Hi! I’m so glad you’re here!
I’m a mother, yoga teacher, writer, and transformational life coach. More than that, I’m a body-centered, deeply-feeling, story-telling, five-planets-in-Leo heart-traveler. A highly inquisitive, ready to laugh, voraciously reading seeker of the Love That Cannot Be Named, the Peace that Passes all Understanding, and the Stillness Inside the Storm of this everyday human experience.
I have been called by many different careers and relationships as well as both scholarly and spiritual paths. Beckoned through all kinds of doorways and hungry for experience - to know life in all of its layers and textures - I have often said yes. Some doorways have led me to exhaustion and overwhelm, furthering me from who I truly am. Others have led me back to myself. Many have guided me to the same place or the same answer but from another angle or with new language. All roads, however challenging, have been beautiful and necessary for what they have taught me and the transformation they have ushered me through.
I was brought up in the Lutheran and evangelical churches in Fort Wayne, Indiana where the reigning trinity is God, sports and family. I was given the practice of prayer and an orientation towards the divine that had me longing for and seeking the mystical in all things… and I loved it! My huge extended family. My church. My competitive athletic career. My school. In high school, I was the president of our Fellowship of Christian Athletes, and I gave sermons in chapel to my Lutheran high school, but I longed to be a pastor in a denomination and community that had no modeling or welcoming for women in the ministry.
Around that time, I discovered poetry, literature, and philosophy, and my orientation shifted. I moved away from the church, and I became an English teacher. I moved to the east coast and joined a Quaker meeting house. I sat in silence and waited for the presence of God to move me. I noticed how language can obscure our connection with the divine, how the divine communicates in so many ways.
I married young, moved to Vermont, taught at a boarding school and became a theater director. I soon discovered DIY art, street theater, costumes, naked bike rides, France, and all-night parades. I began to meditate in earnest. I practice yoga several days a week. I studied Tarot and Astrology. I left my marriage and explored what had always been portrayed as darkness but felt like light to me. Sex. Psychedelics. Creativity. The Contemplative Arts.
My heart broke again and again. Open and open and open.
I then moved to New York City and got my MFA in Creative Writing. I wrote and wrote and wrote and became a nanny for tiny babies, including my nieces and nephew. I got another high school teaching job. I became a yoga teacher. I traveled widely. I read and read. I discovered and communed with plant medicine. I joined a church in Brooklyn and tried out Christianity again, from a new angle. I became certified as a Reiki practioner. I enjoyed the cross-pollination of life and God in all things. I fell in love with a photographer, a romantic, an artist. We traveled around the country, publishing stories for the New York Times. I got pregnant and married and then I lost the baby and then I had my son, my greatest teacher, by far.
My heart broke again and again. Open and open and open.
I moved to the Catskills where I was gifted a yoga studio. My marriage ended. Painfully. Dramatically. Crushingly. I kept teaching yoga. I raised my son across from a mountain and next to a creek. I studied and studied and studied. Meditation. The nervous system. Nature. Yoga. Love. Dream interpretation. Yoga Nidra. Loneliness. (I studied that a-plenty!) My favorite place to study was on my knees with my face on the ground. God is giving you a PhD in Life, my friend once told me. The pandemic hit and I got very sick and I experienced long illness.
My heart broke again and again. And I wondered, Could it really open and heal any more?!
And then I moved back to Fort Wayne, Indiana where my cousin offered me a home in which to restore. Stay as long as you need to, she said. So, here we are for now, my son and me, three blocks from the high school where I delivered those sermons. I keep studying. Skillfull, non-violent communication. Neuropsychology. Hypnosis. Somatic Experiencing. Trauma-informed Yoga. Mythology. Breathwork and Pranayama. All the things that bring me closer to the heart, to truth, to compassion, to the moment, to life as it is, in all of its simple, glorious beauty.
My heart breaks open every day. Sometimes it hurts. Always it holds beauty, Life unfolds just as it does, and love is always right here.
The more beautiful life you imagine is possible.
It is, in fact, already here.
Let’s discover it together.
I’ve been taking yoga classes from Sara for almost 20 years. The first thing that I love is the movement. Sara is an amazing teacher! My day is always a little bit smoother after I practice with her, and my body feels stronger and more flexible.
I also love how she begins each class with a little dharma talk. She’s able to share her life in a way that makes me think more deeply about my own and about my place in this world. Her wisdom is a beautiful mix of Buddhism and spirituality and a deep faith in the knowledge and intuition of our bodies.
This might sound kind of serious, and I don’t want to give you the wrong idea! She’s incredibly lighthearted and there is a lot of humor in every class. I love the mixture of depth and lightness that she offers.
—A.K., High School Teacher