Jackey Toland

Yoga is a journey and mine began in the summer of 2012 when I was first introduced to meditation and mindfulness practices. After practicing breathwork and meditation for a number of years I decided it was time to attend my first in-studio yoga class. Well not exactly, I signed up and sat in the parking lot twice before finally gaining the courage to attend the class. Growing up, I never did sports or any type of physical training. I knew that once more my mind would find another way to tell me how I was “less than”, this time through the judgment of my own physical abilities in comparison to the other students. What I quickly learned was that yoga was less about the “work-out” and more about the “work-in”. I wasn’t just learning poses but instead, unlearning the stories and mindsets that had once kept me trapped in states of anxiety and sadness. I quickly fell in love with yoga and the inner transformations that it provided and would go on to study at Up Dog of Rochester School of Yoga in the winter of 2017 to complete my 200-hour teaching certificate. As a forever student I lead my classes with this mantra in mind, “As long as you are breathing you are doing yoga.”. Some days my practice looks just like this, sitting and breathing, on other days I find intense movement to be deeply empowering and re-centering. The beauty of this practice is that it meets you wherever you’re at. Whether it be through the practice of movement, intentional breath, or stillness, it is my desire that you too will experience new depths of being YOU in ways that are healing and deeply inspiring.