TEACHER SPOTLIGHT - ANNA HOLGUIN
Ana has a heart of gold and shows up behind the scenes to offer Yoga to populations of people who desperately need it, but might not otherwise have access to it. She has always created a sliding scale to make yoga more accessible. We love Ana and her ability to help each student love their own bodies a little bit more.
We are so blessed to have Anna teach this frequently and I hope you can join her for a class soon.
Fun get to know Ana Questions:
If you could travel anywhere, where would it be?
I really want to go to Spain and see the fantastical architecture.
What social/environmental issues are you most passionate about? What are ways yoga can help us make positive change?
I'm a Chicanx eating disorder survivor and I care deeply about raising awareness and helping those in or seeking recovery. Specific attention to non-white racial and cultural experiences and queer non-binary body experience is necessary. I think yoga can relink us into feeling a body that we've othered so I find it necessary to share photos and social media accounts of various types of bodies doing yoga and accessing healing in various ways. Making yoga accessible and not simply for the privileged could also create fruitful change.
Name something that you do daily (other than yoga) to care for yourself.
I've been trying to meditate or write my thoughts down every day. Lately, I have also been eating almond M&M's and pretzels together as a snack. These practices have been good for me.
Do you drink a morning beverage and if so what is it?
Coffee with oat milk, cinnamon, and honey.
Favorite 3 or 4 postures/movements/preps for postures.
I adore how backbends make me feel--I love a back bending crescent lunge with on bent knee. I also like wacky arm balances, though it's taken me a long time to get over fearing them, and I like any pose where I'm twisted up like a pretzel and I might get stuck and start laughing.
More from Anna:
Ana was decidedly not a yoga person until she completely was one. Initially, she found yoga to be a strange and interesting challenge that, though difficult, helped her feel moments of calm and relief. Currently, she’s dedicated to her practice as important, fun, still hard, but necessary. Ana has been practicing yoga since 2012 and participated in 200, 300, and 500-hour teacher trainings at Hilltop Yoga with Hilaire Lockwood. In that time, she’s taken many workshops including a focus on properly and safely adjusting students, and trainings on trauma-sensitive yoga and yoga for survivors of eating disorders.
Ana teaches trauma-sensitive yoga for kids and teens at the Firecracker Foundation and is invested in working toward offering yoga as a healing modality for all. Ana keeps coming back to teaching--she taught English and writing at MSU, trained caregivers in survivor-centered practices at the Michigan Coalition to End Domestic and Sexual Violence, and is currently creating life skills curricula for teens and young adults at the Refugee Development Center of Lansing. A pop culture fanatic, Ana will probably lead you in classes that reference muppets, cartoons, or TV jingles to help you get into your mind, body, and overall self.