The Elusive Heart Center | Kristen Bini McQuaide
Welcome to the latest interview post from the True Nature Tribe. If you’re new here, head back and check out the earlier True Nature Tribe blog posts for some of the other stories.
Throughout this project we photograph and interview yogis about yoga in nature. We went with Kristen to one of our favorite places in the Sierras to capture her practicing yoga in nature. Kristen is the owner and a yoga teacher at The Space, a yoga studio in Visalia, CA. Let’s start with the question, what is yoga?
“Yoga is here to serve you, not you it. Yoga has the power to transform your life, and yoga cultivates honesty.”
For Kristen, yoga is a way of life. She specifies her desire to live from her heart center rather than her ego as well as inspire others to do the same. Recognizing that people are often hard on themselves, she encourages us to make our one, short life a good one and be happy. For her, this means getting connected to our heart center and trying to move from there. We can get lost here and there, that’s ok, we just need to keep coming back to heart center.
Introduced to yoga by her sister’s spiritual path, Kristen already had the seeds of the practice ready when life circumstances drew her back to it. Discovering that her fiancé had a drug addiction, Kristen suddenly felt as though her world was blown apart. Her dreams were destroyed and rather than falling apart, she turned to yoga. She started practicing yoga, both the physical practice and the whole idea of “living close to your heart center, taking one breath at a time, and continuing to move forward.” Kristen learned to see that everything that you need to live your life is already inside you. She believes that these concepts, as well as time spent on her yoga mat, stitched her back together and connected her to heart center.
Heart center. Heart center. Picture a vibrant, energetic, and powerful city transplant to small town life speaking passionately with her hands. During our interview with Kristen, she continually referred to this idea of heart center. She spoke of honesty, desire, and balance. Sometimes she didn’t even use the words but pointed to her heart emphatically saying “here.” Since our interview with Kristen I’ve continued to consider this concept of our heart center and the constant reminders we receive to reconnect with it. How did we get disconnected from it and why is it so hard to see or find or live from when it’s right “here.” (I say as I animatedly point to the center of my chest.)
Prior to having her current practice, Kristen remembers the constant fatigue of her pre-yoga life. The exhaustion of living from her ego rather than her heart center, she believes to be due in part to all of the examples around her. “You don’t work 40 hours a week anymore, you work 50 or 60 because you gotta be busy. You gotta be super busy. You gotta be busy. You gotta be doing this, you gotta be invited to that, you gotta go here, you gotta get this, you gotta buy that, you gotta look like this. I mean I was f’ing exhausted…” She rattles this off all in one breath at lightening speed making Marc and I both equally exhausted just to be reminded of the pressures of the external world as we sat in a laid back coffee shop interviewing her. She took a breath and continued, “…because I wasn’t living my truest desires which were coming from my heart. I was living what I was seeing which was connected to the ego and fear feeding, and feeding, and feeding the ego. I should be this person, I should have this car, I should have this…”
Alternatively, with a yoga practice (and the transition to small town living) Kristen feels calmer and more balanced, happier and more whole.
“When you feel better you want to do better and you want to stay feeling better so you continue this good healthy balance cycle.”
Now, Kristen is doing what she loves everyday practicing and teaching yoga. She’s working towards building her own yoga studio and creating a life where she can do what she loves, while still making a living.
Kristen went to teacher training not necessarily to become a teacher but to understand this practice that she felt drawn to and that she felt helped her reconnect with her heart center. (There it is again, the elusive heart center.) Around the time that she finished her teacher training, a new yoga studio opened where she was invited to teach despite being a new teacher. Since then her passion for teaching grew and at the time of our interview, she is a few month’s from opening her own studio. Her desire is (at the time of the interview) to open a studio that honors the practice and the lineage of yoga. Since our interview, Kristen now owns The Space, a yoga studio in Visalia, CA.
When you find yourself in one of her classes, it become immediately apparent that the physical practice of yoga is important to Kristen. The challenge provided by even the simplest poses helps her to be present in her body focusing only what she’s doing and living in her heart center. But don’t be fooled, Kristen moves regularly beyond the simple. Perhaps incomprehensible to some, Kristen actually enjoys that unattainable aspect of the physical practice and sees beauty in trying poses she may never accomplish. She enjoys the continual challenge, “the layers and layers and layers of yoga” that provide us with endless steps we can take toward samati, bliss.
“Usually you go to yoga to feel better about your physical self first and most people come for the physical practice. But it’s not just about getting into poses, it’s about the story in your head while you get into poses while you simultaneously do good things for your body. Just as much as walking 30 minutes a day is really good for your body, so too with yoga. It takes care of the whole being; the physical, the mental, the spiritual.”
Thanks Kristen! And thanks to the rest of you for tuning in! Be sure to visit our website for more information on what we are doing with the True Nature Tribe project about yoga in nature. You’ll see glimpses of the stories ahead and well as ways to get involved. We would be honored if you would support our project in whatever way you are able. Join our newsletter below. We’ve also created a Postcard Pack that is available for purchase. 100% of the profits will be donated to land conservation.
