“All conflicts are perfectly placed there for you to grow, learn, meet your destiny. The Divine placed these things within your sphere in order for you to do what you were born to do. What you don’t have motivates you.”
When Barbra Brady first heard Yogarupa say this in 2001 at a rustic YMCA camp on Lake George, NY, her Buddhi knew (she’s the sensitive sort)-She had met her teacher. She had studied yoga far and wide, but in Rod Stryker she had found a deep blend of learned scholarship and “yoga” that was essential to her being.
Before she stepped onto her first yoga mat, Barbra lead a life as museum curator. Ever “bookish,” she loved the academic path. But when she began studying yoga in 1996, she began to question dwelling in “the life of the mind.” She was not content…
So, she adjusted. She quit her day job without a plan (or so her conscious mind thought). She immersed herself in practicing in her then home of Montana. She became a teacher in 2000 when her own teacher moved away, and hunkered down for a 200-Hour Teacher Training program in Bozeman and an Advanced Teacher Training with Erich Schiffmann.
It was while taking a teacher training with Jivamukti’s David Life that she had that fate-full (karmic) first encounter with Yogarupa. Circumstances (artha) were such that she did not begin her formal training with him until 2004, when she stepped in full force to her first PYMT. This was before the PYMT was structured with tiers (its own vinyasa krama), and Barbra chose Kundalini as her freshman studies—after all, she remembered Yogarupa’s words, “Nibbling is useless.” Barbra had been missing those academic studies she had forsaken, her soul longed for them. Of course, ParaYoga is exactly—para--the right place for that. More importantly, it was the right place for her to begin to help others step toward this realization:
“Deep within lies a real and everlasting joy. A human being is born to dive deep into the stream of life, find the hidden treasure, and attain eternal fulfillment.”
Srimad Bhagavatam, quoted in Rod Stryker’s The Four Desires
In addition to being a Certified Level II ParaYoga Teacher, Barbra is a writer and editor. She holds an MA in Museum Exhibition Theory & Cultural Studies and has 10+ years experience as a museum curator of contemporary art. She is also a nationally published writer on contemporary art. In 2009 Barbra acted as Executive Director of the Feathered Pipe Foundation in Montana--one of the groundbreaking forces in yoga’s development in the United States. She has recently served as the Contributing Art Editor of Yogamodern.com.
Barbra is an iRest (Richard Miller) Practitioner and is registered with Yoga Alliance at the E-RYT-500 Level. She lives and teaches ParaYoga in Sonoma, California, an Eden that naturally prompts her reflections on nature, food, and yes, tantric hatha yoga. The fragrance of ParaYoga’s Ayurveda is the basis of her work with clients. She has an established private yoga practice in Sonoma where yoga is prescribed for the client (Ayurvedic). Here yoga practices and lifestyles are shaped to move one toward a balanced, healthy, happy life.
For upcoming yoga workshop and Teacher Training information, please visit Barbra's
website. For more of her “curating” all things marvel-ous, check out her blog Curator of Curiosities.
707-227-0044
