From the Heights — and I Mean That Literally
Cleveland Heights Made Me
I grew up in Cleveland Heights, Ohio — a real place, perched at elevation above the city of Cleveland, looking out over everything below.
From 1976 to 1990, those streets were my whole world. And they were remarkable. Cleveland Heights in those years was a genuine melting pot. Rich and poor on the same block. Every ethnicity, every background. Art, music, history, culture crashing into each other in the best possible way.
It was the kind of place that makes you believe in people — because you grew up surrounded by all kinds of them. It also produced some interesting humans. Travis and Jason Kelce grew up in those same neighborhoods. So did Machine Gun Kelly. What the Heights seemed to make was people who were real, resilient, and completely themselves. I like to think some of that stuck. I left in the 90's. Ended up eventually in Central Texas, which is a different world in many ways — fewer edges, less cultural texture. But you don’t lose where you’re from. You carry it. That’s what “From the Heights” means.
The Years In Between
The stretch between leaving Cleveland Heights and arriving at a yoga mat covered a lot of ground — career, relationships, the full catalog of adult life. It also included a serious relationship with alcohol that I eventually had to reckon with.
I got sober in December 2017. That’s not the beginning of my story, but it’s the beginning of the clearest chapter. Eight-plus years later, sobriety is the foundation everything else is built on — including this practice.
How Yoga Found Me
I first was exposed to yoga as a kid. During the 70's my mother practiced at The Light of Yoga Society on Lee Road in Cleveland Heights. Later in life, I came to yoga the way a lot of people in recovery do — looking for something that worked on the inside, not just the outside. What I found was a practice with more depth than I expected: philosophy, breath, stillness, and a framework for living that mapped almost exactly onto what I was already learning in recovery.
Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras describe the practice of stilling the fluctuations of the mind. If you’ve ever sat with a craving, a resentment, or the 2 AM version of your own thoughts, you know exactly what that means. Yoga didn’t give me something new. It gave me language for something I was already doing.
I completed my 200-hour yoga teacher training and became a Registered Yoga Teacher (RYT-200) through Yoga Alliance in January 2026. I’m 55 years old. GenX. Better late than never, and right on time.
How I Teach
My teaching style is accessible, grounded, and trauma-informed. That means I design classes for real bodies with real histories — not for Instagram, not for advanced practitioners, not for people who need to prove anything to anyone.
I believe the mat is a place of honest meeting. You bring what you have that day. We work with it. No performance required.
I’m based in Central Texas and teaching classes in the area. Yoga from the Heights is also building an online presence for people who want to practice from wherever they are — because the practice shouldn’t have a geographic barrier.