Andrea Russell Yoga

 Or the waterfall, or the music heard so deeply  That it is not heard at all, but you are the music  While the music lasts. These are only hints and guesses,  Hints followed by guesses; and the rest/  Is prayer, observance, discipline, thought and action.  The hint half guessed, the gift half understood, is Incarnation.                                                                                                    T.S. Eliot                                                            "Dry Salvages" from Four Quartets Summer afternoons find me proc...

I'm rolling off a potent mix of influences right now, including: -Florence & The Machine (NEW ALBUM SO GOOOOOD) -YouTube videos of Jonathan Van Ness (don't know him? Go look him up. Right now. Go. I'll wait.) -Sparse sleep (dog-watching the ageing dachshund, Honey Doodle, inevitably means I'm awake in the weeeee morning hours of, oh, anywhere from 3 to 5 am) -Dubious skincare shopping on Amazon in said wee hours (any excuse to say "wee hours,") -A 4:30 am self-diagnosis of MELASMA, which is a freaking joke, honestly. Did you know birth control can at once clear acne and simultaneously   create prime conditions for incorrigible brown spots? I mean yes, I know age is inevitable, but these stained-on wrinkles permanently smeared across my forehead are officially NOT OKAY. I'm out to get 'em with a mean cocktail of hyaluronic acid and Vitamin C and whatever other potent herbal remedies I can drum up, because you know I am not about to trust any ...

PSA for the day: don't ever look up the handle #humpday on Instagram. It's not what you think. Or maybe it's exactly what you think? At any rate, we seem to have found ourselves yet again in the midst of a Wednesday. The clouds and dense humidity here in Virginia will not give it up, but there are still plenty of blessings to count. Clouds mean we can tuck into ourselves a little bit, maybe listen to that podcast we've been putting off in favor of barbecues or read that book we've let get overrun by trips to the pool. Or maybe we make the danged peach crisp already, as I did this afternoon, having run out of excuses not to stand in front of the counter making curlicues from peeled peach skin with juice dripping down to my elbows. As I sit here now, the kitchen dense with its own, oven-generated, brown-sugar-scented humidity, I can revel in these quiet joys. And, at the same time, I can't help but notice a certain twinge of guilt. This is an underlying guil...

Well, we made it. It's Sunday. No matter what your schedule is like, I hope we can all agree that Sundays are for re-calibration, for carefulness, for sacred rituals and all the Netflix your heart desires. For those of you wondering, no, those last two are not mutually exclusive, and besides, the heart tells no lies.  Myself, today? I re-calibrated my exhausted body-mind with a 1) a long overdue restorative practice wherein I smooshed my face into pillows and gave myself permission to cry, if needed; 2) a hot and salty bath with dried rosebuds & lavender (a nice thought in theory, but ultimately, very impractical. Petals in places they shouldn't be. Crusty leftovers in the tub. Still, I'm not complaining.); and finally, 3) a mellow, misty-eyed walk down to the creek to converse with the local cows, who regarded me warily but fielded my telepathic wonderings nonetheless. Something about the way cows just stare at you-- jaws working rhythmically, big lashes frami...

Welcome, friends! You have stumbled upon the blog for my blooming passion project, a small yoga and wellness business under my own name, Andrea Russell. The phrase "passion project" may have already clued you in to the nature of the eventual business, and particularly to this writing space I've carved out in my own little corner of the internet--both will serve as the overlay of my personal and professional concerns regarding yoga, life, and everything in between. You know, just a humble, small-scale blog parsing out the meaning of yoga and life. Hah! If you're here, I'm assuming you found my page via my website or facebook page, and therefore most likely know me, or at least of me, to some degree. But in case you don't, here's a brief introduction of 8 arbitrary, but basic, facts: My name is Andrea. I'm twenty-seven years old (not sure when that happened, or when I became the kind of person to exclaim at how old she's getting:  "wh...