I invited her to come by the studio for a cup of tea before her North Wales yoga session so I could hear more about her business, her goals and hopes. She needed to share with her potential clients (her avatar) who she is and what she offers. It was important to understand how Sarah sees herself and her business to help her tell her story. I could, then, help capture and share the part of herself she wanted to convey to the world.

Sarah is captivated by the “amazing universe within”.

This, she so eloquently expressed to me as we were deep diving into her journey to now. Sarah’s appreciation and need for yoga and meditation in her life strengthened as she fully immersed into adulthood and motherhood. Her decision to welcome an abundance of goodness and responsibility into her world burgeoned a drive to establish a practice of mindfulness. The desire to help others access the same joy and peace she discovers each time she is brought deeper insider herself led her to start teaching.

During her initial consult Sarah regaled me with tales about her daughter Francis. She described a precocious little girl that inspires Sarah to greater confidence through her carefree spirit. It became clear that featuring Francis in her session (with Francis’ permission) would be an important part of telling Sarah’s story.

When asked, “Does she enjoy doing yoga with you?”. Sarah quickly replied, “Oh. She ‘teaches me yoga’!”. This, I could not wait to see. I was not disappointed by what followed.

As Francis stepped in front of the camera I asked her to guide mommy in her favorite yoga poses. She erupted into a series of paleontologically inspired poses. A posture flow epic in proportion to its prehistoric nature. See captions to add these poses to your posture flow.

If you’d like to hear more about Paleontological Yoga (The new craze that’s sure to sweep the nation), you can talk to Francis. However, I might recommend starting with a more timeless and nuanced path to the inward self. In which case, I recommend connecting with Sarah York at sarahyorkyoga@gmail.com

For details on your own branding session that goes way beyond headshots, click the button below, scroll down and contact me.

The post A North Wales Yoga Session To Melt Your Heart appeared first on Lux Summit Studio.

I want you to know Wendy, because to know Wendy is to know hope and the resiliency of joy. Wendy has known the death of multiple loved ones, abuse, PTSD, depression and despair so great that she attempted an untimely exit from this world more than once. I only spent a few hours with her, but even I can’t imagine the world without her in it. Now, her joy beams. Her laughter booms and she throws her head back to submerge herself in the delight of life.

The Journey has been a lifetime. Tragedy found her and followed her throughout her life and she nearly succumb to her sorrow, but her children granted her the strength to get the help she needed. This is not a magical story – one in which all goodness is restored with a healthy dose of warm fuzzies and the darkness never creeps back in, because it just doesn’t work that way. This is a story of years of work to claim life, to extinguish the lies of shame and a continual war for the truest self.

Wendy found a therapist she derived tremendous perspective from – a therapist who encouraged her to join a running group. She says it took everything within her to get her to that first running meet up. She could barely hold her head up, but she showed up, which is the definition of vulnerability. Eventually, she began to thrive.

As she journeyed on, she met someone. She was convinced that the more he heard of her story he’d turn on his heels. She was wrong. The more of her truth he heard, the more he loved her. Clearly, tremendous strength and courage had brought her this far. He could see that. He could see her. They married and blended their families.

Along the way she found Yoga. This became the tool to alleviate her anxiety. When she’s on the mat she says she “feels like it doesn’t matter if you’re perfect…It feels like letting go of perfection.” On the mat there is belonging and a safe space. When Wendy is flowing from posture to posture one can’t help but feel the profundity of each movement flow through her. She speaks of postures that she couldn’t complete for years because they were too open and left her feeling devastatingly vulnerable. Yet, she remains intrinsically drawn to them and finds herself flowing toward them in some subconscious determination. Even while we photographed she decided to take on two of the more challenging positions in addition to her repertoire that inspires strength and confidence. When she conquered those two postures (one signifying extreme openness and vulnerability and the other signifying the cusp of mastering some truth in becoming), she erupted into a volcano of laughter and joy. On the mat she is her truest self and journeys forward in becoming.

The post Wendy’s Session appeared first on Lux Summit Studio.