Student Spotlight: Guest Post by Nikki Rodney

From Karen:
I have recently been inspired to do a new regular feature in our monthly newsletter – the Student Spotlight. This will allow some of our students to share their yoga story, and inspire us with the ways yoga has enhanced their lives. A short version will be seen in our newsletter, with the extended version of the student’s reflection published here as a guest blog in the Karen’s Yoga Blog space. I hope you enjoy it!

I would love to hear your yoga story! If you would like to be featured in a Student Spotlight, contact me at info@greentarayoga.com

Our first featured student is Nikki Rodney. Nikki is a seeker, chant writer, birth and death doula, and acupuncturist, based in Cleveland, Ohio. She holds a doctorate in medical anthropology and is a lifelong stress researcher who has published widely on the intergenerational effects of trauma on the body. Nikki has been studying Iyengar Yoga at Green Tara Yoga for three years. She is also a student of Jozef Frucek of Fighting Monkey. You can find her at nicolerodneyacupuncture.com

From Nikki:
If we want a consistent yoga practice, we often think we need more time, more space, or more discipline. But what I’ve found is the opposite: what we need is less friction. As an acupuncturist in two busy clinics, my days are structured around brief pauses between patients. Instead of waiting for the “right” time to practice, I created a simple yoga setup in each office — just enough to make it easy to step onto the mat at any moment. What I thought would be barriers — cost, or how it might look to others —quickly faded when I realized how little was actually required to begin.

What unfolded in those small windows of time surprised me. I didn’t use them to build strength or master new poses — I used them for restorative asanas. A few minutes in a supported shape, a conscious breath, a chance to feel my body again. These moments became less about doing yoga and more about being in relationship with it. Over time, they changed the texture of my days. I felt more grounded, more present, and more resourced to care for others. Yoga didn’t need an hour—it just needed an invitation.

The result of this simple setup was not the practice I expected, but the one I needed. Instead of striving or advancing, I found myself resting. In those brief moments, restorative shapes offered a return—to breath, to sensation, to a deeper sense of care. Seeing patient after patient requires presence and heart, and these pauses became the very thing that sustained it. The practice met me in stillness, offering permission to soften, to receive, to be held. What began as a practical experiment became something much more: a quiet, daily devotion to returning to myself.

It is also worth noting that there is no way to know what will come out of it if you try this. For me, someone with a lot of energy and a lot of determination, I expected to be kicking up into handstand and counting my progress. What I found was the exact opposite. As I opened myself to the practice, the practice told me that it was there for me in the moments between patients so I could rest. When I looked at the props sitting there, with two minutes to use them, it was easy for me to see that what I needed was restoration. I still work at yoga, but that’s in class or at home on a Saturday morning. At work, in those stolen quiet moments, restorative asanas have given me access to a quality of life I struggled to touch a year ago. Permission to rest. Intense relaxation that can be felt from my jaw bones to my toe bones. Tremendous joy in feeling cared for. The result for me is a better quality of life: more awake to myself, more awake the patients who wait on both sides of the two minutes.