Klimt (visipix.com)

I lost Jesus at 14 when the woman I loved most in this world was ripped from my heart. In typical teenage fashion, I needed someone to blame. Instead of an eighteen-wheeler, I chose God.

The truth is that I didn’t trust him anymore. What kind of world kills your grandmother and her three best friends on their way to a fundraiser?

In the absence of His love and that of my grandmother’s, I found myself a man; but in the end I couldn’t trust him either. Neither did my own father remain steadfast in his love.

Those years were swollen with pain, and as I watched my family splinter, until there was little left upon which I could rest my faith.

After I gave up on God, two of my younger sisters took up with him–in that boorish, effusive way of the freshly born again.

Their new-found love, only made me feel lonelier.  Their certainty that Jesus belonged to them, left me wondering how he was ever my friend.

In my twenties, I came to Al-Anon, and there I began dating my Higher Spirit, who remained faceless, and never quite hit the spot like the man in robes with penetrating eyes and long, sandy hair.

It would be decades before I came to peace without a spirit lover, and until then I searched for him in many faiths.

I finally found what I had been looking for, not in a synagogue or women’s coven, but inside the music.

It was the eve before  my beloved grandfather’s funeral–the man who lost his wife to the tragedy that reshaped my life, when my born-again younger sister handed me some music that she was ready to discard.

The New Jersey Mass Choir seemed right up her holy alley, but I quickly learned that there was a hierarchy among Christians which places Catholics well below the born-again.

My sister saved my soul that night, though not in the way she wanted. When the soloist delivered Jesus to me in her rich, soulful tones, it didn’t matter that my passion made no sense.

I felt the love that had once been mine.

I reclaimed Spirit then, in every song and sound, no matter whence it sprang.

Allah, Yahweh, Jesu, Krishna, Shakti, Earth, Water, Sky, Home.

With music and movement, I make sacred the mystery of this journey we call life, without needing to know why.

Kelly Salasin, Vermont

Find out about Falling into the Music with YogaDance & Kelly here.

ps. Special mention goes out to my two beloved, born-again sisters with whom I share an ever-expanding communion in the Mystery that transcends understanding.

This fall you can enjoy a Yoga Parfait–with one spoon–or two, when you combine Casey’s Gentle Yoga with Kelly’s YogaDance Party in Southern Vermont.

Both meet in the Outback at Marlboro Elementary School on Route 9 in Marlboro, Vermont, and begin the week of September 26th through the second week of December.

Enroll for either session by donation (pay what works for you and keeps you coming) or combine the sessions for a Yoga Parfait, see details below.

Gentle Yoga with Casey meets Mondays at 5:30 pm.

YogaDance Party with Kelly meets Thursdays at 5:30 pm.

Each session has approximately 10 classes (offered by donation), or you can combine Yoga & YogaDance for up to 13 classes of  your choice:

Yoga Parfait Menu

Parfait for One: $111  ($8 a class)

Carpool/Family Specials

For 2: $188 ($7 a class)

For 3: $244 ($6 a class)

For 4: $277 ($5 a class)

Each carpool package allows up to 13 classes per person from the fall Yoga and YogaDance Sessions.

Click here to ENROLL or to ask questions

Casey’s Yoga and Kelly’s YogaDance are for everyBODY; skill & experience irrelevant; if you can take a brisk walk, you can YogaDance, and if you can get up and down off the floor, you can Yoga.  For more info, click below.

Kelly’s YogaDance Classes

Casey’s Yoga Classes