and 
ELIZABETH SILAS
Elizabeth teaches a class appropriate for all levels that can be as physically and mentally vigorous as you choose to make it. She assists you in creating a steady breath throughout your flow of postures as her sequencing, precise verbal cues, and subtle physical adjustments guide you in and out of the postures with clear and safe alignment. She's been teaching for ten years and is certified in Jivamukti, Ashtanga, and Pilates. Her teaching draws from many traditions of postural alignment and philosophical approaches so that she can adapt each class to the needs of the students who are there.
Years practicing yoga: 11
Years teaching yoga: 10
Personal Yoga Journey
How long were you a student before you decided to become a teacher?
I had been practicing daily for just one year. I moved from New York to the small town of Oxford, Ohio, where there were only 3 yoga classes a week and no certified teachers. The teacher I had been apprenticing with in NY gave me her blessing to teach, so I did. I also started my first Yoga Alliance teacher training that fall with two other Oxford yogis, and we built a yoga program at Miami University that included 20 drop-in classes a week, plus workshops, in a small midwestern town.
What made you want to become a teacher and how did you know that you were ready to be a teacher?
There was such a demand for yoga, and I knew how much better I felt, inside and out, once I began practicing regularly. I had to offer it to other people--and then I had to figure out how to communicate it better, more clearly and more safely, to a wider variety of students with varying needs. Thus began the lifelong practice and study of how to teach.
What are your personal inspirations/sources behind your teachings? (Besides family/life)
Students. I like to honor why and how people come to yoga class by observing them and opening up to how I might serve them best--even when that means changing my game plan for a class. And stories. I don't get to read a lot of fiction right now, but I think stories and myths are the best way to explain the things that are hardest to put into words.
Who are you currently studying? What are focusing on in your current practice?
I've studied Ashtanga and Jivamukti in my 200- and 300-hour trainings, and I continue to study with teachers in those traditions, while at the same time training with a wide variety of alignment, vinyasa flow, meditation, and philosophy teachers. Right now I am coming back to some of what I gave up during my pregnancies, so that is fun stuff like floating back and forward, dropping into backbends, and so on. And I am coming back to breathing practices, as always, as a gateway to meditation.
How do you take your yoga practice off the mat?
Watching my desire to control what happens on the mat when I practice...and how that desire is so often thwarted! (Or seemingly fulfilled, only to see "what I want" change suddenly!)...helps me do the same in my relationships with others and in the material world.
What are some of your favorite yoga poses and why?
Love malasana and its preparations, to ease the tension out of my low back. Love any kind of lunging posture, to convince my psoas to release. Love inversions and balances of any kind, for the way they remind me that I can't control what's going to happen on any given day...but if I keep coming back again and again, surprising things will happen, and I will balance in positions I've never been able to before. These postures happen not because I control when and where they happen, but because I keep applying myself no matter what the outcome is, day after day. It's just so darn obvious when your head's on the ground and your feet are in the air--and for some reason, today, you're balancing. I can influence the outcome, but I cannot "control" it....and that is GOOD.
Books & Music
What are you reading now?
Strom's A Life Worth Breathing, Goldhagen's Family and Other Accidents, The Runaway Bunny, Goodnight Moon (I have an infant and a toddler:)
What are your top 5 Yoga books (classic & modern)?
David Foster Wallace's "Good Old Neon," Easwaran's version of the Gita, Kornfield's A Path with Heart, Satchidananda's version of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, Gannon and Life's Jivamukti Yoga, and Wallis' version of Buddha's Dhammapada (sorry-6 was as far as I could pare it down)
What songs are on your current playlist?
A Charlie Brown Christmas
What music do you consistently play in your classes?(What are your music staples?)
Krishna Das, Telepopmusik, Pearl Jam, Wah!, Bhagavan Das, Nina Simone, MWhat are some songs/artists that oby, Thievery Corp, Sufjan Stevens, Jesse Hozeny, Deva Premal, Gabrielle Roth, Feist, Lanterna, The Beatles, ELO
Why (or why not) do you play music in your classes?
To inspire our higher motivations and intentions. The longings expressed in pop, rock, and other modern songs--for romantic love, freedom, power, and so forth--are just multiple ways of expressing the underlying longing we all have to realize the interconnection, the nonduality that we are all already a part of and have lost sight of. They express our shared longing to wake up to the reality that I am not a separate little self bouncing off a whole bunch of other little selves, but that in fact all our little mind-body selves are quite intimate and whole already, and not actually separate or individuated, even though we mistake them as being so. If we listen to both kirtan and modern songs with that perspective, then we hear the longing for oneness and the desire to be kind in so much of music--even the "I gotta get you back, baby" variety. Who is "YOU"? You are you, baby. Thou art that. Tat tvam asi.
Advice to Students
What advice would you give your students just beginning yoga?
Breathe. Observe. Move. Let go of the rest.
What advice would you give the more seasoned person practicing yoga?
Breathe. Observe. Be still. Let go of the rest.
What are you yoga must haves? (from items to moments—what do you need to have in your yogic life?)
My lungs. That's just a guess--maybe I don't need those, who knows what happens when they're gone?
Little Known Facts About Me: I was captain of the cheerleading squad in high school, yet never learned the rules of football.
Words That Describe My Class: Detailed in explaining what to do, open as to how to feel, indifferent as to how you look. Transparently clear. Embracing the messiness. Supportive and demanding. Curious about the breath. Mandatory respiration, optional levitation. Tapasic: passionately disciplined. Inspiring flexibility of body AND mind. Hot, not because the room is, but because you are. Sweaty, not just for the sake of being sweaty, but to wash away the crud that builds up every day in our minds--it's the mental sweat that helps us let go of what's no longer needed. Devoid of touchifeeliness.
I Knew I Loved Yoga When: I realized that just because I could bend one knee and keep the other leg straight didn't mean I was done with Warrior B. All this underlying stuff started to become noticeable...stuff about what the posture could be...stuff in me...and it's never stopped bubbling up. So I need to keep doing Warrior B....and most other yogic techniques, because there's just so much THERE to observe.
Where Yoga Helps Me The Most: Gets me back into the other 9/10ths of my body when I'm prone to living just in my head.
Why I Love This Studio: The teachers are deeply knowledgable--so much so that they can go beyond dogma and look for creative ways to serve each student.
Favorite Comment/Quote that inspires you: So hard to choose! I will go with David Foster Wallace: "our endless and impossible journey toward home is in fact our home....[we are] pounding on this door, pounding and pounding, not just wanting admission but needing it, we don't know what it is but we can feel it, this total desperation to enter, pounding and pushing and kicking, etc.....finally, the door opens...and it opens outward: we've been inside what we wanted all along." He's talking about what the reader realizes when reading Kafka's stories, but clearly this epiphany can happen any time, any place...if only we can realize it fully and internalize this knowledge instead of forgetting and starting to bang on that door again!
...take a class with a teacher you have NEVER tried before for $9 (It's our 9th anniversary!). Take 3 classes for $9 and earn free classes: buy a 24 pass this month and get 9 bonus classes or a 12 pass and get 3 bonus classes...
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