Sue Steindorf, Founder's Note
Though the art of connecting the sacred through the body came much later, I awakened to the magic of movement my first time on ice skates at age five. I fell in love with both the ease and challenge of skating and spent much of my childhood on ice. Through my commitment to skating I learned the power of discipline and an appreciation for assessing and refining movement to create balance and beauty. As you can imagine the slightest shift in your center of gravity turns a triple toe loop into a work of art or a painful crash.
As a junior in high school I pushed myself out of balance with my skating, academics and social life. I landed in the hospital for 4 weeks with a septic fever of unknown cause. Doctors eventually found and treated the infection but I needed to learn to walk all over again. It was at that pivotal time in life when one is choosing colleges and careers and my illness inspired me toward a degree in physical therapy.
Early on I had an interest in working with children but this passion was sealed during a Special Olympic weekend camp when I was a physical therapy grad student at Boston University. I will never forget stepping on the camp bus and the sense of entering a new world. Though initially the newness of it all was uncomfortable, soon I was in the midst the most honest openhearted connections I’d ever witnessed. The last day of the camp a group of us were on a walk when a car slowly passed. In that moment I met the gaze of 4 adults looking at us with complete pity as a group of “disabled people”. I had a flash of destiny-an overwhelming feeling that part of my life’s purpose would be to help offer a shift in perceptions, transforming those pitying glances to the appreciation I’d come to know that week-- That people who walk through life with different abilities embody the spiritual principles of living in the moment, honestly and love like no others I had ever met.
After a few years working in hospitals I found myself in the Bainbridge Island School district as a physical therapist in the special education department. Fifteen years into this position I reflected on the lives of so many children growing up with no opportunities for recreational fitness. I was working on their ability to walk yet there were so few places for them to walk to. Inspired by this aha, I created a fitness program in the school district that would provide a bridge to community recreational fitness experiences including an Aikido program, baseball and soccer team, nature walks and yoga classes. To support this program, I decided to attend a program called Yoga for the Special Child so that I would be able to offer yoga classes.
Looking over my options for where to take my yoga training I decided to completely dive into the experience and attend the program at the Integral Yoga Ashram in Yogaville, Virginia. My not so flexible body and unfocused mind knew on some level this was just the place to start. I often laugh when I remember cautioning friends and family, “don’t worry I wont come back doing that om stuff!” I left the island a stressed out working mom who had not slept over 4 hours/night in 10 years and had a host of autoimmune disorders such as asthma and severe allergies. Little did I know how deeply I would be altered on a cellular level in just a few days.
Arriving at the ashram felt like landing on a foreign planet. The pictures of Swami Satchidananda in his orange robes on every wall felt like the eyes of big brother watching me and somehow I felt both unease and a complete knowing that this is where I needed to be. The first 2 days of our lunch time meditation felt like medicine with not so pleasant side effects. My hips and back ached and my mind raced and as uncomfortable as it was I knew this had the potential to be very good for me.
On my third day of meditation the minute I took my seat I knew something was different, my body was at ease, my mind became calm and soon I was in the experience of a profound awakening that would change my life. There is no way to describe these experiences and I must admit it is difficult for me to share this so publicly. The experience of simultaneously dissolving into everything and becoming nothing left me with a profound faith and humility that is indescribable. Years later I would stumble across the introduction in Eckhart Tolle book “The Power of Now” where he describes an almost identical experience and only then did I begin to understand that the path of yoga leads to this connection and that others had similar experiences. My journey was to be thrust up the spiritual mountain then roll back to the bottom to then slowly and steadily and step by step continue the path towards this connection we call yoga.
When I returned from my training I knew with all my heart that I needed community and that for me this path should not to be travelled alone. Having left one week earlier with almost no experience of yoga I had much to learn. I developed a daily practice that was powerful medicine for me. After 10 years of needing sleeping pills, antidepressants and inhalers, my sleep disorder, allergies and asthma healed spontaneously and as long as I practiced I stayed healthy. If I went more than three days with out practice I stopped sleeping through the night. This was an incredible motivator!! During this time there was no yoga studio on the island and though I tried practicing in gyms I was searching for a depth to my practice that was not being nourished in that setting. In 2009 I formed the Island Yoga Space, a collective of teachers interested in fostering yoga and a healing community. For one year I juggled my school district job and the administration of the yoga space but soon I was working 100 hours/week and something needed to change. After 20 years of service, in 2011, I resigned from my school district job and began working with children privately combining yoga and physical therapy.
We were able to create sacred space in our simple industrial building that housed the Island Yoga Space and in that setting I started to see my students flourish. I also began collaborating with several mental health practitioners in our community using yoga to support clients with anxiety, depression, trauma, PTSD and psychosis. Though the range of conditions and ages of my clients is broad, from children with autism and cerebral palsy to adults with anxiety or back pain, I am struck by similarities in the work independent of conditions. I feel that my experience blessed me with the felt sense of the light, love and possibility that resides in each of us. Each time I’m with a client is an opportunity to reflect that back to them. What is really magical is to start to witness clients knowing how to be there own reflection of this light, love and connection to what is possible in their lives.
In the spring of 2011 while driving home from work I heard a very strong and clear voice say, “You must move”. I knew this was not referring to my home and that I needed to listen to this deep guidance. Within the week I found myself looking through the window of an unappealing building for sale on Wyatt Way. Initially I had no interest but something made me peer through to the backyard where I saw the most magnificent Magnolia tree in full bloom. It was love at first sight, and in that moment I knew I’d begun an adventure that would require many leaps of faith. Fortunately, my experience years before at Yogaville prepared me well for this leap and instilled a trust that became vital to the process ahead of me. With our son heading to college and our daughter soon to follow, using our family’s home as the primary asset and resource to build the Center was not exactly logical. The process of creating Dayaalu started and continues to this day to be a process of deep listening and cultivating receptivity of how to be of service to our community and to the world at large.
The phrase “when a student is ready the teacher appears” came to life when I met Christina Donnell in 2010. Her teachings are largely inspired by her experiences with the Q’ero of Peru and the best word I can find to describe her life changing work is mystical. The Q’ero live without a belief in linear time, ownership, or sense of individual soul. Profound interconnectedness and balance is at the core of their culture. During one of her trainings we were invited to give up all of our roles, teachers, and beliefs. Taking this step felt like losing the very connective tissue that held me together, and yet the experience was transformative. It opened a feeling of spaciousness and way to move in the world with the sense of interconnectedness that was the essence of my awakening experience all those years ago in Yogaville.
Though yoga practices continue to be vitally important in my life, this process of loosening my grip on particular beliefs or paths has been very influential in the formation of the Center. No surprise that one of Swami Satchidananda’s main messages is “paths are many, truth is one.” Before we opened our doors I knew that Dayaalu would offer much more than what we often think of as yoga in our culture. Dayaalu’s symbol is seven connected hearts forming a sun shining light and to me this is the feeling of the Dayaalu experience.
Early in the process of creating the Center when asked about our vision these words came to me-- “to provide a place that will support a paradigm shift in medicine and education.” The first time I spoke those words I felt both an overwhelming sense of the enormity of this task and a clear connection to the possibilities.
At this time, Dayaalu Center houses an integrated healing center, a vast array of offerings that surpass anything I could have imagined. Collaborations with other organizations to create continuing medical education to support this envisioned paradigm shift both for patients and providers alike are now emerging. We also started a guild that includes therapists, doctors and educators dedicated to improving the lives of children and their families. We have hopes to support our schools in bringing the mindfulness and meditation practices that neuroscience is showing to improve our ability to learn and become resilient beings.
The mission for Dayaalu was to create a compassionate community that fosters transformation through body mind and spirit. Our wide variety of weekly classes, workshops, live music, community rituals and celebrations are also beyond what we could have ever imagined. What’s most exciting to witness are the transformations happening each day at the Center and to be in the presence of this compassionate community.
Shortly before the Center opened I attended a meditation workshop where I experienced a magnificent image that captured the essence of Dayaalu. As I closed my eyes two ears appeared that started to move together to form a heart. The heart then began to transform into a beautiful lotus flower. Two leaves formed under the flower and they became hands. Then a hummingbird appeared and started to drink from the flower. Then a voice said, “when you deeply listen to your heart and are supported by community you can drink from the nectar of life.”
When people refer to me as the owner of Dayaalu I must confess I always cringe. Being a part of the creation of Dayaalu feels much like birthing and raising my children. My hope is to listen deeply to what Dayaalu wants to become and help her manifest the possibilities of how she can be of service in the world.
In this journey I am deeply grateful to my family for supporting and trusting me in this process, to the inspiration and guidance of my teachers and to this community for being such a beautiful place for Dayaalu to grow up.
Love,
Sue
As a junior in high school I pushed myself out of balance with my skating, academics and social life. I landed in the hospital for 4 weeks with a septic fever of unknown cause. Doctors eventually found and treated the infection but I needed to learn to walk all over again. It was at that pivotal time in life when one is choosing colleges and careers and my illness inspired me toward a degree in physical therapy.
Early on I had an interest in working with children but this passion was sealed during a Special Olympic weekend camp when I was a physical therapy grad student at Boston University. I will never forget stepping on the camp bus and the sense of entering a new world. Though initially the newness of it all was uncomfortable, soon I was in the midst the most honest openhearted connections I’d ever witnessed. The last day of the camp a group of us were on a walk when a car slowly passed. In that moment I met the gaze of 4 adults looking at us with complete pity as a group of “disabled people”. I had a flash of destiny-an overwhelming feeling that part of my life’s purpose would be to help offer a shift in perceptions, transforming those pitying glances to the appreciation I’d come to know that week-- That people who walk through life with different abilities embody the spiritual principles of living in the moment, honestly and love like no others I had ever met.
After a few years working in hospitals I found myself in the Bainbridge Island School district as a physical therapist in the special education department. Fifteen years into this position I reflected on the lives of so many children growing up with no opportunities for recreational fitness. I was working on their ability to walk yet there were so few places for them to walk to. Inspired by this aha, I created a fitness program in the school district that would provide a bridge to community recreational fitness experiences including an Aikido program, baseball and soccer team, nature walks and yoga classes. To support this program, I decided to attend a program called Yoga for the Special Child so that I would be able to offer yoga classes.
Looking over my options for where to take my yoga training I decided to completely dive into the experience and attend the program at the Integral Yoga Ashram in Yogaville, Virginia. My not so flexible body and unfocused mind knew on some level this was just the place to start. I often laugh when I remember cautioning friends and family, “don’t worry I wont come back doing that om stuff!” I left the island a stressed out working mom who had not slept over 4 hours/night in 10 years and had a host of autoimmune disorders such as asthma and severe allergies. Little did I know how deeply I would be altered on a cellular level in just a few days.
Arriving at the ashram felt like landing on a foreign planet. The pictures of Swami Satchidananda in his orange robes on every wall felt like the eyes of big brother watching me and somehow I felt both unease and a complete knowing that this is where I needed to be. The first 2 days of our lunch time meditation felt like medicine with not so pleasant side effects. My hips and back ached and my mind raced and as uncomfortable as it was I knew this had the potential to be very good for me.
On my third day of meditation the minute I took my seat I knew something was different, my body was at ease, my mind became calm and soon I was in the experience of a profound awakening that would change my life. There is no way to describe these experiences and I must admit it is difficult for me to share this so publicly. The experience of simultaneously dissolving into everything and becoming nothing left me with a profound faith and humility that is indescribable. Years later I would stumble across the introduction in Eckhart Tolle book “The Power of Now” where he describes an almost identical experience and only then did I begin to understand that the path of yoga leads to this connection and that others had similar experiences. My journey was to be thrust up the spiritual mountain then roll back to the bottom to then slowly and steadily and step by step continue the path towards this connection we call yoga.
When I returned from my training I knew with all my heart that I needed community and that for me this path should not to be travelled alone. Having left one week earlier with almost no experience of yoga I had much to learn. I developed a daily practice that was powerful medicine for me. After 10 years of needing sleeping pills, antidepressants and inhalers, my sleep disorder, allergies and asthma healed spontaneously and as long as I practiced I stayed healthy. If I went more than three days with out practice I stopped sleeping through the night. This was an incredible motivator!! During this time there was no yoga studio on the island and though I tried practicing in gyms I was searching for a depth to my practice that was not being nourished in that setting. In 2009 I formed the Island Yoga Space, a collective of teachers interested in fostering yoga and a healing community. For one year I juggled my school district job and the administration of the yoga space but soon I was working 100 hours/week and something needed to change. After 20 years of service, in 2011, I resigned from my school district job and began working with children privately combining yoga and physical therapy.
We were able to create sacred space in our simple industrial building that housed the Island Yoga Space and in that setting I started to see my students flourish. I also began collaborating with several mental health practitioners in our community using yoga to support clients with anxiety, depression, trauma, PTSD and psychosis. Though the range of conditions and ages of my clients is broad, from children with autism and cerebral palsy to adults with anxiety or back pain, I am struck by similarities in the work independent of conditions. I feel that my experience blessed me with the felt sense of the light, love and possibility that resides in each of us. Each time I’m with a client is an opportunity to reflect that back to them. What is really magical is to start to witness clients knowing how to be there own reflection of this light, love and connection to what is possible in their lives.
In the spring of 2011 while driving home from work I heard a very strong and clear voice say, “You must move”. I knew this was not referring to my home and that I needed to listen to this deep guidance. Within the week I found myself looking through the window of an unappealing building for sale on Wyatt Way. Initially I had no interest but something made me peer through to the backyard where I saw the most magnificent Magnolia tree in full bloom. It was love at first sight, and in that moment I knew I’d begun an adventure that would require many leaps of faith. Fortunately, my experience years before at Yogaville prepared me well for this leap and instilled a trust that became vital to the process ahead of me. With our son heading to college and our daughter soon to follow, using our family’s home as the primary asset and resource to build the Center was not exactly logical. The process of creating Dayaalu started and continues to this day to be a process of deep listening and cultivating receptivity of how to be of service to our community and to the world at large.
The phrase “when a student is ready the teacher appears” came to life when I met Christina Donnell in 2010. Her teachings are largely inspired by her experiences with the Q’ero of Peru and the best word I can find to describe her life changing work is mystical. The Q’ero live without a belief in linear time, ownership, or sense of individual soul. Profound interconnectedness and balance is at the core of their culture. During one of her trainings we were invited to give up all of our roles, teachers, and beliefs. Taking this step felt like losing the very connective tissue that held me together, and yet the experience was transformative. It opened a feeling of spaciousness and way to move in the world with the sense of interconnectedness that was the essence of my awakening experience all those years ago in Yogaville.
Though yoga practices continue to be vitally important in my life, this process of loosening my grip on particular beliefs or paths has been very influential in the formation of the Center. No surprise that one of Swami Satchidananda’s main messages is “paths are many, truth is one.” Before we opened our doors I knew that Dayaalu would offer much more than what we often think of as yoga in our culture. Dayaalu’s symbol is seven connected hearts forming a sun shining light and to me this is the feeling of the Dayaalu experience.
Early in the process of creating the Center when asked about our vision these words came to me-- “to provide a place that will support a paradigm shift in medicine and education.” The first time I spoke those words I felt both an overwhelming sense of the enormity of this task and a clear connection to the possibilities.
At this time, Dayaalu Center houses an integrated healing center, a vast array of offerings that surpass anything I could have imagined. Collaborations with other organizations to create continuing medical education to support this envisioned paradigm shift both for patients and providers alike are now emerging. We also started a guild that includes therapists, doctors and educators dedicated to improving the lives of children and their families. We have hopes to support our schools in bringing the mindfulness and meditation practices that neuroscience is showing to improve our ability to learn and become resilient beings.
The mission for Dayaalu was to create a compassionate community that fosters transformation through body mind and spirit. Our wide variety of weekly classes, workshops, live music, community rituals and celebrations are also beyond what we could have ever imagined. What’s most exciting to witness are the transformations happening each day at the Center and to be in the presence of this compassionate community.
Shortly before the Center opened I attended a meditation workshop where I experienced a magnificent image that captured the essence of Dayaalu. As I closed my eyes two ears appeared that started to move together to form a heart. The heart then began to transform into a beautiful lotus flower. Two leaves formed under the flower and they became hands. Then a hummingbird appeared and started to drink from the flower. Then a voice said, “when you deeply listen to your heart and are supported by community you can drink from the nectar of life.”
When people refer to me as the owner of Dayaalu I must confess I always cringe. Being a part of the creation of Dayaalu feels much like birthing and raising my children. My hope is to listen deeply to what Dayaalu wants to become and help her manifest the possibilities of how she can be of service in the world.
In this journey I am deeply grateful to my family for supporting and trusting me in this process, to the inspiration and guidance of my teachers and to this community for being such a beautiful place for Dayaalu to grow up.
Love,
Sue
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