With amazing help from Dearbhla Kelly, I was learning to breathe again. She took me in and helped me feel alive again. I’ve been active my entire life, but for the first time truly learning to connect to my body- lungs, heart, muscles, bones, mind all working in sync. I’m especially grateful for Dearbhla’s guidance and understanding of my situation. Her experience in helping me through my injury by emphasizing the fundamentals of yoga have made a big difference in my overall approach. It’s quite intimidating to walk into a studio, with super bendy, advanced people and a teacher who’s taught some of the best of the best. I was the broken lady in the back of the room, just trying my best to make it through to a shabasana without keeling over. But, in her class, I always felt like I was in a safe space.
I’ll never forget the day she ended class with adho mukha vrksana…handstand, which was usually my cue to wait it out in child’s pose. This time, she had me try it. Me…an inversion?? Low and behold, she helped me into the pose and the class applauded! It was awesome and so touching.
Dearbhla, thank you for all your wisdom, attention, and patience. You helped so much and today I am so much better.
- Claire Ortiz
Dearbhla Kelly, one of my favorite yoga teachers in Los Angeles, has a simple method of gaining her students’ trust. Dearbhla makes sure that, by five minutes into class, she knows the name and at least one thing about each student in the room. And each time she sees any of us around the studio, she calls us by name and asks us, personally, how we are doing. In a Los Angeles yoga studio with hundreds of students pouring in and out each day, Dearbhla’s feat of learning names is quite significant, and it shows in her students’ responses. During each of Dearbhla’s classes, she challenges her students to try poses or transitions we might never attempt otherwise, and we do it because of our conviction that our teacher cares about who we are and what we do. Each time I attended her class, Dearbhla reminded me again and again that it feels really good to know someone has made the effort to learn my name.
Rabbi Sydni Rubinstein