About April
I'm a yoga teacher, feminine rites practitioner, and writer based in the Pacific Northwest.
I offer classes, special events, guided ritual and retreats on the Oregon coast and Portland.
For five years, prior to moving to the Oregon coast in 2021, I taught multiple public classes every day of the week in Portland. I also hosted seasonal workshops and special events in spaces across the city. My classes were primarily based out of the RoseHips Movement studio (formerly "Roseway Yoga") in NE Portland. I also taught yoga classes at AfterGlow Yoga, the West Hills Racquet Club, Zoo Health Club, various climbing gyms, private offices and other venues in Portland and the surrounding region. I now teach and offer workshops, retreats and special events on the OR coast.
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The death/life portals of illness and injury that I've experienced have brought the hidden gifts of body, mind, and soul blossoming into my life. Movement practices like yoga, dance, cycling, running & swimming are sacred to me, as are practices like breathwork, creative visualization and spiritual journeying. I guide yoga & creative movement, Akashic Records readings, energy work, meditative journeying, and feminine rites practices because it lights me up to help others through their own portals of expansion. My aim is to create the spaces for people to spark peace and joy in their bodies, and connect with their soul wisdom & self-expression.
My group classes, rites of passage work, meditative journeying & guided rituals are informed both by years of study (of yoga, barre, Pilates, breathwork & more), intuitive insights, and the ancient, earth-based practices of my ancestors in celtic and pre-celtic Ireland, Wales & Scotland, as well as folk magic from my ancestry in the Portuguese Azores.
I am in the process of creating the business Bodies of Water, which I dream will one day contain a brick & mortar / retreat space.
Workshops, Retreats & Special Events
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Over the last decade I've held space for many yoga and movement workshops, women's full/dark moon circles, feminine rites of passage experiences, grief circles, guided meditation workshops, ceremonies for the solstices and equinoxes, group ceremony (including wedding yoga & sacred union energy work), chakra/energy-center rebalancing workshops and more. At the RoseHips studio, I also offered reiki and intuitive readings.
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In addition to working in yoga studios, climbing gyms and elsewhere, I've offered yoga and mindfulness practices to people under the care of rehabilitation facilities, as well as large college campus events, farmers markets, fundraisers and other community events. I previously taught children's yoga in public and private schools across Portland. I even taught Goat Yoga for a time!
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In May of 2022 I co-hosted a 3-day Beltane Full Moon Retreat near my home on the OR coast with RoseHips Movement. We plan to collaborate on regular seasonal retreats as well as special workshops on the coast, in Portland and beyond.
Credentials
I'm a professionally certified yoga teacher (E-RYT® 200, YACEP®) and completed my teacher training through the beloved Yoga Tree program in San Francisco in 2015, with a world-renowned group of teachers who offered trainings based in Ashtanga, Anusara, Iyengar, and Forrest yoga-based techniques as well as prenatal and post-partum yoga. I also bring primal yoga and intuitive movement, guided meditation/visualization, and breathing techniques into many of my classes.
In addition to yoga, I am also a certified barre instructor, Pilates instructor, level II reiki master, and "Maiden to Mother" feminine rites of passage mentor. I've completed special trainings in yoga nidra, somatic breathwork, guided meditation, prenatal and postpartum yoga, children's yoga, crystal energy therapy, aromatherapy and more.
Readings
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For as long as I can remember, I have offered & played with intuitive readings for family and friends. After a transformational, 2-year experience of debilitating, long-term illness that affected my heart and nervous system, and caused chronic insomnia (due to long term side effects of an infection with COVID-19 in 2020), I began to offer my channelled readings more publicly, focused primarily on Akashic Records / past life regressions. The experience of facing the reality of our impermanence in this life, the reality of death, really shook me awake to the urgency be our fully expressed selves without apology.
The feminine/intuitive side of our nature as humans has been buried and undermined for too long. It is vital that we open these creative pathways back up for ourselves. After thousands of years of colonialism, religious cooption, witch hunts and the intentional stamping out of ancient feminine ways (which were once celebrated as sacred by cultures around the globe), we have finally reached a point in history where it is safe to publicly recall our intuitive connections with the innate wisdom of nature. This is because so many of us are remembering the magic at once.
My work is largely intuitive, rooted in many years of training and study.
My hope is to help people remember themselves at the soul level, and celebrate life through mindfulness, ritual and expressive movement.
Other Hats
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In addition to this work, I am a professional writer/editor and have worked for 15 years as a journalist. My work is published in many national and international outlets. I am a former managing editor for the national news site AlterNet, and cofounded two separate psychedelics and plant medicine focused news outlets: Reset.me and Lucid.news. I currently work as an editor for the Independent Media Institute's Local Peace Economy project.
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I am also part of the Cosmic Sister network, and received a Cosmic Sisters of Cannabis grant in 2016 to write “Why Women Are Leading the Charge to (Re)unite Cannabis and Yoga,” the first article about cannabis and yoga ever published in LA Yoga.
In these challenging times we are living, I recognize the imperative for humanity to shift our collective ways and understand ourselves as a part of nature. I stand for the truth that Black Lives Matter and for a psychedelic, eco-feminism that is intersectional. I do my best put my privilege as a white woman to use for this world that is in desperate need of strong, healed feminine energy and balance.
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Unconditional love for the planet and all beings guides my work, and I hope to wake this energy up in the people I have the honor to work with.