A little about Karen....

Where are you from originally?
I'm originally from Colville, WA.
What brought you to your first yoga class?What was your experience?
My initial yoga experience is a little different as I didn't attend my first class until after I'd been practicing regularly on my own for over a year. After some reading, somehow a light bulb kind of went on in my head one day that said yoga was the thing that was missing in my life. I bought a couple of books and starting going through the practices in the books. One of those books was Beryl Bender Birch's "Power Yoga". From my first practice on, my back pain from an old auto accident injury was significantly improved. I went on to teach myself the entire primary series from Birch's book before I ever set foot in a yoga studio. When I finally decided to find a teacher I was hooked on Ashtanga and at that time there was no one teaching Ashtanga in Spokane. I started attending Alison Rubin's Iyengar classes at Harmony Yoga to make sure I was learning the alignment properly to avoid creating potential imbalances or injuries. My experience of taking that first "public" yoga class was that it felt strange to take something that had been very private and personal for me and start doing it in a room full of people. I found that there was wonderful energy, support, and learning to be had in a group class setting.

Do you participate in any other kind of consistent physical exercise?
I love any kind of activity that gets me out in the woods. I hike (and sometimes trail run) consistently all year. More intermittently, depending on the season, weather, etc., I like to get out and mountain bike, kayak and rock climb.

What are you reading right now?
In addition to the latest Yoga Journal, right now I just started an old book from the mid-seventies that I came across called "Indian Thought".

Do you have a hobby or interest that you have that we don't know about?
I think everyone knows that my husband and I love to travel, but we also love 40's style swing dancing. And when I have a snippet of spare time I'm hooked on Sudoku puzzles.
Karen has been teaching at City Yoga since we opened in 2003. Though she works full time as a school psychologist she also maintains a daily ashtanga practice and teaches every other Thursday night at 5:40pm and regularly subs.