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Anna Sunderland Engels
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About Anna

Dr. Anna Engels is a Co-Founder of Yoga Lab Studio in State College, PA, and creator of Sunny Get Up.  She is a yoga teacher registered at the E-RYT 500 and YACEP levels with Yoga Alliance.  Her yoga teaching and practice combines her background in psychology with a strong grounding in anatomy and functional movement to create intelligent and fun sequences that flow with the breath and connect you to your core. She has a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, and her clinical interests and academic research focus on stress, anxiety, depression, and their associated patterns of brain activity using fMRI. She is also a photographer and loves traveling the world, capturing moments of beauty.  She recently launched Sunny Get Up - a line of eco-friendly yoga pants with designs drawn from her nature photography - with the goal to raise money for environmental charities. She currently teaches yoga at Yoga Lab and in the Penn State Kinesiology Department.

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Strong Foundations Tonight: Seek the Light

2/20/2018

 
Picture
Strong Foundations Theme Tonight:
“Seek the Light – It’s More Than Flipping a Switch”

Q. How many yogis does it take to change a light bulb?
A. No one knows – they’re all off seeking the light.
I made that one up. But there are lots of yogi light bulb jokes out there - for some good punch lines CLICK HERE  

I recently changed several burned out light bulbs in our house. That might not sound like much, but some of them had been burned out for longer than I care to admit, and actually changing them felt like an accomplishment. Now when I flip a switch the light actually comes on, but it took some action to get there – remembering to buy light bulbs from the store, getting on a stool for hard to reach places, unscrewing light covers, etc. For a while that was just not a top priority, so instead I turned on a different lamp or just adapted to dimmer light.

It’s amazing how adaptable we are as human beings, but sometimes we get used to darkness, when really what we need to do is take action to change the bulb.
This goes for our bodies too – when we’re limited in our mobility or strength, we develop compensatory movement patterns even if they are suboptimal. We begin to limit our movement possibilities without always realizing that the light has dimmed.
This reminded me of a recent post from my yoga teacher:

“We don’t mean to. We would never do it purposely. We limit our movement experience, day by day, month by month, year by year. And, in doing so, we limit our life experience as well-the abundance, the joy, the connection, the curiosity. But, know this for sure. We can always return to the original self, free and mobile, supple and strong. Instead of limitations, set reverberations. Work your mobility, and fortify your foundation.” – Lara Heimann

I love that – “work your mobility and fortify your foundation.” Let’s do the work, take action, with interest and curiosity, so that when you flip the switch and flip upside down you feel light and bright and free, and you see the light in yourself and in others.

Strong Foundations Tonight at Yoga Lab
5:45 – 7:15pm

See you there.

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