Audrey

Audrey Brigliadoro holds a B.S. in Exercise Physiology, and is registered with Yoga Alliance, having earned her certification with Raji Thron in 1999.  She has been passionate about wellness and fitness for over 18 years.  Audrey's classes are creative, educational, and fun for both the beginner and the seasoned practitioner.  She has a unique way of blending asana, pranayama, and meditation into a profound and safe yoga experience.  Audrey continues her education and practice of yoga by studying with teachers such as Richard Freeman (Ashtanga Vinyasa), Dharma Mittra (Classical), Ana Forest, Sharon Gannon and David Life (Jivamukti), and Joseph Le Page (Integrative Yoga Therapy).  She has also studied Thai Yoga Bodywork with Jonas Westring, and is furthering her education by studying yoga therapy and yoga for the aging.

christy linson's May, 2007 interview with Audrey

christy: How did you get into yoga, how did you find it?

Audrey: I found yoga through an exercise injury. I was personal training at the time and had been teaching 80’s aerobics on a concrete floor. I ended up with 2^nd degree lumbar-sacral sprain which turned into a herniated and then bulging disc in my lower back because I wasn’t taking care of it properly. One day one of my clients suggested I try yoga to heal my back and it worked; instantly I felt better. I put out a universal prayer to sell my personal training business and become a yoga teacher. I was taking a class at the time with Raji (Thron founder of Yoga Synthesis) at the Wiseman bookstore and he sent out flyers for a yoga teacher training program. I signed up instantly. I went through the Yoga Synthesis 250 hour RYT (registered yoga teacher) program. Since then, it’s been a growing experience for me. I am constantly searching out new teachers and new practices and exploring as many avenues of yoga as I can.

C: How long ago was that?

A: It was about 9 or 10 years ago. I would say I practiced just shy of a year before I went through the yoga certification which helped me a lot. Today you have to have at least a year of experience before they will accept you into a program. This was when yoga was beginning to come back in the late 90’s.

C: You studied with Raji Thron. Who are some of the other people that you have learned from or continued to study with?

A: Raji holds teacher enrichment programs and I try to get to them as much as I can. I have been practicing with Ellen Pfeffer, who is Raji’s assistant for 10 years as well. She really inspires me. She is has a lot of wisdom and is really well read, and really walks the yoga walk. She is a big influence. Angela Farmer is one of my absolute favorites. I tend to like the old school teachers like Dharma Mittra and Aadil Palkhivala. Some of my other favorites are Richard Freeman and Edward Clark from Tripsichore, who is my new favorite, but I don’t really attach myself to any one lineage or teacher.  I try to expand out as much as I can.

C: What aspects of yoga have inspired you and do you try to bring into your classes?

A: I would say a lot of sweetness, sincerity, a respect for all lineages of yoga, and a deep awareness of spirituality.

C: Talk about your spirituality, you mentioned universal prayer earlier. How does spirituality enter your yoga practice?

A: I believe all is one.  I am not better than anyone, no one is better than me. We are all here for the purpose of appreciating and learning as much as we can from life. I believe that it is an important path for me and I try to put myself out there as much as I can. I have been through quite a bit of loss, so death has taught me a lot. It’s a part of life which I have experienced very intimately and is very deep inside of me. Yoga in some way, shape, or form is done everyday. Whether it’s a meditation walk, sitting and breathing, contemplation, doing a deep, strong, hard practice or a gentle practice, something is done every day. It’s my medicine and it’s a marriage. It’s a spouse to me.

C: Your injury really directed you away from aerobics and toward yoga. How has that injury affected and inspired your teaching style?

A: I feel that the injury came out of stress.  Aerobics, at the time when I didn’t have a spiritual practice, was almost like church to me. I was just sweating out emotions. I really believe that that back injury came to me from stress, from not expanding, trying to stay contracted in the same time and place, and not wanting to learn anything new.

The injury led me to yoga and I consider my yoga practice to be very safe. I have a degree and a little background in exercise physiology and kinesiology which really enhances my ability as a teacher. I do have a pretty deep understanding of how the body works which came from my injury, because I had to learn about what was hurt and how I could fix it without surgery. It’s really enhanced my alignment focus. Angela Farmer has inspired me because she also found her style of teaching through injury. She began very differently than she teaches now. It was when she sustained an injury that she learned that although yoga had opened her in so many ways, the fears that she held in her body were hiding deeper and deeper in her yoga practice.

I love the idea of a very fluid watery practice. This year I can feel my practice changing and being constructed or developed by the elements. Sometimes I feel a fiery class coming on and sometimes I feel a very earthy practice. I am much more aware of the elements than I ever have been before. I think it comes from years of practicing and by allowing myself to be guided by inner wisdom. It’s almost like the Kripalu third level of teaching where yoga is something going through me. I feel that I am being guided. I don’t have a real guru in the traditional Indian way, but as they say the guru lives within and I am starting to hear and honor her.

C: You were talking about how your practice has been changing. Can you say a little bit about how it has progressed?

A: I call the first 5 years of my yoga practice, which was a very physical layered practice, the honeymoon phase. Yoga is so intricate.  There are so many levels and layers of understanding of just the physical aspects of yoga. I am going to say the first 5 years of practicing and teaching were a very physical experience. It’s just now, in my 9-10^th year, that it has become so much more of an internal practice. The physical aspect is still an important asset of my practice but I am starting to really open those more subtle practices of yoga. I am starting to understand prathyhara. I could read it and recite what it meant before, but I wasn’t actually experiencing it. I am now really starting to appreciate and understand pratyahara, dhyana and sivasana.

C: Can you define those words and also say something about your experiences?

A: Pratyahara is the ability to draw inward. When I practice yoga I experience a heightened sense, my eyesight gets brighter, my ears get sharper, I feel energy in the body. Pratyahara is the ability to draw all of those senses inward. So for me the pratyahara is the internal drawing of senses which opens me to a more metaphysical place where I am just not in my body with senses but it feels more universal.

Dhyana is meditation. I just started really practicing meditation. I think of my physical practice of yoga as meditation in motion, I have to stay balanced with breath; I have to focus on students. There is always an intellectual meditation going on but just this year I am experiencing a more transcendental meditation, in other words allowing myself to turn off all external stuff. I can get there easier than I ever did before.

I guess through the practice of pratyahara, my meditation has just guided me into a better understanding of sivasana which is the complete letting go, or to die, as they say.  I remember in the beginning, I would be practicing sivasana after a hard class and would feel this outer body experience, a shift, a dropping, and it scared me.  I didn’t know what to do with it so I would wake up. So each time I would get into that place I would try to convince myself that it was safe here, it was okay. But there was a lot of fear in that just beginning of the deepest experience of sivasana. And sivasana I think of as a personal experience, we can’t define it. I am still working at it. When I do my home practice, I hate to admit this, but in my home practice I often do not leave time for sivasana. It’s like, “let me just make sure I meditate and breathe and get the channels open so I can be an effective yoga teacher today.”  So unfortunately, I hate to admit it, but often sivasana, which is the most important pose they say, often doesn’t get done. So, I am still working on it. I am still working on the understanding of sivasana.

C: I think that is inspiring. Often as a student you look at the teacher and think they know so much and have it all together and that yoga is somewhere you can arrive at, something you will understand, and that is not what it is.  It is really beautiful the way yoga creates a community of people who are choosing to work with all of their layers and old patterns. I feel this way about your classes which is why I am bringing it up. In your classes it seems that people feel a sense of community and there is an openness that happens because they feel welcome and safe.

A: Thank you. That is the ultimate compliment because that is the essence of yoga. When I meditate I notice the deep old paths of bad habits that can be so comfortable, like old shoes, but are no longer healthy. I feel like in my meditation I am trying to create new paths, and so this is a very important year in yoga for me. There is a lot of growth going on and a lot of resistance too. And I play with that a lot. I feel like in meditation I am trying to create new paths.  I am trying to throw out the old shoes and constantly draw myself back. That has been a huge gift in yoga for me because I do have an addictive personality and love to attach to things. The process of learning detachment has been a very interesting journey for me and I hope it never stops.

C: You have recently begun teaching a Yin Yoga class. What is Yin Yoga and what can students expect from this class?

A: Yin Yoga was designed to target the connective tissues of the body through holding the postures longer. The connective tissues of the body can only be addressed in this way. My Yin Yoga class is a slowed down variation of Vinyasa. At times we will flow through 3 to 4 different poses with long smooth holds and different breathing techniques. At other times we will be in one pose whether its triangle or a supported restorative pose from anywhere from 3 to 10 minutes. This class will really focus on slowing down and holding poses for awhile so that the breath and heat of the body can penetrate the joints, ligaments, and tendons as well as the muscles of the body. This class is suitable for all levels of practitioners.