This is the Baymont podcast with Marty Solomon. I'm his co-host, Brent Billings. Today we are joined by special guests Anita Grace Brown.

She has been using yoga for 25 years to heal from trauma, fear and spiritual struggles. She engages nature and uses art to help others find redemption as well.

Anita, welcome to the show.

Hey everybody, thanks for having me.

And if you want to add any of your own items to what I introduced you with, you know, pretty, I don't know, like there's some specifics in there, but there's also plenty of room for you to elaborate on what you do.

So if there's anything you want to add, talk about who you are, your family or whatever. Feel free to share that.

Okay, I've been married to Bob for 30 years. And we've been friends since high school, so it's a long time and it's been wonderful and hard and all the things.

Our children are now young adults. Luke is in New York. We're back as in San Diego. Super proud of them.

We have loved teaching yoga to children, adults and now seniors over the past 15 years. I recently did a coaching course. So now I added my own unique style of coaching, which involves breathing and centering and grounding, which I bring in from the yoga practice.

I'm a writer and I started writing in my 40s, so that I think is encouraging to people to know that you can start something new later in life.

Yeah, I love that. Maybe also talk a little bit about how you know Marty or Bama or whatever your entrance was into the world that we live in.

I could remember how I found Bama. Maybe I was just Googling a more habrayick approach. And I've just been in love with the teachings. I go back and forth between old and new.

And it's just amazing to me the way that you both dive into the text and wrestle. It really aligns with the way that I approach my faith and the text and my relationship with God.

That's beautiful. I can remember getting. I can't remember if it was social media tags and messages from Anita first or emails, but we had exchanged different messages here and there. And then I got an email one day from a teacher that I really respect and enjoy Alexander Shia and you're connected with his publishing house. And he said, I got this book that I would love for you to consider looking at.

And I had already seen your name. So I kind of knew you. And the book is about amongst many things yoga. And at the time when I got that email, I was like, oh, yes, because I bet I, apparently this has stopped. I haven't gotten an email. I'm probably, I don't know, it's been a few months about yoga. I assumed it was because our contact form wasn't working for a while. And I assume they were now going to Brian.

But there was a while there Anita for a long time, at least for a good year. It was one of the most common emails I would receive was an email about I have a friend who's doing yoga. And that's which craft, isn't it? Like help me out or here. Can I be doing yoga? Like I was going to start experimenting to the yoga, but is that pagan and dangerous?

And like it was just one of the most common received messages and emails that I got on a regular basis was what about yoga in one form or another.

And so I thought, oh, yes, let's, let's have a conversation. Apparently, like I wouldn't have naturally thought that's the Bama podcast. We're going to talk about yoga.

But there was enough conversations and questions coming in about it. I thought, yeah, let's absolutely have a conversation about that. And I've had a bit of my own personal journey. So I'm going to share a little bit about where I've gone on Nita. And then, and then I'd love to hear you kind of comment on some of those things. So, please do.

For me, I was introduced to contempt just apart from yoga, just contemplative practice. I've talked about that on the podcast before. The depth of it, the beauty of it, the importance of it in my life.

I had mentors that taught me about contemplative space, contemplative prayer to how to enjoy the practice of just silent space, centering prayer.

We have a practice that I think we might share at the end of this episode that you let us in.

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