Day 15: Breathe and Relax
Meditation Series: Ride the Wave
Led by Jordan Smiley
This meditation is part of a series designed to help us stay calm and accept the present circumstances. In the same way that a surfer has to stay relaxed and alert to ride an ocean wave, learning to create a restful sense of presence can greatly support us in the midst of daily stress. In this first meditation, we will connect with the breath, and complete a brief body scan by bringing awareness to various body parts. If we notice that the body is holding tension, we’ll use the exhale breath to help release the strain and relax the body and mind.
Jordan (he/his/him) is a Diné and Tewa 2-Spirit leader and story-keeper, full time student and ERYT-500 Y-CEP yoga teacher. He is owner, Co-Director and lead of Teacher Development at Courageous Yoga in Denver, CO.
Jordan understands yoga as a path of liberation, and offers philosophy, meditation, and āsana (postural practice) from the perspective that all inner, outer and collective work are intertwined. His skilled and masterful lineage of teachers and inspirations include both traditional, Indigenous and rebellious sources of wisdom. He has been studying the relationship between social justice and yoga for the last 10 years, with the support of teachers such as Reverend angel Kyodo williams, Michael Stone, and most notably, his grandmothers Maximaña and María, and his mother Carolyna. In the yoga community, Jordan serves as an equity consultant, speaker, curriculum designer, editor, writer and teacher trainer. He is known for infusing poethics into his innovative and playful movement classes and learning environments. His lived wisdom and diverse, strong and radical teachers allow him to support a variety of practitioners and speak with authenticity, love and fire across the topics of philosophy, social identity, physiology, human development and andragogy.
Jordan is grateful to have served as a classroom teacher in the public schools in the culturally rich and historically LatinX West Side of Denver for 10 years, and since then, to have taught for TEDx, Yoga Alliance, Integral Yoga, Honor Yoga's Roots, Breathe For Change, and Nike. He is a return teacher at Yoga on the Rocks at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, and has been published multiple times in Yoga Journal and on the Living Brave podcast. Jordan's gratitude extends continuously to the community who share the path of yoga, where it is his intention to embody fearless self-love, vigorous self-study and enduring compassion. He respectfully resides with his family on unceded land historically and currently cared for by the Hinono-eino, Noochee, Ndee and Tsitsistas people, known colonially as Denver, CO.