true self, and we might suffer trying hold on to them.

But what if there is a gateway into our inner wildness? To journey into a new frontier of possibility by listening of our soul. To go beyond confinement is to rediscover and connect to IT. To belong to life, and not the confinement, can be a lonely journey since the world colludes in holding up personas and habits of bias opinion as walls. Our own walls separate us from each other in forming true bonds of friendship, regardless of gender, social economic or race.

We always say that we know our yoga practice is working when our relationships are improving. To be courageous takes energy. To have energy takes the desire to let life in. And to let life in, we must be willing to let go. It can be painful to sit in uncertainty. Yet this is the gateway to the soul. By looking into the wildness of our inner frontier, we can drop the armor of protection and become kinder to our selves.

When we stop projecting outward, we accept our learned behaviors with forgiveness. A true friendship is a powerful presence in helping to see the prisons within, to inspire without judgement, to shift the landscape from outer to inner, and to support the journey with compassion. A true friend trusts the soul to find the light, to loosen the grip and open the way for grace to unfold. The Celtic word for this is “anam cara”, soul friend.

I am on my Celtic journey next week for a retreat in Ireland with an amazing group of friends, who have welcomed the desire to let go and embrace a sacred path home to the self. The teachings of yoga are my gifts to share, but the experience is open to the mystery of what will be revealed to each of us. That secret landscape is inviting and I hear the call.

Please listen to your inner knowing and remember that our words can trick us into staying confined in the familiar. Be willing to listen with your heart and go forward in love. Our yoga community is the welcoming of all soul friends to feel, be seen and embraced.

Blessings,

Laura Jane