Hello everyone. My name is Pat Halloran and I’ve been a member of YAGD since September of 2014. I live in Farmington Hills and retired from teaching nursing at Macomb Community College in 2000.
I didn’t attend my first yoga class until December of 2004 when I was 62 years old. A girlfriend was visiting over the holidays that year from California and she said I had to try yoga so off we went to the Center for Yoga in West Bloomfield. It was crowded, it was hot, and I by the end of the class I was sweaty and I loved it. Right then I signed up for a three month membership and so began my yoga journey. I was attending classes twice a week and fairly proud of myself. In February of 2005 I signed up to walk a marathon for the American Stroke Association which was to be held in San Diego in June. I asked my yoga teacher how I could better prepare for the walk and he asked me how often I was coming to yoga. I proudly said twice a week. He said that I might want to consider increasing that to four or five times a week if I really wanted to increase my stamina. So I did. I also completed the marathon that June; all 26.2 miles.
After practicing at the Center for Yoga for about three years I felt like something was lacking but I didn’t know what so I decided to change studios. In the meantime I had gone on a couple of yoga retreats and saw the difference that yoga was making in my body and my mind. In 2008 I took yoga teacher training with Eric Paskel. I had no intention of teaching but I wanted to learn more about the philosophy behind yoga and the mechanics of the poses just to enhance my own yoga practice. It was a wonderful learning experience and I did things I never thought I could do, like zip lining and falling backwards off of a six foot ladder and trusting that your fellow yogis were going to catch you:)
I continued my yoga practice, taking hatha and vinyasa classes five or six times a week. Then in 2010 I went on another yoga retreat. When I came home, I got the message that I was suppose to clear the space in my basement. I asked my spirit guides “why” and they just said “clear the space”. I kept asking the question over the next month or so and kept getting the same answer so finally I took everything out of the basement family room and just held the space in the light. About four months later, I got the message from my guides that I was suppose to turn this room into a yoga space and start teaching. I had been a teacher all of my professional life and I didn’t want to teach again but spirit was adamant in what I was suppose to do. So with the help of my son-in-law and grandsons, I turned my basement into a yoga studio.
Since 2010, with the completion of my studio, I have been teaching yoga two or three days a week. Right now I teach a hatha class on Monday’s and a restorative class on Thursday’s. It’s an intimate group of students and I know their strengths and weaknesses well so it is a challenge each week to plan a class that meets their needs.
Currently I practice yoga at The Sports Club in West Bloomfield and practice Kundalini yoga at Kara Yoga in Bloomfield Hills. These two places provide me with the diversity that I currently need and I enjoy experiencing learning from different teachers because of their different teaching styles.
I have also enjoyed being part of the YAGD community. I said that I joined in September of 2014. That happened to be the weekend before the Fall retreat. Linda Herman was president then and she welcomed me and said what are you doing next weekend? Well not only did I end up attending the retreat, I ended up co-teaching a class with Charles Baber. I also met some wonderful people there who to this day, I cherish their friendships.
Those of you who know me know that I also have a massage practice out of my home and that I love to travel. I have been to India four times to study yoga and travel with different teachers. Stop me sometime and I would be happy to share those stories with you or how I taught my first yoga class in Mexico in 2008 to a group of Mexican women when the instructor didn’t show up!!
Namaste’, Pat