Lu (Louisa) DiGrazia
Lu is an Experienced-Registered Yoga Teacher-500 with Yoga Alliance - Louisa (Lu) DiGrazia started her Yoga teaching career in Santa Barbara, CA, in 1972. Her most significant teachers were Indra Devi, J. Krishnamurti, and more recently, Rama Jyoti Vernon, founder of the International Yoga College. Krishnamurti* was her spiritual and Raja Yoga teacher. She learned from him how to be her own teacher and to learn from everyone and everything. Lu attended the University of Hawai'i, graduating with a degree in "Peace and Well-Being" in 1997.
The Yoga School of Kailua, Inc., teaches hatha and raja Yoga which includes meditation, and body-mind and spirit consciousness and awareness. Hatha is breath, postures, and meditation, and was developed fully in the centuries following Patanjali (from about 200 BCE), and continues to evolve; and raja involves the mind-body-spirit matrix which includes meditation and deeper mental exploration so natural for the practicing yogi. Lu lived near Tokyo, Japan for three years from 1965-1968, and was exposed to Yoga for the first time there.
Lu lives in Kailua with her husband, and fellow teacher and lawyer, Tom DiGrazia, and with her daughter Sara, and son-in-law Taylor, and granddaughter Mesina. All three of their daughters (Deja, Simone & Sara) are Yoga practitioners. Lu and Tom are proud grandparents of 3.
A major focus of Lu's work these days is teaching Yoga to inmates at all four adult correctional institutions on Oahuwith the program she and Tom created, Hawai'i Yoga Prison Project (HYP). "Inside" she teaches asana/postures, breath, meditation and the Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, like her general-public classes. Yoga for the prison population aids students in reentering society as more physically and spiritually whole, healthy, responsible, spiritually connected citizens. One of her main concerns is with the rehabilitation of a wounded body and spirit. Therapeutic Yoga can be essential for the injured student to heal the body-mind and spirit matrix. Louisa has spent her career learning how to help people to heal holistically. Safety is the main concern for Louisa and her Yoga School teachers. The second focus of the YSK, is teaching student teachers, and preparing them for entering the Yoga world fully prepared for the work.
She has developed a Yoga class incorporating Yoga and weight training. This class strengthens the body faster than Yoga alone, and the strength training improves Yoga asana/postures making the Hatha YogaÊstrength asanas/poses easier.
Lu also conducts official Hawai'i State wedding ceremonies, rights of passage, Christenings, funerals, devotional services, wedding vow renewals, etc. as a Licensed Minister, non-denomination, Registered as a Minister in the State of Hawai'i.
*Krishnamurti claimed allegiance to no caste, nationality or religion and was bound by no tradition. He said people have to be free of fear, conditioning, authority, and dogma by exercising awareness, and self-knowledge. Awareness will bring about order and psychological transformation. The conflict-ridden violent world, he suggested, cannot be transformed into a life of goodness, love and compassion by any political, social or economic strategies. It is only through an alert cognitive state in which one is aware of oneself and one's situation, and the subtle movement of life itself within and without, that an individual can bring about a mutation in consciousness, without the mediation of any guru or organized religion. Only in this exercise of freedom from the known can one be free of conflict and conditioning, begin to discover right relationship, the beginnings of a meditative mind, and therefore, to experience insight and creativity in all areas of ones' life.