ditch the comparisons and reconnect to your true self AND OTHERS

"I help current and former competitive athletes and recovering perfectionists heal from burnout, let go of unhealthy conditioning, and reconnect to their authentic selves. Learn to thrive in life beyond competition through the ancient practices of yoga, community, and self-study."          
 -----Sarah Neal, The Skating Yogi

my Featured Blog Posts:

Perspective
02.25.22

Last week as I was reading through some old notebooks working on a course proposal teach abroad, I came across this essay I wrote while studying abroad. Here’s the translation for you:

     “When I finish my degree, I want to be a figure skating coach. I know that skating has nothing to do with being a Spanish and English major, but it has a lot to do with my life and my dreams. When I was a child, skating was always on my mind. Everything I did—whether it was sleep, walk, study, eat, or breathe—it was to be able to skate more and better. Now, even though it’s been four years since I stopped training and competing, thoughts and dreams about skating still fill my head and I still want to go back to where skating was my life.” 

bodily autonomy and sports
08.28.21

     The Olympics and Simone Biles are still on my mind. How can they not be? After all, I'm still a coach of youth sports, and my own sport still faces its own struggles with prioritizing medals and money over athlete well-being. Elite sports, by nature, require a level of single-mindedness that some would argue is pathological. What do we do with this knowledge? What role do agency and bodily autonomy play in our path to healing and creating a truly safe sport?

Agency in young athletes and Grit training
08.19.2021

    As we have seen over the past few years, many well-established athletic training methods and practices need to stop. Most level-headed people now agree that clear patterns of abuse like what we saw in USA Gymnastics should never have been tolerated. But what about the behaviors that aren’t so clear, that may still be justified as “scientific”  or to promote “toughness”? 

whats next? Life after competition...
09.08.21

     Leaving competitive sports behind is a lot like breaking up with a significant other. Either you make the choice to end it, or someone or something chooses for you. When you retire from sports, sometimes it’s because you don’t make the cut for the team, or maybe you have a career-ending injury, you graduate, a parent loses a job or they get divorced, or maybe you just don’t love it enough anymore to keep making the required sacrifices. Or maybe a tragedy (or pandemic) leads your peers to grow apart or your family to reevaluate your current financial and emotional investment.  No matter the reason, leaving competitive sports almost always entails an agonizing transition for an athlete.

Forever Athlete

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