Hello

​

I love yoga because yoga saved my life. In a time when my life was hectic and sad, Yoga taught me to slow down. It taught me how to consciously breathe. Yoga helped me find peace and autonomy in a body and a life that was not living up to my expected fairytale. 

Two things are important to me in sharing yoga: deity and representation. 

Deity

When I first started practicing yoga, I asked my instructor, Hanif Hakima, about the yoga and religion controversy. He wisely stated that yoga is a practice, not a religion and that we bring our own deity to yoga with us. That statement gave me lots of ease, and yoga has since always been like church to me - a time when I can freely connect with Sovereignty - to release, to cry, to praise, to use my body in worship. 

When I was trained as a yoga teacher, we learned sanskrit for our poses and salutations. It was during a sun salutation practice that I realized a sun salutation is really about honoring the sun! I made it a point then to script prayers to God in my mind as I practiced. That was the beginning of Salute the Son. 

Representation

I don’t always see a lot of melanin magic in the yoga spaces I practice. And I don’t often get the intentional spiritual Christ-centered connection. Salute the Son is a way for me to take what I do in my daily practice and share it with others.