Contact Information and Bi{y}og{a}raphy

Please feel welcome to contact Mark Spring at Momentasana Yoga at momentasana.yoga@gmail.com

Bi{y}og{a}raphy

In the winter of 1993, I began to take my first yoga course in the Field House, a cavernous stone building on the University of Toledo’s campus. Walking to the class on frigid, sometimes subzero mornings, and then working my way through several first-time poses toward savasana in a warm, silent, softly-sunlit chamber…introduced me to the challenge of staying awake during that beloved concluding resting pose! {This is a gentle challenge I have now presented to practitioners in hundreds of yoga classes, especially the yoga nidra journeys I have enjoyed the privilege to guide since 2017, when I started to offer classes.}

As I prepared for the experience and challenge of that first series of courses in Ohio, I approached yoga with quiet intentness and curiosity, an open mind, and a strong interest in working on flexibility to balance out the compressive effects of intense compulsory weightlifting I found myself doing three times per week as part of my college athletics training. In and of itself, the weight training program provided me with a physical, emotional, and psychological education of lifelong value. Learning to call upon yoga to improve myself as an athlete, however, deepened, expanded, and diversified that education profoundly, right from that first collegiate year. Through yoga, I gained protective flexibility which limited and prevented injuries that had once frequently recurred. I listened to my body much more sensitively and resourcefully. I learned to mend more quickly, to think more flexibly and calmly, and to understand the mysterious, awesome role that attention can play in either inflaming injury or in facilitating recovery and fostering wellness. And a something-much-more, a capacity for noticing and a sense of welcome, quiet change, awakened. Almost imperceptibly at first, that initial experience of a series of twice-weekly yoga classes made a lasting impression that surprised me and continued to make its way more explicitly into my awareness.

Over nearly three decades since I completed that introductory course series, my practice of yoga has helped me to gain concrete experiences of healing, change, and resilience amidst life’s challenges, while it has also enhanced life’s many joys. Yoga offers one a rewarding and endless path of learning, an expanded capacity for listening to and savoring subtle details, and a widely varied set of practices that enable one to live more perceptively, expressively, and mindfully.

Teaching yoga courses is one of the great wonders, honors, and privileges of my life. I embark on paths of healing, play, work, concentration, and growth with people of every walk of life, learning much about myself in the process, and keeping in mind my belief in each person’s Inner Teacher, the intuitive, independent actor-perceiver in each person whom I work to understand and support.

The value and challenge of engaging with people in this practice humbles me, awakens keen self-awareness, and prompts me to notice new information that flows to my attention during each practice. Practicing yoga is a creative endeavor, whether one practices independently as a beginner or works with large classes as a teacher. The practice may become both intimately familiar and refreshingly new, each time.

Momentasana Yoga exists in order to more deeply join and actively facilitate the practice of yoga in the lives of beginners and teachers alike. I feel honored and excited to learn more about each person’s journey and to find ways to explore yoga together to our secure and lasting benefit.