FELICIA FRANKLIN

WHAT DREW YOU TO KATONAH YOGA?

My son Amadi, had been telling me about Katonah Yoga at least a year before I attended my first class. The bigger question for me is, what made me keep coming back?! The answer to that is intrigue. I thought I was a pretty fit person. I lifted weights, I was a runner and I did hot yoga for goodness sake. I can certainly do this yoga right? Well, after my first class, I was like, oh boy, my body won’t do this. I learned very quickly that my hips were stiff, my shoulder was messed up and I had no idea what a spit was as it pertained to my body. I felt compelled to come back and find out more. Firstly, more of what my body could do, secondly find out what in the world was a magic square, thirdly, what was a spit and how do I get on it.

HOW HAS KATONAH CHANGED YOUR PRACTICE & TEACHING?

With the little yoga I had done prior to practicing Katonah, I never knew that a yoga practice could change your body and then your mind in the way mine has in the last three or four years. Flat feet, stiff hips and sometimes linear thinking take time to develop into a foot with an emerging arch, hips that aren’t as stiff and a mind and body that are becoming more spherical, but mine have. Since this practice is so hands on, which was also new to me, I have learned over the years how to not only understand where my body needs to be in a pose, but also how to help adjust others do the same.

HOW HAVE YOU SEEN KATONAH CHANGE STUDENTS?

For me, watching new students who have never experienced Katonah Yoga is the best. First it’s “Lets start in a dog,” “bend you knees…” “What, bend my knees?!” “Hips three o’clock and nine o’clock… Excuse me?” “Straighten your arms…” “They are straight, aren’t they?” Then one person, or more, come over and adjusts the student to the archetype of the pose and you watch them take a breath, close their eyes and smile. That’s magic. Watching anyone, new student or veteran student, “get it,” is magical.