I finished filming a beginning yoga for anxiety video on Friday, June 19 at YogaWorks Pasadena! The video is one in a series of four yoga for anxiety and depression videos for my mental health blog The Strange is Beautiful (thestrangeisbeautiful.com) and for my 300 hour yoga teacher training project. I’m so grateful to have such talented, helpful and loving friends – Christian Soriano, Corey Strong and Nadia Adella – who gave their time to make this video possible and a brilliant yoga mentor, Ashley Rideaux, to help me design the yoga sequence. A huge thanks to YogaWorks Pasadena, to the manager Ken, for letting me use the studio to film and for moppping/turning the air on so the room wasn’t a sauna for the shoot! :)
(From left to right: Corey Strong, Shannen Roberts, Christian Soriano and Nadia Adella.)
Thank you to Christian Soriano for filming! You created the perfect vibe with a red filtered light and a pastel purple filtered light plus got all possible angles with an aerial view GoPro, two stationary cameras and he went around with his handheld as well. P.S. Still have leftover honey oat bars and an Arizona green tea for you xoxoxox
Thank you to Corey Strong for helping out at the last minute and screwing bars into the top of Nadia Adella’s 9 feet by 9 feet backdrop the night before the shoot and for coming along to tape the posters together and to literally string it up on a pipe in the studio. If you didn’t go, most likely Nadia and I would have taped up the posters one by one and prayed that they wouldn’t fall during the hour shoot! P. S. Also ty for listening to my anxiety ridden phone call the night before regarding my fear of the posters falling ahhhh! Peruvian food for you foreverrrr xoxooxx
Thank you thank you thank youuuu to Nadia Adella, mah homegurl 4ever, for easing my anxieties of how to make the video interesting and unique by getting 20 posters from the 99 cent store and paint from Walmart and going straight DIY style to create an amazing backdrop of your trademark dancing monsters. You’re always there when I need help, and always offer a generous hand. I’m so excited for your children’s books to be finished and to help you promote them <3333 We should create legs for the backdrop so you can take it around to wherever you sell your books like at zine fest etc. Going to miss you more than you know when you are in Indonesia and at UCI but am so proud of all of your goals you’ve accomplished and will be here if you need help, to vent, a night out for some boy scouting, and of course to eat/watch Friends and LOTR. You’re the best and I love you.
Lastly, thank you to my mentor and friend Ashley Rideaux for helping me write this sequence and use the correct terms. You’ve helped me come out of my darkest times whether it was panic disorder or tamasic depression, and I’m so happy that I can give back to help others with these videos. <33333333
Also, if you liked my hair and are looking for a new hair stylist, Mecura Joi (@mecurajoi) cut my hair and Kayla Mauceri (@kaylarose213) colored my hair. Contact them through their Instagrams!
This video is going to be awesome! I’m so excited to see the final product and to add Lisa Sonoda‘s calming music to soothe your anxieties <333 Check out her music here: lisasonoda.com
xoxox
Shannen Roberts
Founding Editor-in-Chief of The Strange is Beautiful
P. S.
Thank you to my joints for being healthy and able to perform this sequence for the video. Originally I was going to have other people do the sequence because when I wrote it, arthritis had taken over my body. But the flare up ended, and I am so grateful to be able to move for this shoot.
