I’m teaching 2 yoga classes today at Area Yoga Brooklyn heights: 12:25 Basics and 1:45 Open/Restorative, both perfect for beginners. Perfect for rainy Sundays. Purrrrfect for youuu. 144 Montague $15
For full schedule click menu/yoga

Need help recovering from yesterday’s festivities? Come take my restorative yoga class tonight 5:10-6:20pm at Area Yoga Park Slope (45 5th Ave. at Bergen) $15
For full schedule click menu/yoga

Where I am in my life right now is about genuine self-expression. I spent a lot of my childhood and adolescence suffering and hiding. Self-expression through creative words and movement kept me alive. Dancing and writing poetry are how I have honored my experiences, acknowledged my pain, and found beauty in my vulnerability and my strength. As a child, dance class was the one place where it was safe to be in my body and have fun. I started practicing yoga as a teenager to heal my body and my spirit. My development as a professional dancer was a development of that healing.

I worked hard to build a life and career focused on alleviating other people’s suffering, and drawing on my painful experiences to help others. I am very proud of the work I did as a social worker and I know I changed people’s lives. I was still suffering. Moving to New York and turning my focus to yoga and dance is about letting genuine self-expression drive my life, rather than finding it despite my life. Yoga and burlesque may seem like an odd combination, but it is not for me. Studying burlesque and Yoga simultaneously made a lot of sense. Both are about being in one’s own body, exploring, accepting, nurturing, and expressing one’s truest self, then taking that very personal and private knowledge of self out into the world to connect with other people from a genuine, loving center. I am not just my body, but I am in this body. Taking ownership of my body and sharing it on my own terms is hugely powerful and healing. I love doing this through dance.

I am genuinely a sexual person, so my sexuality is evident in my dancing. What I discovered in burlesque is an even bolder expression of my own power. I can create my own act, my own choreography, my own message, show all the parts of myself- the parts of my body as well as the parts of my personality. I can be child-like and mature, silly and sexy, hungry and satisfied, soft and strong, exposed and in command. In performing burlesque I feel genuine. I feel connected. Being without clothing and not without control is so huge for me and for all women. If you know and care about me, you get that. So I don’t see a need to really separate my burlesque life- it’s all me. I am not ashamed of it. Maybe for the first time in my life, I am not ashamed of my body or sexuality. I refuse to be ashamed. Stella de Lis is not an alter ego or a secret, it’s a name I chose to honor where this expression comes from, where I come from. Just as I chose to be called Renée because it honors the rebirth I had when I reclaimed my life as my own.

I wear my feminism proudly, and it is evident in all aspects of my life. I fight for women to be seen and heard and respected, myself included. I am choosing now to do this through yoga and burlesque because they are both self-controlled; I am no longer struggling within broken systems. I can be truly genuine in my purpose and effect.

All this to say, I am being my truest self, and the people who love me see that. Thank you for reading this. Thank you for seeing me.

  I’ll be teaching the following yoga classes over the holidays:

Tuesday, December 22

8:25pm 

Open 

Area Yoga 45 5th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217

–

Saturday, December 26

5:10pm

Restorative 

Area Yoga 45 5th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217

–

Sunday, December 27

1:45pm

Open Restorative

Area Yoga 144 Montague St, Brooklyn, NY 11201

–

Monday, December 28

5:00pm

Sweat, Stretch, and Relax

Area Yoga, 389 Court St, Brooklyn, NY 11231

–

Tuesday, December 29

8:25pm 

Open 

Area Yoga 45 5th Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217

–

Friday, January 1, 2016

12:30pm

Express Basic

Area Yoga 144 Montague St, Brooklyn, NY 11201

–

Saturday, January 2, 2016

3:10pm Basics

and 

4:30pm Open

Area Yoga, 389 Court St, Brooklyn, NY 11231

–

Sign up at http://www.areayogabrooklyn.com 🙏

So it’s been 13 months and I finally feel like a legit Brooklyn resident. Now I only get lost on purpose, I don’t ask for go cups at bars, and I have 4 plaid button-downs in my wardrobe. 

  Happy Fall! Fall is my favorite time of year. Leaves change color, temperatures change, we become more introspective as we let go of the warmth of summer and settle into the darker, colder elements the yin cycle brings. This is a time of gathering and elimination, both in nature and in our health. This is a perfect time to consider your world, eliminate the negative, and gather the positive.

As yoga is connection, I seek to connect to these traits of the season in my practice. I am incorporating poses that are detoxifying, grounding, receptive, and nurturing. I couldn’t think of a more perfect time to gather my teaching skills, and share yoga with my community 🙂

I’ll be teaching 4 of Area Yoga’s donation based weekly community classes at 389 Court St. 8:00-9:10pm on the following Saturdays: October 10, 17, 24, and November 7. Suggested donation is $10, and all donations benefit orphaned African elephant Boromoko, fostered by Area Yoga and in care of the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust.

  
I am really excited to be dancing in the 9/11 Tribute “Table of Silence.” It’s a public performance ritual for peace and will be streamed live from Lincoln Center. I hope you will join us in person or online!
 Livestream: Friday, September 11, 2015, beginning at 8:15AM

the new world trade center behind me as I walk to my doctor’s office

Today is a new anniversary for me. With everything I’ve been seeing on my newsfeed about the Katrina 10th anniversary, and being in rehearsals for an important anniversary ritual on September 11, I wanted to share some thoughts. Anniversaries are important. Even anniversaries of trauma. These anniversaries are not celebrations of the trauma, nor assertions that things are now back to normal. Things will never be back to normal. Horrible things happen. Human beings are capable of horrible things. But we are also resilient. We survive, we continue to live and risk and love anyway. We heal. We participate in and even facilitate each other’s healing. I don’t like the adage, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,” because it implies that strength comes from near destruction. We are born strong. So it is simpler than that- what doesn’t kill you doesn’t kill you. You keep going. Our bodies naturally tend toward healing. So do our hearts. Remembering the trauma is acknowledging the healing.

On Saturday I remembered how it felt to see my home torn and left to bleed out. I also remembered how it felt to hold a binder full of emails from strangers in Chicago willing to open up their homes to me after I fled there. How it still feels to be in a room full of people who share my hometown and understand its complexity. Today I remember the car accident I had while moving out of New Orleans into New York. It’s slammed into my memory the way that all traumas are. But that trauma was also followed by the kindness of strangers and friends, a new rooting of my life, and healing of my body.

Next Friday I’ll remember the day that devastated my new home, joining with New Yorkers through my art, honoring the lives lost, and praying for peace. Healing can not happen without grief, and grief can not happen without remembering. These anniversaries are about remembering the injury and honoring the healing. When I remember these days, I grieve for what is lost, and I celebrate human resilience.

  
I am now teaching open yoga classes at Ruskin Karate in Borough Park! Tuesdays 8-9:15pm and Sundays 11am-12:15. Your first class is only $10, and the drop in rate thereafter is $15. Discounted monthly rates will be available also. This is a gentle vinyasa flow class suitable for adults of all ages and abilities. I want to offer more classes, so please take a minute and fill out this short survey to let me know what kinds of classes you would like to take, and when. See you on the mat!

Renée Gaubert was born in Brussels, Belgium and grew up in New Orleans, Louisiana with a passion for movement. Renée is a Registered Yoga Teacher through Yoga Alliance, as well as a professional dancer. Renée studied ballet and modern dance at Tulane University while also pursuing a BA in Sociology at Loyola University. After graduating in 2008, Renée focused on practicing social work in Post-Katrina New Orleans for several years as a Disaster Housing Case Manager, Domestic Violence Victim Advocate, and Mental Health Professional before returning to the dance world with an even deeper passion for healing through movement. With over 10 years of teaching experience, Renée seeks to cultivate body awareness and holistic empowerment through yoga and dance.

Take class with Renée