Sianna Sherman graciously agreed to be interviewed by Bay Shakti on Saturday, December 12th. Yours Truly, with all the Holiday Fanfare, did not have a chance to post this interview until now. The full interview will come in a 4 part installment, approximately 30 minutes total with Sianna. Stay tuned for the other 3 installments, coming very soon.
(If you’re reading via email or rss, please visit the blog for the video.)
During the interview, I found Sianna’s demeanor to be inviting and warm, despite the chilly hallway at Yoga Kula, San Francisco. We would have taped upstairs in the studio proper, but she was full throttle in the midst of teaching her immersion, and we, at Bay Shakti, were happy to have half an hour with her during the immersion break. While the immersionist yogis took their breaks upstairs during an unusually cold San Francisco day, Sianna, my husband Brad as the camera-man, and I headed downstairs to the relatively quiet hallway.
Sianna Sherman's Wheel of Life Immersion at Yoga Kula, San Francisco
Sianna Sherman is not only one of the world’s foremost yoginis, but also one of the most brilliant minds in Anusara yoga. If you have never taken a class or workshop with Sianna, she is most definitely a poetess, weaving beautiful, uplifting language around asana like a tapestry. You can’t help but get swept up into her beauty and grace, which helps heighten your own practice. She really is a most exquisite being, far from ordinary, and more in the stratosphere of a divine goddess tethered to the here and now to teach us yoga and how to be nicer people.
Sianna Sherman
Transcript of the Interview:
Q. So I wanted to start with a question around inspiration. What gives you inspiration in this life and who?
A. So I’d like to begin with my parents, because I feel that my parents and my sister really embody love, and they help so many people and they are totally committed to helping every single person that they meet that could require help in some way, and they have been this way ever since I can remember and even in the times that I personally have felt maybe more like going into my room and being private and quiet they were the ones who were just like come on, you know and connect with us and let’s go help someone. It’s amazing that they hold this very constant state of love for each other and for the people that they meet, and so that’s really one of my biggest inspirations. I’m also immensely inspired by nature and especially trees. I love to be in forests, I love the redwoods of California. I love all trees, but 5 years ago it was really the Redwood trees that drew me out here when I made a big move from the East Coast out to here. So I love trees and I love all of nature. And I love poetry, it inspires me greatly and Tantric teachings inspire me a lot, the text of Tantra, the stories, I love story tellers, {I} forgot about that, story tellers and music, absolutely light me on fire and there’s more too {laugh}.
Q. in a nutshelll {laugh}…yeah…Can you speak about the power of Revelation, you mentioned the Tantic teachings, what in particular inspires you about Anusara? Why Anusara of all the of yoga systems?
A. Oh, okay that’s beautiful. So Anusara, for me one of the things that just sort of went like this to me {gestures an embrace} invited me right into the best parts of myself is that in Anusara, we have what’s called First Principle and it’s called Opening to Grace. And in this First Principle, it’s allowing ourselves to be become more sensitive, more spacious, more with attunement, more listening, more present with however something is in the moment, and allowing ourselves to feel compassion and love in ways that we’re connected to ourselves and more than just ourselves in the moment, connected to the bigger picture we like to say in Anusara, so for me when I first started studying Anusara, it was so huge, because it wasn’t just about being in the pose, like okay, come to your breath, we have all these ways of opening to grace, come to your back body, your foundation, but it was more like what was happening in my life. So when I would be inside a situation in my life that was maybe challenging for me, I would actually start to ask myself, what does Open to Grace look like right now in this moment in this situation, when I’m off my yoga mat, and here I am feeling all these challenges or intensities, or something that is pulling me off-center in a big way, and I started really asking the question, what does Opening to Grace look like right now in this moment and what would happen was an immediate bonding with a greater sense of love and self-love inside myself.
To find out more about Sianna Sherman and where she is teaching, check out OpentoGrace.com
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I am so pleased to learn more about Sianna. What sweet light.
Leela, thank you for posting a comment all the way from TN, my home state! I agree, Sianna has a very sweet light about her, well put!
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