About Christine, YogaGuide:
I'm Christine Stump and I was a paramedic on the streets of Albuquerque for 10 years working emergencies and, sometimes as part of a dynamic team, saving lives. Now I help people by giving them tools to deal with the everyday emergencies of modern life and feel empowered in their bodies and lives. Yoga is the tool I used for myself and now it's what I teach.
After teaching yoga part time for 8 years, I dedicated myself to teaching and sharing the user manual to your body full time in November 2014. I've studied Yin, Restorative, Ashtanga, Iyengar, Raja and am Core Strength Vinyasa trained (not certified) - all styles of Hatha Yoga, the only style that matters. Each style contributes ways of engaging and cueing the poses that can illuminate different students, depending on their goals, challenges, needs and resources. I posses an intimate understanding of the anatomy and physiology of yoga and the tools to adapt it specifically to you. You come before any style, any preconception or any pose. Yoga is for you - not the other way around.
Desikachar, whose work deeply influences my teaching, instructs that we must adapt the yoga to the student and never the student to the yoga. You deserve a practice that adapts to what you bring to the mat on any given day, no matter what. I have the experience, training and background to provide you this experience and help you learn how to do it for yourself when you need.
"Too often "fitness" only wears old grooves more deeply into our thought patterns, self-talk and even muscular engagement patterns. Yoga is different because you begin with what is most true about you: your wholeness. From this place, when it is acknowledged and nurtured, you can shift patterns, identifications and habits creating the lift you want."
After teaching yoga part time for 8 years, I dedicated myself to teaching and sharing the user manual to your body full time in November 2014. I've studied Yin, Restorative, Ashtanga, Iyengar, Raja and am Core Strength Vinyasa trained (not certified) - all styles of Hatha Yoga, the only style that matters. Each style contributes ways of engaging and cueing the poses that can illuminate different students, depending on their goals, challenges, needs and resources. I posses an intimate understanding of the anatomy and physiology of yoga and the tools to adapt it specifically to you. You come before any style, any preconception or any pose. Yoga is for you - not the other way around.
Desikachar, whose work deeply influences my teaching, instructs that we must adapt the yoga to the student and never the student to the yoga. You deserve a practice that adapts to what you bring to the mat on any given day, no matter what. I have the experience, training and background to provide you this experience and help you learn how to do it for yourself when you need.
"Too often "fitness" only wears old grooves more deeply into our thought patterns, self-talk and even muscular engagement patterns. Yoga is different because you begin with what is most true about you: your wholeness. From this place, when it is acknowledged and nurtured, you can shift patterns, identifications and habits creating the lift you want."
How I got here and my yoga philosophy:
My first memory of doing yoga was just after the casts were removed, after I began to walk and before I began to talk (I was late bloomer when it came to gab). My Mom was doing yoga with the leotard lady on the television. Do you remember her? She wore a blue leotard and had the most soothing voice. Mom did what she did and I did what Mom did. Kind of. I would practice with more or less discipline throughout my teens, exploring yoga and meditation from books, trying to do what the books said was possible. I studied Reiki, meditated in a Sensory Deprivation Tank as part of an experiment on meditation, and was part of a Rainbow Gathering - but mostly I was on my own, experimenting and sometimes having breakthroughs.
I studied yoga while teaching Western Philosophy in the Midwest more than 25 years ago. Logic and rhetoric - as well as my aggressive fitness routine - left me seeking mind-body integration, greater understanding and peace. Those practices from books were awkward and had limited - but palpable - results. When I found an outdoor Tai Chi class with a teacher whose humor equalled his discipline, I detoured through this related world of contemplative exercise. I still use techniques and ideas Sifu Kenny taught, and incorporate them in classes.
I studied yoga while teaching Western Philosophy in the Midwest more than 25 years ago. Logic and rhetoric - as well as my aggressive fitness routine - left me seeking mind-body integration, greater understanding and peace. Those practices from books were awkward and had limited - but palpable - results. When I found an outdoor Tai Chi class with a teacher whose humor equalled his discipline, I detoured through this related world of contemplative exercise. I still use techniques and ideas Sifu Kenny taught, and incorporate them in classes.
Born with a birth defect that affected my hips and all my leg and foot bones, I was then just beginning to experience the degeneration that would eventually require the replacement of at least one of my hip joints. After spending 18 of my first 24 months in casts that were re-set every 2 weeks and in which I learned to walk, my legs look completely normal and function closely enough to normal that I was able to co-captain the track team, run long distances and lift beastly amounts of weight until my 40s. Yoga is why I was able to wait until 43 for my first hip replacement and yoga has helped me prevent pain and dysfunction as well as cope with it once it asserted its inevitability, finally to recover from surgery and return to a thriving practice.
I finally dove into disciplined yoga practice after moving to Albuquerque in 2000 to take a rewarding and stressful position in my then dream job - weekend night medic. As an antidote to that stress, i embraced teacher training in 2004 and began seeing the connections between the philosophies I'd studied in my 20s and the anatomy and physiology required to be a Paramedic.
All American yoga classes are some flavor of Hatha Yoga - the physical discipline of the postures, or asana. My classes integrate what I've found valuable from different flavors of Hatha Yoga - Anusara, Iyengar, Ashtanga and even Buddhist and other forms of meditation. In the tradition of ViniYoga, I tailor practices to people and encourage home practice.
I now teach yoga full time. My experience has taught me that every person in every situation is well in some respect. The more a person is supported in acknowledging their experience, the more they can own all aspects of their their wholeness and wellness. From this place of embracing wellness, many positive things can grow. I support people in owning their wellness through practice of yoga. To seek and try to create strength, healing, weight loss or other seemingly positive attributes before experiencing what is already whole about yourself can lead to simply creating an armor around the places of pain or dysfunction. Too often "fitness" only wears old grooves more deeply into our thought patterns, self-talk and even muscular engagement patterns. Yoga is different because you begin with what is most true about you: your wholeness. From this place, when it is acknowledged and nurtured, you can shift patterns, identifications and habits creating the lift you want.
Through yoga, you find your inner strength as well the outer, peace as well as focus, flexibility as well as tone. You don't have to be flexible - or anything else - to do yoga: yoga helps you become those things.
I finally dove into disciplined yoga practice after moving to Albuquerque in 2000 to take a rewarding and stressful position in my then dream job - weekend night medic. As an antidote to that stress, i embraced teacher training in 2004 and began seeing the connections between the philosophies I'd studied in my 20s and the anatomy and physiology required to be a Paramedic.
All American yoga classes are some flavor of Hatha Yoga - the physical discipline of the postures, or asana. My classes integrate what I've found valuable from different flavors of Hatha Yoga - Anusara, Iyengar, Ashtanga and even Buddhist and other forms of meditation. In the tradition of ViniYoga, I tailor practices to people and encourage home practice.
I now teach yoga full time. My experience has taught me that every person in every situation is well in some respect. The more a person is supported in acknowledging their experience, the more they can own all aspects of their their wholeness and wellness. From this place of embracing wellness, many positive things can grow. I support people in owning their wellness through practice of yoga. To seek and try to create strength, healing, weight loss or other seemingly positive attributes before experiencing what is already whole about yourself can lead to simply creating an armor around the places of pain or dysfunction. Too often "fitness" only wears old grooves more deeply into our thought patterns, self-talk and even muscular engagement patterns. Yoga is different because you begin with what is most true about you: your wholeness. From this place, when it is acknowledged and nurtured, you can shift patterns, identifications and habits creating the lift you want.
Through yoga, you find your inner strength as well the outer, peace as well as focus, flexibility as well as tone. You don't have to be flexible - or anything else - to do yoga: yoga helps you become those things.
"I never knew I could love yoga so much. it has made a huge difference in my personal and professional life." ~Leona
"Christine is so attuned to her students. She customizes the small group classes each session by asking how you feel in your body TODAY. She also is encouraging but not pushy, sensitive to injuries and physical limitations." ~Jonette
"I am so grateful I found you and yoga or I may never have known how good I can feel!" ~Norma
"I've got guns!" (pointing to her biceps and triceps) ~Dr. Susan Turner
"Just wanted to share: *crunches have taken on a whole new meaning!* and my abs have taken on a whole new feeling... thanks for sharing your knowledge! [about alternatives to "crunches" and why they aren't the best way to create core strength!] " ~Norma
"I am so glad I made it to classes last weekend - you inspired me to re-institute a home practice:) Just enjoyed a wonderful practice with mountain pose [in the presence of] Sandia Mountain!" ~Daphne B.
"Christine is so attuned to her students. She customizes the small group classes each session by asking how you feel in your body TODAY. She also is encouraging but not pushy, sensitive to injuries and physical limitations." ~Jonette
"I am so grateful I found you and yoga or I may never have known how good I can feel!" ~Norma
"I've got guns!" (pointing to her biceps and triceps) ~Dr. Susan Turner
"Just wanted to share: *crunches have taken on a whole new meaning!* and my abs have taken on a whole new feeling... thanks for sharing your knowledge! [about alternatives to "crunches" and why they aren't the best way to create core strength!] " ~Norma
"I am so glad I made it to classes last weekend - you inspired me to re-institute a home practice:) Just enjoyed a wonderful practice with mountain pose [in the presence of] Sandia Mountain!" ~Daphne B.
Want to read more? Look here:
ElephantJournal.com: elephantjornal.com
YogaGuide: yogaguide.wordpress.com
Muse In the Valley: museinthevalley.com
Love My Yoga: Lovemyyoga.com
Newbie Yoga: newbieyoga.com
Southwest Flair: southwestflair.com
Yoga Examiner: examiner.com
The Inside Mag: theinsidemag.com
YogaGuide: yogaguide.wordpress.com
Muse In the Valley: museinthevalley.com
Love My Yoga: Lovemyyoga.com
Newbie Yoga: newbieyoga.com
Southwest Flair: southwestflair.com
Yoga Examiner: examiner.com
The Inside Mag: theinsidemag.com