Mimi Kuo-Deemer has been practising yoga since 1995 and teaching since 2002. She is a faculty member on triyoga's teacher training and mentors teachers in training at Yogacampus. She takes great pleasure in creating safe, innovative yoga classes where students can work hard and relax deeply. Mainly, she weaves healthy alignment principles into enlivening, mindful, vinyasa flow, but also enjoys peppering her teaching with restorative yoga, meditation and qigong practices. Her main teachers in the Yoga world are Erich Schiffmann and Donna Farhi, who continually strengthen her belief that Yoga is the art of living. Above all, she values her students and self-practice as her main sources of inspiration. Mimi is the author of the DVD "Vinyasa Yoga: A Steady, Mindful Practice," and is also the co-founder of Yoga Yard, a studio in Beijing, China, where she taught for 7 years before moving to London.
Where it all starts
Yoga for me is the art of living. It is a potent and profound tool that helps inform the body and focus the mind. I believe it is an accessible practice that anyone, regardless of age, experience or physical condition, can find beneficial.
I have been practicing yoga since 1995 and teaching since 2002. My teaching and practice draw from a mindful hatha/vinyasa Yoga tradition, dance, and qigong/taiqi. My classes integrate active vinyasa flow with more receptive, grounding practices and meditation. I encourage students to explore working with pranayama (breathing) and asanas (postures) to help detoxify the body and strengthen muscles. These practices also improve flexibility, help nourish the organs and bring balance to the nervous system. This process uncovers greater physical ease and well-being. However, the physical aspect of yoga is just one part of a far richer philosophy and life practice that aims to improve mental and spiritual health. I believe the practice of yoga ultimately encourages students to experience more stillness, clarity, and inner-joy.
In my daily practice and whenever I teach, I am reminded that yoga is a blessing. It's truly a gift to watch how even simple postures and mindful breath can continually dismantle tension and awaken ease in my own daily life, as well as in the lives of others. Teaching yoga is one of my favorite things.
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I often look back at the first time I practiced from that book; I didn't know it then, but yoga did more than give me my health back -- it started putting things in perspective. By cultivating a type of physical awareness that wasn't based on how I looked while doing it (like dance had trained me to think) I started to feel a lot more; through learning to mindfully explore my own body's possibilities and limitations each day on my mat, I began to treat myself and others with more respect. I eventually discovered that yoga made me happier. It helped break down a lot of negative ideas I had about myself that simply weren't true. In other words, yoga made me feel good.
Over the years, both photography and yoga have become my ways of taking in the rawness of the world around me and making it beautiful, poetic or more intimate: to me, they are both art forms that help make better sense of the self and the world in general. Yoga began to shift my perspective and allowed me to look more carefully at what was going on. I began to see the things around me with a new type of clarity, and I experienced life with higher resolution. My relationships with people I photographed seemed different, too. I felt more intimate and connected to the people I photographed, and didn't feel that I had to be a distant, invisible observer -- a role that many photographers I know believe is a must for the occupation. As a result, I have found that the distinctions between myself and others in the world are less striking. Much of this is because I believe Yoga makes us more comfortable in our own skin, and when we meet others that comfort is communicated.
Deepening gratitude for my teachers and community I credit Erich Schiffmann for inspiring me to teach yoga. I did my first training with him in 2002 and began teaching immediately afterwards. Erich imparted to me the ideas that teaching, meditation and one's own yoga practice are some of the greatest gifts in life. I thank him at the end of each of my yoga practices and appreciate the free-flow of love and goodness that emanates from him daily. In 2003, I met Donna Farhi. Studying with her granted insights to questions I had about my own practice and teaching. Today, the principles she introduced continue to foster an intuitive and subtle approach to yoga that humbles me the more I learn. I have been fortunate to continue studying with her regularly around the world, as well as assist her Spinal Integration workshop in Beijing, China, in 2009. |
Over the years, I've also drawn much inspiration from Max Strom, whom I assisted through his 200 hour Yoga Alliance teacher training, Matthew Cohen, and Sarah Powers. Equally valuable is the learning I gain each day from my students and self-practice. I am a faculty member on Triyoga's teacher training, a mentor on the Yogacampus teacher training, a Yoga Alliance Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT), and a member of the International Association of Yoga Therapists (IAYT).
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