Passion in Movement
Kiera Gallup
2010, While living in Missoula, Montana, I stepped into my second yoga class. The first yoga class was back in University and it wasn’t very inspiring. The second class was hot hatha yoga and it forever changed my life.
We often think yoga is calming in the way that it’s supposed to be easy during practice, but this was anything but that. The calm came after the class. The calm came when I realized I wrung out everything that I thought I was. After one month of practice, I couldn’t afford to keep practicing so I made excuses, like we often do in life.
In 2011, I found myself practicing sitting meditation at a Japanese Renzai Buddhist Temple in Northern California. It was the hardest thing I had ever done, even a hot 90 minute yoga class in 40 degrees Celsius.
“I do not fear the man that practices 10,000 kicks one time, but the man that practices one kick 10,000 times.”
-Bruce Lee
Diving into a Buddhist practice really set a tone for my search towards a deeper truth, or some would call it a realization. Spending time in sweat lodges and practicing with buddhist monks/teacher made me see there are much harder things in life than a 90 minute hot yoga class.
It wasn’t until 2012 when I found myself on a 6,000 acre ranch outside of Reno, NV that I decided to commit to yoga completely. I was questioning what I was doing with my life and I thought of the yoga class I took back in Montana. So I practiced with my whole heart. Treating the practice as a ceremony, more than an exercise. I found that everything we did in the yoga room, every movement we made in our asana practice was a reflection of everything we did in our lives.
I became a certified Yoga Instructor in June of 2014. My training required at least a year of solid practice and a recommendation from the studio I was practicing at. The training lasted two months where we practiced two 90 minute hot yoga classes a day, one on the weekends, including lectures with teachers and students from around the world. Immediately after I began teaching two 90 minute hot yoga classes a day, as well as practicing before or after. When my birthday, June 21st, was established as the International Day of Yoga, it felt that being a yoga instructor is the perfect path for me.
I became certified in 2018 in Vinyasa, and that training opened my eyes to the depth of how easy it is to become a yoga instructor without much experience. Since then, I’ve dived into practice differently than other instructors, knowing how important the practice is to our teaching. If we don’t practice yoga ourselves, then how are we to teach?
In my teaching I focus on anatomical alignment. I share with students body knowledge from my practice and knowledge from working in physical therapy clinics as an aide. I believe that I am here to guide you towards being present in the moment. To dive deeper into practice, one doesn’t need to know all the book knowledge but needs to constantly remain present in the now, not who we were in the past or who we will become in the future.
Moving to Costa Rica with my husband, who is a dual citizen and has family here, we have dived into making Costa Rica our home. Costa Rica is filled with a wide variety of nature and cultural experiences. We love the community here and can’t wait to watch it grow into something more than we ever thought it could be.
Bienvenido! Welcome to the land and ocean we now call home! I’m excited for you to join us here and share your practice with me!
Book a Class
Available for Privates, Workshops, and Community classes.