Meet Yoga Teacher Kaitlen Brennan

Kaitlen began practicing yoga more than 20 years ago when pregnant with her daughter. Yoga and meditation had a profound effect on her (and her labor!), and it has “ held her hand” ever since. She has studied many styles of yoga and meditation throughout the years and continues to be guided to share the teachings with her students.

Her classes emphasis alignment and body awareness, pranayama, and intentional movements with a graceful presence. Weaving together rich teachings of Hatha, Vinyasa, Yin, and Chinese Medicine opens space to discover, to release, and to connect inward. Kaitlen particularly enjoys exploring the intersection of the sister science of Ayurveda and yoga with Chinese Medicine and uniting these two medicines in both acupuncture sessions and classes.

She believes yoga is a synergy, an exploration of breath, body, and mind, and that at its core, reveals your spirit and your truest self.
Kaitlen graduated from the 200-hour program at the Devanadi School of Yoga and is continuing her studies in its 300-hour program. She is a 50-hour-certified Yin instructor and carries a master's degree in Chinese Medicine; she is certified in massage and bodywork. Kaitlen is inquisitive and curious, always learning and exploring holistic therapy and wellness that can create vitality and longevity and elevate our vibration in the world.

Kaitlen lives in St. Paul with her husband and two dogs and has two adult children. In her free time, she enjoys seasonal cooking, hiking, and exploring nature, travel, and creative gardening.

Meet Yoga Teacher Victoria Blackbird

Yogi, seeress, star child, and lover of beauty….

Victoria Blackbird completed her RYT 200 yoga teacher certification from Devanadi School of Yoga and Wellness, where she also received her Reiki Master attunement. She has been practicing as a Shamanic Energy Medicine Practitioner and Holistic Health and Wellness Coach since receiving her rights and initiations with The Four Winds Society in 2018. Victoria blends her traditional training and intuitive energetic gifts with plant medicine and modern-day tools. Her intention is to guide others in their practice toward true authenticity, cultivating personal power and inner peace along the way.

Meet Yoga Teacher Rian Bang

Rian’s story begins with the growing true awareness of her physical body at the age of 12 through health concerns, loss of faith, physical weaknesses, and emotional struggles. Not knowing where to turn, she threw herself into fitness and ultimately found yoga at 15. She dabbled in it for a number of years, practicing even through pregnancy with her first child in 2012. Yoga evolved into a major tool in her growth process. Following her heart, in 2015 she completed the Green Lotus’s 200-hour teacher-training program. She later completed the 500-hour teacher-training certification at Green Lotus, become a mother of three, is a wife to a magnificent man, and stays home to raise her family and manage the home. Without her foundation, she would not have faced life’s lessons with the grace she found through the lens of yoga. She now works to share that lens with others on and off the mat. She is a guide, honored to walk alongside you in community with others.

The Completion of Depletion

I’m depleted. Out of juice. Stopped dead in my tracks.  I know I’m not alone. Just saying the words, “I’m depleted” somewhat eases the sense of depletion. I suspect you might know the feeling. The question is: Why does it take so long to admit it? And who do we think we’re fooling?

Like so many of you, I am finely attuned to my body and to my mind. The slightest change in calibration – be it physical, mental, emotional, spiritual - reverberates throughout my integrated system like shock waves. I trust my body and what it communicates, and I trust that I know my body best. I trust myself to make sound decisions that affect my body, mind, and spirit – I trust you to make yours.

What I mistrust? The ubiquitous “I’m fine”, “I’m well”, “I’m good” when someone asks me how I am and when I ask someone else. This mistrust bases itself on my direct experience. If I, your average human being albeit one who possessed huge amounts of energy, feels depleted from time to time, I assume with a high degree of confidence that most other humans do, too.

My depletion flows from a hidden underground spring of challenges, many of which we share. A primary culprit? Two years of coping and then recovering from the pandemic – in the case of MB and me fighting to save a business while facing the worry about loved ones. We’ve heard your pandemic sagas, too:  saving your kids from the shock and challenge created from it, working from home (a blessing and a curse), feeling stuck.

Depletion results from so many triggers: grief, worry, overwork, no work, conflict with friends and family members, overeating and undereating, too much exercise and, for most of us, too little. Sometimes the cause slams into us like the fast-moving service vehicle that recently rear-ended my car on the freeway from following too close. When an accident happened in front of me, and I was able to avoid colliding into it because I’d left enough space, the driver behind me had not. Stopped dead in my tracks turned out not to just be a phrase. That impact depleted me in multiple ways and forced me into cutting back my schedule.

I wanted to keep going – this is both an instinct and a learned behavior (“just keep going” being a favorite idiom in many family structures). My head, my neck, my brain, my mind, my heart say otherwise. I’m listening to them. MB said recently and kindly, “My Energizer Bunny is missing in action.”

Stopping for a while, what a notion. It’s in the pause that we find ourselves and our well-being again. I’m working less because those are the doc’s orders as my eyes and brain require time to establish the proper communications patterns between them. In the pause, a secret revealed itself to me: When we finally admit to feeling depleted, healing and rebounding begin. Slowly, the body wants to move again. Carefully, the brain permits trying different approaches to counter the ever-present pounding headache. Mindful that we are energy, we attune to the ebb and flow of it and make different choices.

What if, when you feel depleted, you stopped yourself dead in your tracks? What if, instead of blustering through with the “I’m fine” and “I’m well”, you told the truth – “Right now, I’m pausing for a bit”? Would you, like me, begin to turn a corner into respecting your body, mind, spirt? And if you’re already practiced at this, share your stories.

What I’ve learned from this experience is to honor only that which I am feeling – whatever the feeling is – and pause in it. In the pause a solution reveals itself, whether it’s for rest, action, reflection.

The philosophy of yoga encourages us to “stay in the body”; to find the middle path; to non-harming ourselves and others (ahimsa); to telling the truth to ourselves and others (satya), and to cleanliness toward ourselves and others (saucha), which means to take care with ourselves and others.

Don’t wait for a debilitating shock to your system, for doctor’s orders, for collapse. Admitting to depletion (satya) completes it so we can move forward with the confidence that we know ourselves best. Admitting to depletion is the first step in defeating depletion. Join me.

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