Teacher spotlight: Beth McCarthy

How do you define yoga?
Basic textbook readings define yoga as a Hindu-derived discipline that promotes spiritual unity and awakening. The word yoga stems from the sanskrit root "yuj," which means to join, unite or yoke - with self, others, the world, and ultimately, Universal Divine Essence or God. This is a classical definition of yoga, and one that new yoga practitioners and teachers are most familiar with.

Taking the definition of yoga a little deeper, there are two very specific sutras within the Sutras of Patanjali - a wonderful, sacred philosophical text dating back some 2,000 years ago that offers the definitive meaning of yoga.

For readers new to yoga, words such as Patanjali and sutra might be a bit intimidating. Simply described, Patanjali was a great sage and scholar, who took the ancient teachings of yoga and transcribed them in writing onto leaves which were stacked on top of one another, unbound, as a way of creating ease and targeted practice for teachers and students of yoga.

Each leaf revealed a beautiful truth that, when reflected upon and explored at the experiential level, brought about joy and spiritual evolution. Prior to Patanjali's generous gift of codifying the teachings, yoga was passed on through oral tradition using primarily chant in a call-and-response format between teacher and student.

Today the Sutras of Patanjali can be easily found in bound book format at most book stores. This small gem of a book is divided into four chapters and made up of 196 terse teachings called sutras, or threads of wisdom. There are several translations available for comparative study on the market today.

The two very specific sutras that define yoga in the book of Patanjali are:
Yoga Citta Vrtti Nirodha (sutra 1. 2)
Drastuh Svarupe Avasthanam (sutra 1.3)

"Yoga is experienced in that mind which has ceased to identify itself with its vacillating waves of perception. When this happens then the Seer is revealed, resting in its own essential nature and one realizes the True Self."
- Translation by Mukunda Tom Stiles

"Yoga is the uniting of consciousness of heart. United in the heart, consciousness is steadied, then we abide in our true nature, joy."
- Translation by Nischala Joy Devi

Coming back to the question, how do I define yoga? I define yoga as the practice and art of moving into stillness. As we discover the exquisite, joyful state of stillness, we unite with our self, which opens the door to uniting with friends, enemies, nature and the whole world and God.

As Erich Schiffmann, a world-renowned author and teacher, so poetically puts it, "Yoga is a way of moving into stillness in order to experience the truth of who you are."

How did you begin yoga? What made the practice stick to you?
I was in the "midst of madness" when I first began yoga. I was raising four kids all under the age of seven at the time. From the moment I stepped through the door of Kalitrea Yoga Studio in Crystal Lake, Ill., and heard a little bell sound, I knew my world would never be the same.

Within weeks, I not only rekindled my sense of self but I also found delightful new friendships, and began the process of creating a new, inspiring career as a yoga teacher. Although I reveled in the physical sensations of asana, I was most drawn, intellectually and spiritually, to the deeper philosophical teachings, as well as the therapeutic aspects of yoga.

I have so many sweet memories of that time in my life. Every evening after class, between bouncing and bathing babies, I'd share the poses, meditations, magic and memories of that evening's yoga class with my husband. After I put the kids to bed, I'd take out my yoga journal, light candles, sit in front of my fire and script out the practice I had experienced hours before. I also summarized and reflected upon the philosophical teachings that most touched my heart. At times, I painted or drew my experience, and always, I'd end the evening moving my body, flowing from pose to pose, to recreate the experience I had had just hours before. I would end my practice in stillness, and in gratitude through prayer.

Today, I have dozens of practice journals that I fondly open and visit from time to time. Recently I opened the first journal I wrote 13 years ago, when I was a brand new student of yoga. As I opened it, I offered a prayer of thanks for my teacher, Jill Thomas, and her yoga studio in Crystal Lake that helped make yoga stick for me.

What does your personal practice look like?
I currently have a beautiful practice, on and off the mat.

Abhyasa is a Sanskrit word that means "devoted spiritual practice.” I love this word and teaching. As a teacher, I ask students to tend to their spiritual practice and help guide them to find meaningful tools to help their practice stick. As a student of yoga, I sincerely adhere to the practice of abhyasa on and off the mat.

Nischala Joy Devi, who is the author of the first ever feminine translation of the yoga sutras, translates abhyasa in sutra 1.14, as being a practice that is nurtured by a sustained, steady rhythm and a dedicated heart.

On the mat, my practice includes intention, asana (primarily in the Viniyoga tradition), pranayama, restorative yoga, contemplative practice, meditation, ritual, sutra study, journaling, poetry reading and prayer.

I was diagnosed with breast cancer last fall and underwent surgery in December. Due to my diagnosis, my practice changed. It deepened. I included metta meditation, loving kindness compassion practice, to quell the tenderness and pain I felt for others living with cancer and illness.

Metta helped transform my personal experience of cancer. It helped to deepen my commitment to serve others as a yoga therapist, and broadened and optimized my mind during a very difficult time.

At the physical level, therapeutic daily asana prepared my body for surgery and helped me to heal very quickly. I cooked a delicious Christmas dinner for my family single handedly (and single breasted!) one week after surgery. I had full range of motion within two weeks of surgery, and now six months later, I'm stronger, healthier, happier and filled with life direction more than ever before. I attribute this to dedicated yoga practice.

Off the mat, my practice is equally as transformative and strong. I'm sure many of you have heard the term "living your yoga." I sincerely do my personal best on a day-to-day basis to live my yoga. Being human, I have good days and not so good days, but my practice is sincere and dedicated - abhyasa.

What and where do you teach?
I'm the owner of Healing Through Yoga, a yoga therapy business located in the Briargate community. I teach in my studio, working one-on-one with individuals who have structural imbalances, injuries, emotional trauma and chronic health challenges.

I specialize in back health, women's health issues and yoga for cancer survivors. In addition to my private practice, I teach a variety of therapeutic and non-therapeutic classes, workshops and series at my studio. I have a bunch of fun summer workshops scheduled and will be offering a Back to Health and Awakening Joy for Women series at the end of the summer.

I'm also the creator of Awakening Joy for Women, a yoga and healing arts inspired business. I offer workshops, classes, retreats and private mentoring services for women seeking to awaken joy and renewed direction in their life. They are available through my studio. I lead retreats throughout the year at Old Town Yoga in Fort Collins, and will be rounding up a bunch of beautiful women to join me on retreat later this summer at Horseshoe Lodge in Beulah, Colorado.

Outside of my studio, I teach community and employee classes at Penrose Hospital at both locations. I've been teaching there for more than 10 years. In the past, I volunteered my services as a yoga therapist, offering lunch time classes for cancer patients. I've also offered my Back to Health series several times there. Many of the students who graced my classes ten years ago are still students today. I have a strong community of friends at Penrose Hospital and simply love my connection there.

I also teach a weekly class at the Briargate YMCA. My career as a yoga teacher was initiated there. At the time, it was the fastest growing Y in the country. My classes were enormous. This served to grow my "teacher wings" very quickly! I became a strong and confident teacher early on in my career, and learned how to address health conditions within a large classroom setting.This sparked my love of yoga at the therapeutic level and helped guide me to becoming a Structural Yoga Therapist. Through my relationship with the Briargate YMCA and its members, I've cultivated dozens upon dozens of precious friendships and opportunities that I continue to be blessed by today.

The styles of yoga I teach are called Viniyoga and Structural™ Yoga Therapy. Both styles of yoga are highly therapeutic, and honor the deeper traditions and practices of yoga. As an example, Viniyoga incorporates intention, chant, mudra, philosophy, adaptation, asana, pranayama, meditation, mantra and ritual all eloquently sequenced within the practice. It's a deeply nourishing and balancing style of yoga.

Structural™ Yoga Therapy offers many of the same Components and benefits of Viniyoga. In addition, there is a sequence called the Joint Freeing Series that promotes overall balance and freedom at the physical level. In my training, I learned highly therapeutic adaptations to the Joint Freeing Series that I use primarily on a one-on-one basis or in a therapeutic classroom setting. For readers interested in gaining an overview of Structural™ Yoga Therapy and the Joint Freeing Series, you may refer to Mukunda Stiles' book Structural™ Yoga Therapy.

How long have you been teaching? What is your training?
I have taught yoga for 13 years. I'm registered with Yoga Alliance at the RYT E500 level.

My initial teacher training program was through the Temple of Kriya Yoga in Chicago, a year-long Iyengar-inspired 200 hour teacher training program. It laid a solid foundation for me at every level, especially in terms of structural alignment and form. Interestingly, I teach a form of yoga now called Viniyoga. It differs greatly from Iyengar yoga. Viniyoga emphasizes function over form, without the embellishment of props. I honor and value both styles of yoga, and incorporate them into the classroom as well as into my personal practice.

I went on to receive a 700-hour certification as a Structural™ Yoga Therapist through Mukunda Tom Stiles in Boulder, Colorado. This was a rigorous training and one I'm very proud of completing! My graduation paper was on Parkinson's Disease with Essential Tremor Syndrome. I invite readers to view my paper by visiting the Structural Yoga Therapy section of my website: HealingThroughYoga.net.

In 2008, I received a 200-hour certification as a Viniyoga teacher, and in 2010, I went on to receive a 500-hour training. Both trainings were through Fort Collins Yoga Studio in Colorado. River Cummings, a senior Viniyoga teacher and Viniyoga Therapist, facilitated both programs. She is a truly gifted teacher. I hold memories of this 200-hour training closest to my heart, from developing great friendships, to traveling with River to Costa Rica, to deepening my personal practice, and to becoming the yoga teacher and therapist I am today.

In addition to these trainings, I hold a certificate of completion through the Pacific Institute of Yoga Therapy in Seattle for attending Yoga For Optimal Back Health, an advanced training for yoga teachers and medical professionals. Robin Rothenberg, a senior Viniyoga teacher and therapist, developed this training program for teachers and professionals within the medical community. It came about as a result of a nationally acclaimed study she co-wrote with Gary Kraftsow on the benefits of yoga therapy for back health. The study was published in the Internal Annals of Medicine in 2005.

I will take a 50-hour intensive training program in Boulder this summer with Laura Kupperman, called Yoga for Survivors. Due to my recent experience with cancer, I'm passionate about offering safe, effective yoga classes for people diagnosed with cancer.

Each training has enhanced my path at a profound level both personally and professionally. I've been blessed in studying under many incredible teachers and I am deeply appreciative for the way they influenced the quality of my personal and professional life today.

Why do you teach or favorite part of teaching?
My passion as a teacher of yoga is to help others heal, and through healing and health, to find happiness and renewed life direction using yoga. Each of us has a special calling or purpose in life. Through yoga, as we unravel the tension and stress that hinders our ability to tap into our essence, we come to understand and know our purpose in life. That is why coming to a daily stillness is essential. Stillness guides us in the direction of our dreams, so we may imprint our unique beauty and gifts onto the world. That's why we're all here. To give of ourselves. To make the world a better place. My favorite part of being a teacher is witnessing students as they heal and blossom through yoga, and in doing so, become a light for others.

How has yoga changed you?
Yoga hasn't necessarily "changed" me. Instead, it's helped me to realize, through my stillness practice, that I don't need to change at all. Before yoga, I held a narrow, judgmental, limiting view of myself. Yoga helped to peel away this negative view and reveal the light of who I am.

Yoga has also helped me to help others come to a place of understanding and celebrating the preciousness of who they are at their essence, which is perfect and unchangeable. All we need to do is stop moving, and be still, to know our perfect nature.

Thich Nhat Hahn, a Vietnamese monk, who is a teacher, author, poet and peace activist shares that through the practice of tapping into our essential nature, we effortlessly find ourselves on the shore of perfect well-being.

"Touched by the seed of insight within us, we see what to do and what not to do, and suddenly we find ourselves on the shore of healing, well being and health." - Thich Nhat Hahn

How has yoga changed me? By informing me I don't need to change at all.

Favorite part of yoga?
I suppose my favorite part of yoga is reading and studying multiple translations of the Sutras of Patanjali, and then, after personal practice, creatively bringing them into the classroom.

Within the sutras there lie many "models" that function as a framework for realizing healing, happiness and joyful transformation. I never grow tired of its teachings and practices. Every time I open this book, I am drawn into its magic.

The Sutras of Patanjali offer a meaningful, creative platform for me to live by and to teach from. Within the classroom, I weave together intention, poetry, music, metaphor, breath, mindfulness, meditation, visualization, contemplation and Viniyoga-inspired movement explorations in the service of teaching a sutra or grouping of sutras.

What or who is your greatest teacher?
Part of my spiritual practice includes communing with nature. Come rain or sunshine, I take time each day to be with myself outdoors. When weather is pretty, I practice my yoga outdoors, and after yoga, I rest quietly in the arms of nature for a time.

When I am with her, she keeps me company, soothes my mind and provides answers and direction.

John O'Donohue, an Irish poet and Catholic scholar who has written several books, including Anam Cara and Eternal Echoes, writes: "Nature senses the longing that is within us, the restlessness that never lets us settle. She takes us into the tranquility of her stillness if we visit her. We slip into her quiet contemplation and inhabit for a while the depth of her ancient longing, and through her, we become one with the rhythm of the universe."

Nature is my great teacher.

One piece of yogic teaching you would share with the world?
One of my favorite quotes is by an unknown author:

"Life is is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it's learning how to dance in the rain."

My one piece of yogic advice is to dance!

Stop waiting for the storms in your internal and external world to pass, and start living the life of your dreams. Within the present moment there is always bright sunshine, blue skies and clear purpose and unbound possibility.

Heartache, pain, suffering and trauma are an unavoidable part of life. Learn to dance in the rain.

How to find you (website, Facebook, Twitter, etc.):
To learn more about my service and class offerings: HealingThroughYoga.net, 719-209-8528 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. .