My teaching (our learning) is about deeply understanding and honoring our bodies. Health and fitness require awareness, practice, commitment. The science and art of living an embodied life.
People always say “Listen to your body,” but many of my clients start out not knowing how to listen, or what to do with the information they could ‘hear’. Like what does it mean that this part hurts in this way? What does it mean that my sleep has changed, my guts aren’t happy, or my mood is everywhere but steady?
Like reading a map, we gotta start where we are, engage with the tools in front of us, navigate, seek out new resources, and move ourselves forward, Inward. How do we know where we’re headed if we can’t see (or hear, feel, sense) where we’re starting?
Your body has so much to teach you – I can help you translate!
Some of my clients say that I ‘speak body’. Together, we learn, practice, and LIVE at new levels of embodiment.
Over the past 20 years, I’ve applied areas of study like dance and improvisation, movement analysis, anatomy and physiology, Yoga, running and biomechanics, functional movement education, developmental movement patterns, somatics, imagery strategies, neuroscience…all things human body, brain and spirit in motion. I love/live this stuff!
I believe in our capacity to change, grow and thrive.
I witness this in every lesson I teach, and study it daily in myself.
First, let me clarify a key point.
Some people imagine my lessons are like Coaching. Talking and thinking.
Although we do discuss and process our experience verbally, there’s a wealth of knowledge under our words and logic. Our sessions require us to get out of our heads (thankfully) and reconnect in real time with our wise, animal selves (gratefully!) through movement.
It’s a skill to be present in our bodies – one that can be learned and strengthened.
Here’s my bio:
Cheri Dostal Ryba believes embodiment creates presence, pleasure, personal and collective healing by exploring ‘who we are and how we be.’ She’s a C-IAYT Yoga Therapist and Franklin Method Movement Educator with 20 years experience in dance, fitness and wellness. Her favorite professional roles right now include being a co-director and lead faculty for the accredited C-IAYT training program AlcheMe Yoga Therapy, and releasing her first book, Pelvic Yoga Therapy for the Whole Woman: A Professional Guide, with Singing Dragon publishing. Cheri engages with the yoga community around the world at the SYTAR yoga therapy conference, and presented at the 2019 and 2022 conferences.
As a Senior Associate to Donna Farhi, Cheri has assisted with yoga/somatics intensives in Seattle, Austin, and Albuquerque, and served as an Assistant Teacher during the 2015 Advanced Teacher Training Intensive in New Zealand. She’s assisted Donna over 400 hours since her original training in 2010.
Yoga, meditation, and trail running helped Cheri navigate through an unexpected divorce and miscarriage, rebuild her immune system and resilience, and welcome love and vulnerability. Returning to snowboarding and rock climbing after motherhood? Humbling! Movement is medicine.
Since then, The Franklin Method and deepening her studies of yoga philosophy, ethics and informed consent, touch, and the nervous system according to polyvagal theory has brought her skill and wisdom to the next level. She loves supporting mamas and women of wise ages, people seeking pelvic embodiment and relief from pelvic symptoms like incontinence, prolapse, pain with sex, and more.
Studying and teaching about humans in motion is her lifelong passion, embodiment an ongoing personal experiment. Cheri hopes to write many more books and loves pulling weeds in the garden. She adventures through life with her husband and makes up songs and creates art with her two cheeky monkey daughters.
