Yoga studies – 2005 - Present
Yoga teaching – 2007 – Present

I first encountered yoga during college, when my roommate and I attempted workouts by following instructions from a book. Since then, I have practiced yoga in various forms and styles until three years ago, when I began studying and practicing regularly at Spacious Heart Yoga with Kara Schmidt. I appreciate the heart-centered philosophy of Anusara® Yoga and its affirmation of the beauty in every body.

While nursing my mother through the last stages of congestive heart failure, I became especially aware of the physical powers of the heart and the breath, and was inspired to more consciously nurture the heart and the breath in my own practice. I have found in a deeper study of yoga philosophy an affirmation of life, an interconnection with others, and an acceptance of self. I have also discovered how to practice yoga in my everyday life with a new awareness of posture and attitude. By substituting for Kara and leading guided practices in Yoga for during my writing workshops, I have discovered the joy of sharing Yoga with others.

I am a writer of poetry and essays, an anthologist, and a teacher of English and Creative Writing at Goshen College. I have published a book a poems, Empty Room with Light  a book of poems, and editor of  and edited an anthology, A Cappella: Mennonite Voices in Poetry. I have taught classes in the spiritual writings of women and the literature of war and peace, and conduct workshops in poetry writing and writing as a spiritual practice. In the summer of 2008 I led a writing workshop, “Listen for the Loons,” with poet Julia Kasdorf at Wilderness Wind in Ely, Minnesota where I began every morning with yoga and guided mediation by the lake.

I am also an avid photographer and love to garden and travel, two hobbies that sometimes conflict.

While working towards becoming a yoga teacher, I am also pursuing training as a spiritual guide. I am interested in the intersections of religions, in particular the conversation between Christian and Buddhist practices of peace and compassion, and I have long been a fellow-traveler with silent meeting Quakers. I am married to Merv Smucker, a clinical psychologist, with whom I have four children ranging in ages from 24 to 10, and we are grandparents of two.