ABOUT
YOGA
WITH
AVERY
ABOUT
YOGA
WITH
AVERY
AVERY’S APPROACH
to yoga
You know yoga practice can be transformative – that feeling clear, strong and spiritually connected empowers you to live in integrity, rooted in purpose.
Unfortunately, a lot of modern yoga is a reductive, watered down version of ‘fitness’ flow that prioritizes conforming to a performative image, “positive vibes,” and toxic weight loss ideals. Many common approaches to asana and sequencing fail to help you progress in your practice, and can actually cause frustrating injuries.
On top of that, for queer and trans folks, BIPOC, and anyone whose identity has been pushed to the margins, pressure to assimilate runs rampant. Harmful mainstream culture is often replicated in yoga spaces, through its cis, hetero, white, classist norms.
Being an outsider is a blessing, but navigating a world steeped in systemic oppression is exhausting, complex, and heartbreaking. In order to survive, maybe you’ve sometimes disconnected from your body, your needs, or from certain parts of your sweet, sacred self. While it’s gotten you this far, you know it’s time for a deep shift.
You’re up for deep practice, but not into the BS.
You want to have a deeper, more committed practice – but it can be hard to find yoga that actually works with your body- not against it – so that you can experience the empowering strength and stability, pain relieving anatomical alignment, energizing clarity, somatic release, and embodied healing that really addresses the stress, fatigue, and mind-body challenges you face.
There are so many folks – maybe you are one – who are hungry to explore the full system of classical yoga in a way that uplifts their values around social change, collective healing, and how to integrate their physical practice with the rest of life. I am here for you.
Imagine feeling completely at peace with who you are.
Appreciative of your incredible body and all the amazing things it can do and feel, compassionate towards yourself and all you’ve been through, that brought you to this point.
What would it feel like to let go of the layers of armor, to soften and be seen, to play and explore freely, the inner and outer wilderness?
To feel rooted in your truth, tender and fully alive? And to know deeply, that whenever challenges come, you’re connected to your inner strength and guidance.I so want this for you – to have a deep, committed yoga practice that nourishes you on every level, and empowers all the ways you show up.
I teach yoga in the rigorous, adaptive, somatically precise method of the Iyengar lineage through an anti oppression framework that uplifts inner healing towards collective liberation.
I am deeply grateful to my teachers, whose skill, dedication, and care and am indebted to. You have given me my life.
Deep pranams to the Iyengar family – Geetaji and Prashantji, Abhijata Iyengar and Raya Uma Datta. Gratitude to Kim Schwarz for your years of dedicated mentorship; and to Ramanand Patel, Patricia Walden, Swati and Rajiv Chanchani, Faeq Biria, Leslie Howard, Bobbie Fultz, Leslie Bradley, Craig Kurtz, Hong Gwi Seok, Susanna Barkataki, Francois Raoult, Laura Allard, Zoreh Asfar, Patti Lentz, and others.
Your teachings live on through me and my students and this thread of connection is one I hope to never take for granted.
—
My yoga journey officially began more than 20 years ago, though my quest for exploring consciousness and being in service to healing started in early childhood.
When I was a kid, growing up with hippie parents in rural WV, I had the privilege of spending a lot of time alone in nature. Embodied, exploring the magic of imagination, creativity, and the sacred dance of life, I had big dreams, a tender heart, and a lot of energy!
As a queer genderfluid teen in the late 90s, living in NM, I was hungry for belonging, which led me to find gay community that included raves, hip hop, drugs and sex work. Yoga opened the door to heal from shame, stop using and reclaim authorship of my life, build self acceptance, and gave me tools to discover new worlds. These queer stories are very much a part of my yoga, though.
As a person with then undiagnosed ADHD, yoga and meditation also became crucial for navigating my neurodiverse brain. As a person with a lot of mobility, I dove into Ashtanga style classes but kept getting hurt. Once I found Iyengar’s approach to asana and began to learn yoga philosophy, it changed everything. From early on, my background in yoga has been focused on functional anatomy, stability, and alignment.
Hungry for depth, and finding this subject endlessly fascinating and relevant, I embraced on decades of committed study, which I continue too engage in – I will always be first and foremost, a student.
The path was long and winding
though; I was closeted in yoga for
many years.
I led a double life. Queer and trans organizing, drag shows and antiracism activism over here, yoga “professionalism” over there.
A serious practitioner, I have over 10,000 hours of training. I’ve acquired way too many certifications: eRYT500, YACEP, certifications in trauma informed yoga, kids, teen and prenatal yoga, yoga for the pelvic floor, and in 2018 I passed Iyengar Yoga assessment after more than 5 years of preparation to become a Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher. I’ve travelled twice to India to study. I have been a full time teacher since 2005.
Over the years I have increasingly worked to bring these two worlds together. I am a passionate advocate for queer and trans wellness, and have been involved in many yoga equity projects.
All people, especially folks who have been left
out of or turned of by mainstream yoga
spaces, should have access to the revitalizing
nourishment of deeply informed, classical yoga
that goes beyond fitness, without having
to code switch or assimilate in order to practice.
I am skillful at helping those with range of motion challenges to understand how to work intelligently and safely to open up, while also helping folks with hypermobile bodies to adjust their practice to find stability.
My offerings center and deeply welcome queers, outsiders, allies, socially conscious healers, change makers! I am a rigorous teacher, but also compassionate and nurturing. I teach all of my classes in a way that centers accessibility, and what is your work in the pose to bring you into balance.
This stability-centered approach to asana supports dynamic strength, supple autonomous movement, inner body length, and nervous system regulation.
Come explore structural reorganization and right relationship in your joints. Rebuild the neutral curves and fluid movement of the spine, and explore integrative core and pelvic floor health to globally decompress your body and clear out residual pain and fatigue. The physical entry point of asana allows for safe, effective mental, emotional, and energetic alignment, and profound spiritual connection.
We practice to reorganize our bodies and minds, nervous systems, patterns. Such practice makes healing within and the collective, tangible.
I teach asana as the ground from which we can explore and embody all eight limbs of Patanjali’s system. The sutras provide rich inspiration and guidance for embodied anti-oppression work. Yoga, a healing practice rooted in liberation, fortifies our ability to not only survive, but thrive amidst systemic oppression. Some of our greatest joy, vitality, strength and wisdom is rooted in reclaiming the parts of us systemic oppression has tried to conquer, and dismantling the ways we perpetuate inherited patterns of harm. Committed yoga practice can empower this integration.
We all have social conditioning that keeps us stuck in old patterns. We replicate internalized oppression that affects our sense of self, and our relationships. We often blame ourselves for the ways we struggle, as we cope with intergenerational trauma, late stage capitalism, and being alive in a pivotal time on the planet. We use yoga as a playful laboratory to heal from the past. We develop our capacity for staying joyfully engaged. We reclaim a sense of wholeness and belonging.
But the biggest highlight is to work with my beloved students, and witness their brave, committed practice and incredible transformative wins. I am honored to explore this work together, and constantly inspired by the beauty,meaning,and emerging possibilities we continue to discover together.
A few career
Highlights
I was a featured model and yoga teacher in the Adidas + Wanderlust Summer 2019 Collection, and received a grant from Adidas to produce Yoga for All: a Healing Justice Immersion. I delivered a speech in tribute to Geeta Iyengar at the 2019 USA Iyengar Yoga Convention in Dallas, and also spoke at the 2018 Centenary Celebrations in Pune, India honoring BKS Iyengar.
A lifelong artist, I have had the honor of performing in Topsy Turvy Queer Circus and BUST shows, and I did the illustrations for pelvic floor yoga expert Leslie Howard’s book, Pelvic Liberation. I painted a large artwork of Guruji that was signed by Geetaji and Prashantji that now hangs in the new Iyengar Yoga Center in Mumbai. Since 2017 I have been a core organizer for ABQ Queer Trans Community Yoga. In 2019 they helped create the Reclaim Pride Yoga Challenge. In 2020 I was a organized a free Queer Trans Community Yoga 6 Month Guest Teacher Series featuring trans and non-binary primarily BIPOC teachers, thanks to a grant ABQ QTCY received from the Trans Justice Funding Project.
I’ve had the true treat to teach many magical workshops, retreats, private sessions, and thousands of classes! I provide low cost and free speciality classes in gender affirming yoga to queer, enby and trans folks, and offer inclusivity guidance and training for allies.
Yoga Certifications:
(listed most recent first)
- Certified Iyengar Yoga Teacher at the Introductory 1 &2 Level
- Trauma Informed Yoga Certification with Mark Lilly, Street Yoga
- Yoga for the Pelvic Floor Teacher Training with Leslie Howard
- YogaKids Certification
- Pranayama Certification with Francois Raoult (still in process)
- 500 RYT Yoga Certification from High Desert Yoga (2008)
- Prenatal Yoga Certification with Colette Crawford
- 200 RYT Hatha Yoga Certification from Temple of Kriya Yoga
Offsite Programs and Projects:
in Albuquerque and surrounding areas
- Media Arts Charter School: Teen Yoga Asana and Philosophy classes for freshman class
- Kid’s Yoga at Montessori of the Rio Grande Charter School
- Yoga for Autism at John Adams Elementary
- Yoga at MATS Detox/Rehabilitation Center
- Crossroads for Women: Free 8 week Yoga Program for CFW clients transitioning out of incarceration.
- Lovelace Labor of Love: Prenatal yoga taught at Lovelace Hospital
- Milagro: Prenatal Yoga for women in recovery from narcotics addiction.
- Arts in Medicine: Chair yoga in hospital waiting rooms as part of the AIM program.
- To’hajiilee/ Canoncito Band of Navajos 8 week Senior Chair Yoga Program, through the CBN Diabetes Department
- Santo Domingo Pueblo Health Center Free Yoga Series for staff and community members, 2018
- Queer Trans Community Yoga (free/ donation based monthly class) through partnership with NM Transgender Resource Center 2017-present
- Trans and Nonbinary Yoga Workshop at the Mountain Run Center, 2019
- Embodying Nonbinary Workshop, 2020
“Avery has always made me feel at ease in their classes. As a genderqueer person, this has not always been the case in typical yoga spaces. Avery creates an environment of growth through their direction and presence. One that encourages me to challenge myself, working with my body, not against it, with gentle reminders to stay present.”
Patti Bilbro (she/ her)