54-Deborah Abrams: The Prospering Power of Yoga, Stillness, & Being Present in the Moment

<p>•    I wasn't really a gym rat growing up, I didn't take kindly to indoor sporting activities, I was more of an outdoorsy kind of girl. Growing up in Canada, I was a girl scout, I went through all the stages in Canada, we call them Girl Guides of Canada, and I went all the way becoming a leader on everything, and then taking that into school, I was a leader in school, I headed the Outdoors Club, I was a camp counselor for school, and in turn during the summers I was camp counselor for my nearby communities, and so outdoor activity was always my go-to. (2:52)</p><p>•   So this was what, 21 years ago, and now I pass forward... Now we have access to so much more. And so way back then, there was just really only a couple of styles, like methodologies of the yoga practice, and I don't know if they still have this group that brings Yogi rock stars, as they say, into the city for us all to go and flee to and just learn from. They do many workshops, and I used to take up as much as I can from Baron Baptiste, Tim Miller, Kino Macgregor, all the ones that have Ashtanga or Iyengar backgrounds, like the power and then  Baron Baptiste coined the phrase power yoga. Right? And so I was always attracted to this powerful side of it, Power Vinyasa, very athletic. (7:14)</p><p>•   At the gym one day, I saw my pro fitness coordinator and I hadn't seen her in a while, and all of a sudden I see her and her body has had completely transformed, changed into this machine, like I could see every muscle. She was a walking piece of anatomy, I could see every tendon, every muscle. Just as she moves, I'm like, Oh my gosh, what are you doing? So she passed her trainer's name onto me, and that's when I got into the lifting weights. (10:25)</p><p>•    I teach the Lit yoga method, which is a physical therapy-based yoga practice, and so every time you come into the class it's very much a tune up to your body, we get the core integrated, we get your big stabilizers, big movers or glutes fired up because like I call it, this snoozy glutes or glut