Sianna Sherman is an internationally recognized Anusara Yoga teacher who delights in sharing these teachings with poetry, stories and expressive insight. Sianna's parents and sister have been her life-long inspirations because they embody the generosity and graciousness of love that resides in a wide-open heart. In 1990, Sianna began traveling the world to study the art of yoga. Her travels spanned the continents as she delved with fervor into the richness of the traditions of yoga. In 1993, while traveling through India, she stumbled upon the beginnings of her Tantric yoga influence with an impromptu arrival at the Ganeshpuri ashram of Gurumayi Chidvilasananda. Just a few weeks earlier, she had celebrated her birthday by sitting on a boulder in the currents of the Ganges River while contemplating her life, listening to the water and hearing the promise within to follow the path of her heart. This promise has been the guiding light of her life and she feels a great rush of love for all her teachers who have helped her on this journey. In 1995, Sianna had the exquisite blessing of meeting her life-long teacher John Friend who would later found the system of yoga called Anusara Yoga. She apprenticed John for many years and continues to be near him as often as possible. From the first moment of being in the same room with John, Sianna knew she had found her teacher and that the currents of the Ganges had guided her to this momentous occasion. In 2001, she had the auspicious meeting with Dr. Douglas Brooks, a world renown scholar of Hindu Tantrism, and she began her more formal studies of Tantric philosophy with her heart and mind on fire! Today, Sianna is considered one of the most senior teachers within the Anusara Yoga tradition. In 2008, Yoga Journal chose Sianna as one of 21 Young Talented Young Teachers to Shape the Future of Yoga. She artfully weaves asana, philosophy, and love into a colorful tapestry offered from her heart. She celebrates the broad expanse of the many voices of yoga and spirituality as a feast of creative and soulful ways of being alive!
Sianna's influences are wide and vast, including many herbal apprenticeships, story-telling, music and dancing, priestess traditions of initiating young girls into the horizon of their lives as women, plant spirit medicine, martial arts, Thai massage and other forms of bodywork, poetry and the shamanic arts. There are so many teachers she wishes to acknowledge with immense appreciation. In the tradition of hatha yoga, four bright stars that Sianna always remembers with great love include: Richard Freeman who brought to life for Sianna the living inner world of yoga through metaphor and presence, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois whose smile lights up the world, Janet Hochfeld who grounded the practice of yoga in everyday life, and Grethcen Spiro who lives in the endless realms of imagination and dance. Among her female influences in the folkloric ways of women, Sianna offers her blessings to the following teachers: Gina Mcgarry, Jahanara Mangus, Mara Levin, Cascade Andersen Geller, Susun Weed, Rosemary Gladstar, and Brenda Rose Villa. To the poetic traditions of story-telling and inspiration she wishes to thank Martin Prechtel and John O'Donohue. To the expanding world of her Tantric studies, she gives thanks to Dr. Paul Muller Ortega, Sally Kempton, Dr. Robert Svoboda, Carlos Pomeda, Chris Wallis (Hareesh), Christopher Thompkins and Scott Blossom. And to the indefatigable spirit of Mary Poppins, who inspires life to burst into full color and every walk in the park to be an adventure we always remember!
When Sianna is not traveling, she lives in San Francisco with the love of her life, Kenny Graham, and in the greater Kentucky area near her family and the deciduous forests that she roamed within as a child upon her horse Misty.
Anusara™ means flowing with grace and to step into the currents of the heart. Anusara Yoga® is a powerful hatha yoga system that weaves a Tantric philosophy of intrinsic goodness with the Universal Principles of Alignment. Anusara Yoga impacts the hearts of its practitioners with its embracing philosophy and lightness of spirit. This elegant system combines precise therapeutic biomechanics with a vision of playfulness, creativity and kindness that welcomes everyone!
John Friend is one of the most charismatic and highly respected hatha yoga teachers in the world. Blending an uplifting philosophy with a sense of humor and a profound knowledge of biomechanics, John guides each student with joy and passion. In 1997, John founded Anusara Yoga as an offering of his innovative spirit and as a vision of life as beauty. Today, Anusara Yoga is practiced around the world in celebration of Grace.
Insight can come to us like a great leap of lightning and wisdom accrues with our steady release into our hearts and minds. Every now and then I feel inspired to write these flashes of insight and to share with you the little pockets of wisdom that help me along the way. May our love of life be the guiding force of the penetrating presence of insight and wisdom.
Oct. 3, 2007
For nearly 3 years, there is a poem that has been roaming around in my awareness like a wild stallion that never sleeps. This poem was gifted to me by a very good friend, Peter Goodman, at a time when my life seemed to be falling apart at every seam. I have memorized this poem by heart and many of my students will tell you that I recite it endlessly and shamelessly because every time I hear it, it hits the mark of my heart with generous profundity and I smiile each and every time.
Last Night As I Was Sleeping
Last night as I was sleeping, |
When I first read this poem, I burst into tears as I tumbled effortlessly into the graciousness of my own experience. I had been swimming upstream against the currents when my life seemed to fall apart, and I was lingering in those murky waters of feeling like I had somehow failed my own self. Upon reading this poem near the warm ocean waters of one of my favorite places on earth, Tierra de Milagros in Costa Rica (The Land of Miracles), I simply released myself into myself and there I was intact, filled with gentle strength, renewed of vision, ready for a fresh start, soft in the forgiveness of all the hurts and struggles both received and imposed upon others, and simply re-ignited with a sense of wonder and deep peace.
This poem articulates for me some of the most beautiful offerings of life. When we allow ourselves to Open To Grace, the first principle of Anusara Yoga, an entire Universe can reveal itself from inside out as the currents of our own hearts. There are always new waters of recognition to sip from; our so-called failures are being churned in the beehive of our hearts into honey that can feed others; the light of consciousness is giving birth to itself right inside of us all the time; and the Divine lives within us, as us and in the fullness of all our experiences.
In yoga, there is a word for the sweetness of honey called madhurya and the key to this notion of honey can be summed up in the words of one of my great teachers, Dr. Douglas Brooks: The Universe is here to taste its own sweetness. Each of us is drinking from the nectar of our experiences, from all the varied flowers we choose to seek, and in yoga these experiences are churned in the beehive of the heart. With yoga, we can settle into ourselves and savor our experiences, while our hearts and minds churn the drops of nectar into endless love for ourselves and one another.
It is my wish for all of us to be more gentle with ourselves, to allow the currents of love to carry us fresh and anew, and to nourish our parched inner places with a few drops of golden honey. May the promise of yoga help us remember that we are always expanding as Love.
Saprema, (with love)
