This month we reached out to Elizabeth U for a student profile. Elizabeth is a radiant yogini who can often be seen in morning classes. She hails from East Marin and has been living in Bolinas since 2007, in a little cabin on a hill that she adores.

Elizabeth specializes in financing for sustainable food operations, and she moved to West Marin for its strong local and sustainable food community. She has worked for several businesses and organizations in the bay area, and now runs her own nonprofit, Finance for Food (www.financeforfood.com). Her office is in Inverness Park, but she travels quite a bit giving workshops and speaking all over the country.

Her yoga journey began after graduating from college in Montreal. “I spent several years bopping between Yosemite, Joshua Tree, and my parents’ house trying to be a climbing bum… this turned out to NOT be a good fit for me, but I did learn my first yoga poses from my climbing friends!” She moved back to the Bay Area in 2002 and discovered Bikram Yoga for a while but decided that it seemed to perpetuate her Type A personality, and moved on to explore vinyasa flow styles and some yin yoga.

After moving to Bolinas, she started practicing with James Fox, who used to teach every Saturday morning in the Bolinas Community Center. This really inspired her to deepen her yoga and meditation practice. When James stopped teaching because his Prison Yoga project took off (he recently wrote a yoga and meditation book for prisoners), Elizabeth started coming to Yoga Toes, first once or twice a week, and now she tries to come at least 3 or 4 times a week if she’s not on the road. “I love the constancy of the studio, the teachers, the people who come to practice, even the location in a working barn! Even if I’ve been gone for weeks I come back and it’s so obvious that the calm, the magic of the practice in that space has been going strong while I’ve been away.”

Elizabeth said she’s at the point where she just doesn’t feel right if she doesn’t get on the mat regularly. She comes mostly for the benefits to her state of mind, though she says the physical benefits are immediately noticeable as well. “It’s as if my entire outlook becomes more flexible and open as I open up and stretch my body,” she said.

When she’s not doing yoga? As a writer, Elizabeth spends most of her waking hours hunched over a computer. But in addition to her dedicated yoga practice, she loves to hike, and she also just started surfing. “I’ve been trying to get out in the water every day that I’m in town – there’s something really magical about taking in the sunset while bobbing about with friends in the ocean!” She has also recently taken up the electric bass, and she says “practical, simple cooking is one of my main joys in life.”

“There is so much about Yoga Toes that I love. I love that the meditation session and gentle class is always there, every morning, if I commit to showing up. I love that Amanda just exudes love and light and care, and it’s so fun that Nick’s classes sometimes dissolve into spontaneous dance parties! There’s also something really special and accepting about the space itself, and the community of people who show up – if I’m going through a rough patch, frequently something will shift and open up over the course of a class, and I’ll find myself sobbing by the end, letting it all flow out, accepting whatever is going on rather than fighting it back… and nobody ever tries to talk me out of my tears, people will just nod or bow or even congratulate me for moving through my stuff, it’s like being held, I so appreciate that!”

We love you Elizabeth!!