About Me

I am a daily yoga practitioner, yoga teacher, teacher trainer, wellness consultant, and writer. My first two books, Yoga For Healthy Knees and Yoga For Computer Users, were published by Rodmell Press as part of their Yoga Shorts series. I am currently at work on a new book about using yoga practice to support emotional well-being.

I started yoga on a whim – actually, at the insistence of a friend – sometime around 1986. I wandered very skeptically into a class at a neighborhood studio and somehow never really left.  The class I happened in on was an Iyengar class, and I was hugely surprised by how challenging it was. In fact, I found the standing poses torturous for many years. What kept me coming back was how great I felt after class. It was an amazing experience for me – no matter how frazzled, fatigued, or upset I might have been when I got there, I left each class feeling calm, vitalized, sometimes even blissed. But what really hooked me was the discovery that yoga had cleared up my chronic knee pain – due to multiple injuries in my teens and early twenties – after extensive physical therapy has failed to do so. That’s when I started to take yoga seriously. So began a long journey of riding the wave of practice. Gradually my exploration of yoga moved from a purely physical discipline to a deepening spiritual exploration, with asana eventually becoming the vehicle rather than the point.

Off of the yoga mat, I am a regular person. I live in the Lake Merritt  neighborhood of Oakland, one of the most culturally and ethnically diverse areas in the U.S. On weekends I hike the trails of the beautiful San Francisco Bay Area. I follow politics, and have strong opinions on most issues. I adore my two nieces and my nephew (and their parents are pretty cool too). I am a lifelong bookworm, always wish I had more time to read. I love chocolate.

About my practice & my personal philosophy

Typically I practice five days a week, and take weekends off. It hasn’t been an easy place to get to and there are still constant challenges. But those five mornings a week, I put in an hour or two on the mat. I have a strong background in the Iyengar method, but I’ve also explored both Asthtanga Vinyasa and Kripalu in some depth, and bring an eclectic mix to my practice, which varies quite a bit from day to day. In any given week, I do everything from a gentle restorative practice to mostly pranayama and meditation to a challenging backbend sequence with 20 or 30 urdvha dhanurasanas.

Developing my practice has been a long and constantly evolving journey. Those of us who have explored yoga in any depth know that to practice is to come face to face with our inner selves, and to find everything from our best to our worst, from inspiration to resistance to profound self-doubt.

What I do know for sure is that yoga is an extraordinary resource. The journey of yoga practice is not about achieving advanced poses or looking like a model from the pages of a glossy yoga magazine, but about learning to use the tools of yoga to care for and heal ourselves on many levels.  I believe practice can and should nourish our whole being -- body, mind and spirit. The vibrant good health hatha yoga can offer creates an ideal foundation for personal and spiritual growth.

For More About Me

Visit my website @ www.sandyblaine.com
and my yoga studio at www.alamedayogastation.com