Staying and Other Proustian Moments (Reflections on 25 Years of Yoga)

A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through Instagram when an engaging French educational content creator I follow shared a short piece about Marcel Proust and something called a Proustian moment.

I had never heard the expression before, but I was immediately captivated. (If you don't already follow French history, literature, food, and all the wonderfully random things Instagram thinks we should learn, here's one I highly recommend @frenchteachercarlitoo).

Proust wrote about the simple act of dipping a small madeleine cake into a cup of tea. The taste instantly transported him back to childhood, unlocking memories he hadn't consciously been searching for. He later immortalized that moment in In Search of Lost Time, the seven-volume novel he spent years writing, much of it from his bed while living with chronic illness.

We all have these moments, right? Maybe it's a smell of your grandma's perfume, or the sight of a familiar place. Songs always have a way to transport me instantly back to even the simplest moments in time.

Something, perhaps, that reconnects us with another version of ourselves before we've even realized what's happening.

A trip to California this past spring is why this phrase landed so deeply. Space and time alone to allow sweet moments like these to surface.

The Drive Home

Traveling from Europe, I typically fly into LAX and make the drive north from Santa Monica and Malibu along the Pacific Coast Highway to Santa Barbara. It's one of my favorite stretches of road. Ocean on one side and familiar hills on the other. Windows down and music of my choice playing. Somewhere along the bend in the road the mix of ocean spray and the scent of eucalyptus begins drifting into the car, and before I know it my shoulders have dropped and my breathing has slowed. Long before I arrive at my destination, I begin to exhale.

That drive always reminds me of my dad and has become a place I feel closest to him especially now that he's gone. Not in a sad way but more in a grateful one. Whatever else life held, one of the greatest gifts he gave me was California.

By the time I reach Santa Barbara, I already feel like I've come home.

Yoga Soup

And that's exactly what Yoga Soup has always been for me. I go back to practice at this studio because it's a part of coming home. It's one of my favorite rituals every time I return.

The studio has changed a lot over the years. The quirky coffin that used to sit in the lobby is long gone. The space has evolved, as most great places do. But there is always a pot of warm soup and tea waiting for anyone wanting to linger after class. Some fresh, crunchy veggies from the farmers' market. And that feeling that everyone walking through those doors belongs.

This visit was especially meaningful because my old teacher, Eddie Elner, was on the schedule when I could make the class.

Long before Yoga Soup moved into its current space, Eddie taught Friday night classes in a large warehouse downtown. These classes were always donation-based - give from the heart. Some Fridays, my donation was whatever quarters I had left after doing laundry. Other Fridays, after payday, a crisp twenty-dollar bill went into the box.

Those classes were packed with mats nearly touching and hands and feet definitely connecting. Music of all genres played. People laughed, cried, some slept. Nobody seemed too concerned whether their practice or how they looked was perfect.

Looking back now, I think Eddie gave me permission to stop taking yoga, and maybe even myself, quite so seriously.

To play. This was what he reminded me of during this particular class. It wasn't just his verbal cues and instruction, but I could feel this in my deepest fibers. That this practice of yoga is joyful.

Where It Began

Yoga Soup and Eddie weren't where my practice began. That story started years earlier.

I first walked into a yoga class as an injured triathlete at a converted church in downtown SB. At the time, I wasn't looking for spirituality or philosophy. I wasn't searching for stillness or self-discovery. I simply wanted to heal and get back to training and be free from pain.

Being the "invincible" 20-year-old I thought I was, who knew that Downward Facing Dog would humble me immediately? That Savasana would feel like an eternity. Lying still with my racing mind for ten minutes honestly felt harder than finishing any race.

It was my Aunt Annie Mincey who first introduced me to yoga and suggested it as a path towards healing.

Over a girls' weekend in San Francisco practicing with her teacher, Rod Stryker, something sparked inside me. The physical practice of yoga became something my body, mind and spirit needed every day. Maybe my soul recognized something before I did.

Whatever it was...I kept coming back. That's the funny thing about the practice.

Sometimes it begins long before we understand why we're returning.

Over the years, I found different teachers, different studios, and different styles of yoga. Each one met me exactly where I was at that age and stage — discipline in one season, alignment in another. Some opened my eyes to anatomy and the quiet intelligence of the body. Others gave me my dearest soul sisters, mentors, and friends. And a few taught me something much harder to define...

Presence.

The First 200 Hours

My first 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training came along for very practical reasons. As the Wellness Director of an athletic club we were always scrambling to find yoga teachers and substitutes. My boss offered to pay for the training, which was a generous and wonderful opportunity.

At the time, I thought I was adding another professional skill and this training would help deepen my knowledge of the practice I was daily growing to love. I had no idea I was changing the course of my life.

Those months introduced me to teachers who gave me far more than an education in yoga. They gave me a foundation built on science and soul. They taught me what it meant to truly hold space for another human being. They gently encouraged me to slow down enough to notice what was happening beneath the movement.

Somewhere during that training, I experienced stillness differently than I ever had before. Not as the absence of movement, but as presence.

It was also during that time that I found my way back to my faith in a much quieter, steadier and adult way. Yoga didn't replace it. It simply created enough silence that I could hear that still, small voice that had been there all along.

Looking back, I realize that YTT gave me something I would return to again and again.

Not a perfect practice or amazing flexibility, but an anchor.

One that carried me through the loss of my mother, through motherhood, through raising two daughters while my husband traveled often, and through the countless ordinary "groundhog days" that quietly shape a life just as much as the extraordinary ones.

Then, as so often happens in life, another transition arrived.

A New Chapter, A New Training

Years before our family made our international move to Portugal, I knew I needed something to keep me grounded. Not just through the move itself, but through everything it represented. We weren't simply changing countries. We were stepping into a completely new chapter of life.

Around that time, a carpool mom, neighbor and dear friend casually mentioned she was going to take a 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training. Her mom was opening a new studio in our community and she was going to teach. "Why don't you do it with me?!"

Sometimes the biggest turning points in our lives arrive as the gentlest invitations.

I said yes.

Here I thought I was preparing for an international move, but what I was really preparing for was the woman I was becoming.

That second 200-hour YTT was very different from the first training. In my twenties, I was discovering yoga. In my late thirties, I was discovering myself in an entirely new way.

We spent 10 days immersed and then countless long weekends soaking in practice, philosophy, anatomy, meditation, breathwork, and conversations that continued long after classes had ended.

We laughed. We cried. We supported one another. We became a community - The Heart Rocks.

I often say my first teacher training awakened something in me. The second rooted it. If the first felt like an awakening, the second felt a little like heart surgery.

That second 200-hour led into another 300-hour YTT plus countless additional hours of study. One workshop fueled more desire to learn to take with me on our move. One certification opened the door to the next.

Anatomy.

Functional movement.

Fascia.

Breath.

The nervous system.

Ayurveda.

Trauma-informed practice.

Yoga Tune Up®.

Foundation Training.

Every experience added another layer, not only to how I understood the body, but to how I understood people, the mind and spirit. How it threaded into my clinical private practice as a Registered Dietitian and my clients' every-day lives.

I've always loved learning. But looking back now, I realize something I couldn't see then. How much I was being poured into and just how much I needed every bit of it.

There are seasons when we need teachers to hold the lantern a little higher while we find our way. Seasons when community carries us. Seasons when we're absorbing, questioning, and stretching into who we're becoming.

From Filling Up to Pouring Out

Because somewhere along the way, something shifted. It's hard to explain, and perhaps it's an understanding that simply comes with time and age.

I still love learning, reading, attending trainings and asking all the questions. I leave workshops and listen to podcasts with pages of notes and another stack of books to read.

None of that version of me has changed.

What has changed is the place I'm learning from.

For many years, I came to these courses and my practice to be filled up. I was hungry for and needed teachers, the gathering of wisdom, space and time to grow.

And to this day, I want and welcome this all. It just feels different. Less grasping and more like an opening.

Less like searching for something missing and more like making space for whatever is ready to arrive.

It's a much quieter, softer relationship now.

Is that what happens when a practice has been part of your life for more than twenty-five years?

It's now, in my fifties, that I honestly feel able to pour into others without depleting myself. That sentence has surprised me every time I've said it out loud because I have loved teaching in every decade since my late teens.

Just reflecting back, there were seasons when giving came at a cost. I could keep the motivation high in a spin class and hold space for everyone else in yoga while quietly running on empty myself.

Today feels different. There is more capacity, steadiness, and trust. And it's not because life is easier or because I've figured everything out. But because the practice has had time to do what I never could have forced it to do.

It has shaped me.

Scotland

That's the place I was standing in when the invitation came. Not empty, not searching — just ready to pour into someone else's beginning the way so many people had poured into mine.

Which brings me to Scotland.

When Sheila Ewers reached out and asked if I would collaborate with her in teaching a 21-day immersive 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training at Rachel's Farm, a luxury and exclusive property in the Scottish Highlands, I didn't need much time to think.

For decades, Sheila has been creating extraordinary opportunities for people to learn, grow, and transform. My own 200- and 300-hour trainings, and years under her guidance as my teacher and mentor are among them. Assisting and teaching alongside Sheila in destinations around Europe for Seek Yoga retreats and in her Georgia-based studios have shaped me as a teacher and my work as Whole Living Nutritionist. To collaborate with her this deeply feels like both a professional milestone and a deeply personal one.

I'll also walk into Scotland exactly as I walk onto my yoga mat every day, as a student. Just this time, one with a little more experience to share than I did twenty-five years ago.

People often assume Yoga Teacher Training is only for those who want to become yoga teachers.

Some will. Many won't. And that's perfectly okay.

For me, the greatest gift of any of my hours of teacher training was never the certificate or more credentials behind my name.

It was giving myself enough uninterrupted time to be immersed in the practice.

To ask the brewing questions, to be challenged, to be fully supported.

To sit in community and laugh and cry.

To become quiet enough to hear that still, small voice again. Maybe in a new or deeper way.

Those gifts have stayed with me far longer than any sequence I ever created.

Perhaps that's what a Proustian moment really offers. Not a longing for the past, but a reminder of who we've been all along.

Looking back over these memories, I don't see isolated moments anymore. I see a thread. Teachers, studios, friendships, coastlines, faith, family and practice all quietly weaving together into a life I could never have planned.

If you're curious, our waitlist is open to start the conversation. All the rich details of the training live here. 

We Become What We Stay With

In writing this reflection, I realize my recent California trip really was so much about gratitude.

Gratitude for every teacher who appeared exactly when I needed them. For every class I almost skipped but didn't. For every season and transition when I was being emptied and poured into.

And for arriving at a moment where I really understand what it feels like to pour into others from a place of abundance instead of depletion.

Maybe that's why the drive from Santa Monica to Santa Barbara still moves me every single time.

It reminds me that growth rarely happens all at once. It happens over miles. Over years. Over thousands of ordinary practices that no one else sees.

If you've been feeling a quiet nudge to deepen your own practice—not because you're looking for another certificate, but because you're curious about what might unfold if you gave yourself the gift of time—I hope you'll consider joining Sheila and me in Scotland.

Whether you leave teaching yoga or simply living your own life more intentionally, I have a feeling you'll leave with something far more valuable than you imagined.

You'll leave with a practice that continues to meet you, season after season.

And if the past twenty-five years have taught me anything, it's this:

We become what we stay with.

Proust's madeleine was only a small cake dipped in tea.

Mine happened to be a drive up the California coast, the scent of eucalyptus drifting through an open car window, and the familiar feeling of rolling out my mat at a studio that still feels like home.

It reminded me that the most meaningful transformations in our lives rarely happen in a single moment.

They happen because, somehow, we keep coming back.

It's in the staying.