Bay Shakti Talks: Interview with Sianna Sherman, Part 3

Q: Sianna, can your walk me through like a day in the life?

A. {Sianna} Are you sure? {laughs}

{Ginger} Because Kenny Graham, who is a certified Anusara teacher who teaches with Sianna here on Wednesday nights, he’s mentioned a couple of times that you roll out of bed and into hanumanasana and for those of your who are watching, that’s the splits.  So, does your day really start like that, in a seamless Yoga practice that way?

Sianna in hanumanasana pose

{Sianna} My day, I.. yeah, I do hanuman pretty soon.  It’s true, actually.  It’s one of my favorite things to do, ’cause it energizes me and I feel like I’m in my body when I’m do hanumanasana.  I mean, it feels really good to do the splits, for me, and then I sit for meditation, right?  So usually, okay, so I wake up and I get up.  I usually get up pretty early and I make tea.  I really like to make Chai especially and I like to chant some mantras while I’m making Chai and the world is still really quiet.  I like getting up when the world is quiet.  And that’s actually important for me to get up when the world is quiet because I tend to be an active person.  So, if I wake up, like when I wake up later when the world is already awake, I sort of wake up into the buzz and I already can buzz pretty loudly.  So, it’s really good for me to wake up when the world is quiet and then I just have this really sweet time and I make Chai usually and I chant some mantras, and then I do a few little breathing exercises, and a few little asanas, hanuman being one, and then I sit for meditation.  I have a meditation practice that I love very much and I feel is the foundation of my day.

Q; Do you have a sacred space in your home, a Puja, an alter?

A. Yes, well, you know, we are living in San Francisco and we have a beautiful, gorgeous small/little apartment where the living room is the office, is the meditation/yoga room, is where we have gatherings and where we sometimes eat and watch movies.  So, one space serves as everything.  But I have a special cushion and a meditation. The original meaning of asana is 1) is it means seat, but it also means, it typically it would be like a wool cloth or a lion or tiger skin or something like this and it’s what you place between the seat that you take and with the earth.  So that there’s a threshold place that’s being met.  So, I have what’s called an asana, this special seat and that is only used for that.  So that’s what makes it very special, I guess, in that way.  I light candles and I usually use some sage and I just say a prayer and I sit for meditation and that’s the beginning of my day.  Do you want me to go on with the rest of my day?

Q: Sure!  Do you want to talk about your teaching?

A. {Sianna} Oh, well do you?.. I mean, okay. So, meditation begins it, and then my days are very busy.  They are really full.  So, I teach a lot, I have my personal practices, then you have the business that you’re running, you know, with all of this, and I now have, the world’s greatest personal assistant. His name is Jeremy Simon. I love Jeremy, LOVE Jeremy. He saves my life every day.

{Ginger} Jeremy is a great teacher here in San Francisco.

{Sianna} Yes, he is also a great teacher here of AcroYoga and Anusara. So Jeremy is like, he’s amazing for me. So we have a lot of correspondence throughout the day… and then I find times to play and I really try to find time to be in nature, so we live close to the water.  Kenny and I love to take walks by the water and by the beach and spend time in that way.

Q: What would surprise viewers here, about you?

A. Hmm…okay. Well, I have had 3 official names.  First names.  Okay, do I have to tell you what they are? {laughs}

So, there was my birth name is Sheri, and that is a very beautiful name that my mother and father gave me and I still hold that one close to my heart and my personal family still uses this name for me.  Then, about, in my early 20′s I was part of a priestess group in the Celtic tradition that I was a part of for about 8 years and I was initiated with another name, and then that became my legal name.  That name was Raven. Then, 8 years into that name, John and I…I was telling John… and I had met John Friend as Raven, and he liked that because he likes all of the, you know, the Pagan festivals and nature and all of this, so we had a nice connection there.  And then I said to John though one day, I said you know, I think it’s time for a new name and I said, because my life started to become more public.  So when I was more in the priestess tradition, I was still in Yoga and teaching, but I had a quieter life and we did ceremonies for people, but it was in a circle of people that understood these, sort of, initiated names.  So, then as my life became in greater circles of publicity, so many people would always ask, what’s Raven mean?  Where’d that come from, you know? And I would tell them, but sometimes they understood, and sometimes it didn’t make a connection.  So, I said to John, you know, I’m going to keep Raven as my personal ceremony name in this way, but now it’s time for another name for this next phase of life.  And so, we thought about it for a long time and he would call me up and he would be like, oh, I thought of this name, what do you think of this name?  Then I would call him back and say, not that name, what about this name?  So we tried.  Then one day I was sitting with my full birth name, and I just wrote it all out on a piece of paper and I thought to myself, my name must be already here.  So I wrote out my whole birth name, which is Sheri Anna Cecilia Sherman… and Anna was my Mom’s Mom.  So my grandmother, Cecilia, my Dad’s Mom.. and I looked at the spelling of all.. and I started pulling sounds and letters out and I created this matrix that became Sianna.  It was in honor of the spelling of my original birth name and then my two grandmothers Cecilia and Anna — Sianna.  And then I called John and I said, I think I have it and I said, Sianna.  He was real quiet… and he said, maybe. Then some months went by and we were practicing and in the practice he said, Sianna, you know, take your thigh bone back, or whatever.  And I immediately turned around and did it and I was like, oh! it worked, you know?… like I wasn’t even…he caught me off guard and it worked and then at the end of that workshop in front of a couple hundred people he initiated me officially as Sianna, and then that became my third legal name.  So there we are.

{Ginger} What a fascinating story! I had no idea. The incarnations. Wow!

To find out more about Sianna Sherman and where she is teaching, check out OpentoGrace.com