Bee Well Yoga

I have been practicing and falling in love with yoga for over 20 years. I am inspired by the evolution that happens as someone experiences yoga. It is different for everyone, but it is heavenly. The journey of this practice is really an examination of life - and that can be a difficult thing. However, with the difficulty, comes the gift - and that's what you see when you are able to guide a practice. You see 'the gift' on the faces of the students each time they leave the mat. The gift of yoga. And it is different for everyone. The gift is personal and it is precious.

My particular fondness for Vinyasa and Restorative Yoga led me to seek training at Saraswati's Yoga Joint in Norwalk, CT with Mitchel Bleier and Kaia Yoga Studio in Westport, CT with Jillian Pransky. I have also had the privilege of studying with Shiva Rea, Judith Lasater, Rodney Yee, Tias Little and Kathryn Budig.

My classes combine an intense vinyasa flow with light humor and a strong focus on the breath and alignment. My restorative classes have been described as 'a yoga massage' allowing you to melt into the mat and fully relax the mind, body and soul.

I absolutely love experiencing yoga through breath, writing, meditation and asana. I love my family, running, soaking up the energy of the sun and devouring a good book.

I have been practicing yoga since for almost fifteen years, but it took me ten years of practicing at home to actually work up the nerve to attend my first class. While I originally began practicing to benefit my physical health, the benefits I received mentally and emotionally were what kept me coming back to my mat. In 2014, I completed my 200 hour teacher training with YogaGypsy in Springdale, and this past year I completed my 300 hour teacher training with LivFree Power Yoga with Annie Q. in Connecticut.

I am truly passionate about bringing yoga everywhere to everyone and I have given yoga instruction in hospices, women’s shelters, outdoors, gyms, spas, and yoga studios. I believe there is a yoga for every single person, and that is why I love teaching anything from heated power vinyasa to yin and meditation. I approach the classes I teach with a light heart, and I'm always finding ways to apply the lessons we learn on our mats to the rest of our lives. I truly believe that our yoga practice can make the world a better place.

Before 2007, I had my home and gym yoga practice and loved it. It was a basic Sun Salutations and a few variations. In the spring of 2007 I was diagnosed with colon cancer. Looking back, I’m confident my yoga practice influenced my treatment and recovery. In 2013, after the chemo and into the monitor and checkup period, I attended my first “studio” yoga class in downtown Bentonville AR, USA and discovered how much I didn’t know about Yoga. I had no concept of “Restorative”, but I loved the class and the studio setting. I continued with other new classes and discovered more about Yoga and myself. In December 2017 I enrolled in Yoga Teacher Training. It was one of the best things I’ve ever done for myself. I loved the people and the experience and owe so much to my teacher trainer, Lynn Hancock. This year, 2018, I reached my 10 year - no recurrence milestone. I’m thankful and grateful for every day of my journey. With my 200 RYT in hand, I’m on a new adventure to know more and share more about Yoga than I had ever dreamed. Hank lives in Rogers, AR with his wife Julie. Their two adult children and three grandchildren also live in the area. His hobbies include volunteering, reading, playing golf and keeping up with technology.

Over the last six years, I trained with a trainer who has a masters in biomechanics. My experience with him inspired a passion within me for physical training which led me to study with the Cooper's Institute and become certified in personal training so I could inspire other people. Living in South Africa, I was able to further my studies and become certified in Bootybarre. When I returned to the States, I also became certified in BBarreless. I love making people strong in their core and strong in their heart...it is my passion...to make people feel good about themselves, inside and out.

In 2006, due to the nudging of a good friend, I haphazardly stumbled into a 6-week Kundalini Yoga workshop. I had no idea why we were doing weird breathing exercises and making odd noises, but I was fascinated and intrigued. It was such a different experience from my fast paced, stress filled life where it was easier to keep moving then to sit, be still and be with what was there. And I clearly wasn’t ready. For years afterward I took the harder path: climbing ladders, never stopping, burning out.

And then, as it happens, tragedy struck. As Elizabeth Lesser puts it: “Some of us need a cataclysmic event to find our way toward ‘the center of our own existence’”. So when I finally came back to Yoga, it was with a deep need for healing. And through that healing I have found my Wholeness, which, for me, is finding joy in every bit of this life experience. There is no question that life has difficulty. And yet, through continually cultivating awareness, equanimity, and compassion, we become able to, as Buddha says, “rest like a giant tree in the midst of it all”. I’m grateful for the beautiful, simple technology of Yoga to expand my perspective and chip away at the calcification of life’s conditioning so I can see clearly and respond from a place of centeredness and love. And it is from this place of love that I humbly share this knowledge and experience with others. Because, truly, we are all connected and in this together. - Namaste.