Jessica Caporizzo

I practiced yoga off and on through high school and liked it well enough; it seemed like a good way to maintain mobility and flexibility. But when I had to undergo two spinal surgeries my first year of college, my relationship with my body changed drastically and abruptly. I turned to yoga more regularly during my recovery, desperately searching for something that would enable me to move back into strength and comfort in my body. For a while it helped, but I still had a lot of chronic pain, and my yoga practice was an unpredictable and frustrating journey of forcing myself into yoga postures. In time, and under the guidance of patient, trusted teachers, I discovered the philosophy of yoga that’s so much deeper than the physical poses. I learned that my practice had to start with the mind and the breath and then express itself in the body with compassion, kindly moving through whatever pain (mental or physical) was present in that moment. Instead of learning how to “beat the pain,” I learned how to hold it with love and grace. With that as the foundation, I developed tools in the body to navigate the discomfort, moving gradually into a place of stability and eventually strength. These tools of breathwork and meditation empowered a compassion for and awareness of my body so that I could better move through seasons of pain and difficulty as well as seasons of joy and physical strength.

My desire as a teacher is to hold that same space for others, offering a container for education, curiosity, and compassion as we befriend the mind, body and breath. How we navigate these things on the mat is an indicator of how we navigate the circumstances around us, and this ancient yoga philosophy offers many myths, metaphors, and ideas that we can explore in our physical body and take out into our daily lives. The more empowered we are in this way, the more we can be grounded in our best physical and spiritual selves and serve well in our communities. 

When I’m not teaching or practicing yoga, I’m teaching and practicing piano. I’m a classical pianist who loves performing, improvising, singing, and jamming out with friends.