Still Life With Celeste Greene

The yoga therapist talks nature, meditation, Ayurveda and living mindfully.

I’m so very grateful to introduce this conversation with Celeste Greene, a certified yoga teacher and yoga therapist. She began practicing yoga at age 15, and also paints, sculpts and designs. She has her own practice in the Nashville area called Living Yoga, and also sees patients at Vanderbilt’s Osher Center for Integrative Health. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Celeste for many years now, and she is a true wealth of knowledge, nurturance and creativity.

Since our recent chat, I have been drinking warm spiced milk every morning (so delicious), and reflecting more intentionally about how and where I spend my time and energy. Below, we discuss the power of presence, the beauty of nature, and what exactly yoga therapy means. I hope you enjoy this as much as I have.

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Transcribed, edited and condensed from our conversation on May 24, 2024.

Celeste: Hi. Oh, it's good to see you. I had a really good time going through your questions.

Elise: Hi! I feel like there’s so much that we could chat about. I’ve been really looking forward to this.

I am going to show up the best way that I can, but I’m personally not in a great place at the moment. Plus I’m on my period and am feeling really spread thin.

Celeste: Well, you're in good company. You don’t have to be anybody for me.

Elise: I’m grateful to talk and hold space together. I’m curious, is there anything you’ve been feeling nostalgic about lately?

Celeste: That’s a perfect question. I just moved out to Joelton, Tennessee, from Nashville. I love being out here — it’s 5 and a half acres. There is a creek. I’m always drawn to being a little removed from what’s going on. I love being in nature, so it’s not out of character for me, but I didn’t realize until I moved out here how similar this place is to where I grew up.

I grew up in between Leipers Fork and Fairview, in a small area called Fernvale. We were so isolated out on 600 acres, so we would spend a lot of time picking blackberries, walking in the woods, taking baths in the creek… things like that. And I’m so nostalgic for it. It’s like I’m coming full circle now, almost returning to my childhood, here as an adult.

Elise: How does that feel?

Celeste: Gosh, I don’t know. It feels healing. It’s been really healing.

I’ve been thinking a lot about who I was as a child, and the innocence that exists before anything gets crazy. Recently I’ve been seeing a lot of turtles and snakes out here, like I did as a child. I walk in the creek barefoot and those feelings are really precious, like I’m reuniting with that part of myself. There’s a wholeness to it.

Elise: Beautiful, like a returning to yourself. Do you feel like you've been able to preserve some of that childlike innocence?

Celeste: I’m feeling more playful in general right now. I notice when I’m in periods of transition and adjustment, like I am right now, I’m more aware of things in nature that I might not usually be aware of. I’m in sync with something different.

The other day I was driving down the road and out of the corner of my eye I saw something brown slightly moving. It was a baby deer, so I pulled over!

Elise: Oh, I saw your photo of that! Incredible! Wasn't it around your feet?

Celeste: It was walking and then came running to me when I got out of the car. It wove itself in between my feet like a cat does.

Elise: Wow.

Celeste: It was such a wild moment. It was kind of rubbing up against my legs, and it was right at the street, so I’m thinking okay, what are we gonna do here? I started to walk it back to the woods — it was a really magical experience.

Elise: That sounds so spiritual, too. Deer are such spiritual beings.

Celeste: Yeah, and I think if I weren’t in the place of life that I'm currently in, I might have just driven right past it and not even noticed. It was very small — the size of a cat — in a grassy area, almost camouflaged. It wanted to follow me around like a dog.

I started to walk the deer back towards the woods. The mom probably left it here, but it was storming so the baby had gotten up. It was following me, and at some point, it started to veer on its own path — back to where it had been lying down, and then it curled up. It felt like the baby deer was saying, Oh right, thank you. I forgot I’m supposed to wait over here.

It was so special and symbolic, this sweet and innocent being — kind of what we were talking about — returning home. Remembering like, Yes, I am supposed to rest. I think that’s what being in nature and being an observant of nature reminds me to do.

Elise: I connect with that so deeply. How do you think we can metaphorically return home, no matter where we are?

Celeste: I'm just learning over the past few years how my home and the space that I'm in, the actual space, really impacts me. It is a reflection of myself. How I’m living, what I care about, the tactile material I bring in, all those things reflect back to me. I think that’s why I found yoga and meditation so early on, and why I care so much about it.

I heard somebody saying the other day that wherever they grew up, or with the people they were around when they were young, they learned early on that they could never fit into it. They decided to go the complete opposite way, instead of failing at trying to fit in. And that was my experience, I was really young searching for truth. What is true? How do we understand truth in our own selves and in society? Yoga gave me a way to go inward.

At its core, yoga is a journey towards authenticity. Home, for me, is when I am incorporating all these parts of myself that were maybe lost or forgotten. It sounds so cliché, but it’s true. I feel most myself and at home when I’m incorporating practices that return me to an internal place. Like, This is who I am. Not this other thing, but this. And then I can move through the world in that way.

Elise: Yes, it’s not stagnant. It’s always moving and evolving.

Celeste: Exactly, I think it’s never-ending, and the idea that we can return home and stay home is an illusion.

Elise: My equilibrium has been so off lately… I know the things I should be doing to feel better or more connected with myself, but mentally I just can’t seem to get there. There was a meme going around recently that said something like:

I’m feeling really down, and I don’t know why.
—Have you exercised today?
No.
—Did you go outside?
No.
—Did you talk to anyone?
No.

And so on, haha. What steps do you take when your mind, body and spirit feel disconnected?

Celeste: Such a good question, and so honest. The thing that comes to mind immediately is to just be gentle on yourself. It's okay to not do any of those things. It's okay.

Elise: … aaand instantly my eyes well up with tears.

Celeste: It’s okay to be unable to make a move from where you currently are. I know it can be painful and frustrating, and so you want to do all these things to change it.

What I’ve learned in my life, and in working with others, is that there is something else at play, something that we’re at the mercy of. We are in a process that is not of our own doing or making. It doesn’t go like we want it to go. It doesn’t work to our timing. Things don’t often function in a linear way — it’s much more abstract and intangible. There are times that we cannot do anything else but to just be in the thing. Be as gentle and easy and kind on yourself as you can during that process.

Elise: Oof, yeah.

Celeste: And then when you have the energy, or if you’re like me, when things get so bad that you can’t take it any longer, then you go and you do the thing. And it’s like, Oh right, I forgot. And then it motivates you a little bit, or you remember how good it makes you feel, and you do it again. But you can’t do that until you’re ready to do it, and I don’t think there should be any shame around that.

Elise: This is such a good reminder that I definitely needed to hear today. Thank you.

I want to talk more specifically about your yoga practice and yoga therapy work. Can you tell me more about what yoga therapy is, and what you find the most fulfilling in your line of work?

Celeste: This is one of my favorite things to talk about. I have a private practice that I’m at half of the week, and then I work at Vanderbilt’s Integrative Medical Center called the Osher Center for the other half of the week.

Recently, I’ve been giving a lot of presentations at the Osher Center for medical providers, students and patients around “what is yoga therapy,” because it’s still such a new industry.

It’s a new concept for people — I mean it’s obviously a very old concept, but what we do for yoga in the West seems primarily focused on physical practice and exercise.

Yoga is an old, ancient system to move ourselves towards balance. Changing our state of being. Something like: I’m in pain, my breath is short and shallow. I’m anxious. Everything in my whole life is doomed. In yoga therapy, we’re looking at how to move that state towards a state of balance which looks like: My body is relaxed and comfortable. My mind is focused. My breath is long and smooth. My perspective is positive. There may be difficult things coming up, but it will change and this is not a dead end. 

The external situations may not have changed, but the perspective has. I always tell this thing from my own life, because it’s a great example. Say I do my practice one morning and I’m on my way to work. I've caught myself driving at 60mph in the fast lane, just enjoying myself, and somebody pulls up behind me and I’m like Shoot, I’m sorry. I’m driving slow in the fast lane. Let me move over, I see you’re in a rush.

And then let’s say another day, I have a bunch of coffee, I don’t do my practice, maybe I have a fight with someone or things are feeling hectic in my life. I’m going 80mph in the fast lane and somebody cuts me off, and I’m like What an asshole! Now I’m going to tail them.

The same exact thing has happened in my life, right? The perspective is different based on the state of being that I’m in. So what we’re interested in in yoga is changing the state of being. It’s so cool because we have techniques for breathing, movement, meditation, sound and lifestyle, which are all just different ways to potentially change a person’s state of being towards something else. We test techniques against the individual to see if it brings more peace or less. Does it make your breath short and shallow, or long and smooth? Does it make you more at ease or more anxious?

Not every technique is for everyone, and that’s something I am always clarifying for people. I think we’ve gotten confused or think we need to be able to master every technique. If something is creating discord within your system, it’s the wrong technique for you.

So I create individual practices for people that bring them into a state change, and they are able to have that experience every day as they do the practice on their own at home. It’s quite beautiful because you can create this foundation where everything falls into place.

The Yoga Sutras say that the result of changing your state is internal clarity. You’re able to hear inside yourself because your mind isn’t going all over the place — you’re not distracted by your pain or the doom that’s in your life. There’s peace, there’s clarity, there’s insight and intuition and contentment that are developed when we’re in a certain state of being.

You don’t have to use the tools of yoga to have a state change. You can go for a walk, you can play with a puppy. There’s all kinds of things you can do, but these are the specific tools that we use in yoga to move someone in the direction of balance or wholeness within themselves.

Elise: Wow, that is so incredible and makes so much sense, but I had no idea. It sounds like every single one of us would be good candidates for yoga therapy!

In my mind, I kind of associated yoga therapy with physical therapy, thinking they were both similarly focused around a more physical movement. Are a lot of your patients physically injured or disabled, or is it more emotional and mental?

Celeste: A lot of emotional distress. That's the primary thing. In my practice at Osher, everyone that comes in has been sent by a primary care or specialty provider, because they are usually very complex cases. They have chronic, sometimes multiple chronic diagnoses that are overlapping. And what we know about chronic pain now is that there is a huge root in the emotions. So a lot of the stuff that we’re working on, even though it might show up physically initially on the surface, actually has some undigested events or things that need to be processed and released.

Talk therapy is so great, but sometimes it can’t get to certain things. With yoga, we have different tools, so we don’t have to talk about it. We can make a sound, or do certain breathing techniques, or move our body in certain ways — or a combination of all three. Most people associate yoga with physical therapy, but it’s not at all. What we are interested in is the mind. The Yoga Sutras says yoga is the directing of the mind somewhere, and the practice of keeping it there. So we are really talking about being present — that’s the whole game. How do I become present? What makes me more present? What’s in the way of me being present?

Elise: Presence is so so powerful. This reminds me of a podcast I listened to recently. Are you familiar with Dr. Ellen Langer? She’s an American professor of psychology at Harvard University.

Celeste: I’m not.

Elise: She was on Rich Roll’s podcast and it was mind-blowing for me. She wrote a book called The Mindful Body: Thinking Our Way to Chronic Health which I just started reading too. She did a study on cancer patients and the difference in being told your cancer is in remission versus cured. Those who saw their cancer as cured were better on all measures they tested, both psychological and physical.

Celeste: That’s exactly what I work with people on. If you are present, there’s a healing energy in that. And if you are not, there’s a destruction energy. All of the studies and research that we are involved in at Osher center around this, too. Everything is connected, and in yoga we have a model for that. It’s how we look at the human system. I’m passionate about bringing people into awareness around living in conversation with themselves as a whole, listening and caring for themselves wholly and not viewing everything as separate parts.

Elise: I know you’re a big feeler and empath like I am. How do you create boundaries or take care of yourself when dealing with so much trauma and emotional distress each day? That’s a heavy weight to carry — holding space for your patients probably physically requires a lot of you, too.

Celeste: Such a good question, Elise. The number one way is through my own practices, my own personal yoga therapy practice that I'm doing every day. You can’t teach if you haven’t been taught. 

Elise: That is a powerful line. “You can’t teach if you haven’t been taught.”

Celeste: My journey informs me being able to show up for people, and that’s important. I have to be established in myself to sit with somebody else in their pain. I have so many practices that I do to really help fortify myself and create a container that is separate. Also, you know, just showing up. All I have to do is really be present with them.

I heard this quote in a painting class, my teacher said something like, “The best paintings are when your technical knowledge and your intuition marry.” And that’s how it is for me when I’m working with someone. Being present, listening internally, and taking action.

Elise: I love that. I find that I can really feel and intuit things from other people, too. Even just walking down the street sometimes. Does that affect you a lot in day-to-day life, outside of your practice?

Celeste: Like you said, I'm a really big feeler. With my patients, it’s how I work in a way that maybe other people don’t. I can feel the tiniest little adjustments — did they just move towards peace or away from it? I can keep going and turn the volume up in this way, or drop it and try something different if I feel that you’re moving away from yourself.

I definitely have a limit. I have boundaries and limits to myself — I only see 3 people a day. I learned early on that my maximum is not when I’m depleted.

Elise: Gosh, so many good quotes from you. That is so insightful.

Celeste: I don’t take on more than what keeps me steady in myself. I have definitely struggled about being out in the world — in the pain and in the beauty of it all. It is deeply felt for me, and there have been periods where my high sensitivity was debilitating and I wasn’t able to do the things that I wanted to do in the world. This is actually why I began practicing and studying yoga therapy, and working really closely with an Ayurvedic practitioner.

I could immediately start bawling, watching a beautiful piece of music being performed. Or seeing somebody on the street that is in pain or suffering — this stuff would take me out for the day and make it hard to function. I’ve had to work really hard at creating this boundary energetically. I still don’t love being in large crowds and have to be careful about what environments I put myself in.

I oil my whole body every day. I only eat warm, cooked foods. I have a yoga practice and a meditation practice that help fortify me, rather than feeling so porous and open.

Elise: I love this word fortify that you’ve used a couple different times. I’m so similar to you in that way. My nightly baths are so important to me.

This is such a silly story, but I remember one of the first times I noticed this about myself. I was in high school and was babysitting for some younger kids at my school, working late one night. They had gone to bed and I was flipping through channels on the TV. There was nothing on and I just wanted to go home. I came across a really tacky, small town beauty pageant and was laughing to myself about it. But it was the tail end of the event, and the winner was announced. The crowd started cheering and there was a standing ovation, and I just started bawling. I wasn’t even invested in this silly little thing, but it moved me to tears. Ha!

Celeste: Haha, I love that so much. It actually reminds me of something funny which is that I can’t watch much TV or movies. Because of that same thing, it will kind of live in me in some way. If it’s a negative thing, it will live in me and I don’t want that. Sometimes friends will ask me what I’ve been watching… I was talking with a friend while at a performance at OZ Arts. I told her I was really into a show called Grantchester on PBS that I’m pretty sure only 70 year olds watch. She hadn’t heard of it, but these three gray-haired gay men turned around and were like “I love that show! Who is your favorite vicar?”

Elise: Hahaha!

Celeste: That’s really the only thing I can watch… something very, very gentle. I'm usually in it for the aesthetics. I like to look at some beautiful scenery, whether it be in nature or architecture or of a time period.

Elise: I love that so much. That is so mindful of you, and I need to think more about that! Even the small stuff can impact me in a big way. I’ve gotten so bad about vegging out in front of the TV before bed most nights, watching super dark shows. It affects my sleep! It affects my next day! So I’m glad you mentioned that, because it’s all connected and I want to be more attuned to it within myself.

Celeste: I've been thinking a lot about how we calibrate to things. It’s an Ayurvedic concept that we take on what qualities we experience. A violent movie impacts us — we receive it and we take it on. So if you’re around someone who is talking negatively about everything in their life, you are going to take that on and start thinking more negatively about things in your life.

Elise: Hmm.

Celeste: It’s a concept I love and think about often, but recently I’ve been seeing it in a new way. It’s easier for us to come down than it is for something to come up. We kind of adjust downwards with certain things.

Elise: It affects all of us, even though you and I may be more particularly sensitive to some things. But it’s crazy how much we often aren’t even aware of it.

Celeste: Yeah, we don't get taught this stuff, like how to actually protect one's own self.

Elise: I’ve often really struggled with the feeling of being “good” at a lot of things, but not necessarily “excelling” at any one thing — this was especially difficult in my 20s as I would compare myself to others. I’ve learned over the years the positive sides of this for me, but at times I can’t help but wish for something more simple and straightforward. I know there’s a lot of things in your world too: from yoga to mindfulness to Ayurveda to painting to florals to interior design to somatic work. 

Have you ever felt this way, and how do you make sense of it all?

Celeste: Yes! As you were talking, I resonated with feeling that exact way when I was in my 20s. I love to work in a lot of capacities, and I love being creative in any way.

I started off going to culinary school. I loved cooking and I thought I was going to do that. I went and cooked in the back of house for a while, and then realized it was not sustainable or how I wanted to live my life.

So then I pivoted towards events — styling of events and design, and I started doing editorial styling for photo shoots. The people I was doing that with taught me how to do floral design, so then I was doing that. The whole time I kept thinking, This is it. This will be it. But what I learned in my early 30s was that I don’t like having creative practices linked to my income. When I do, they feel like a production instead of an expression, and it really taints it for me. If I’m making 200 floral center pieces or 200 plates of food, I lose the beauty and exploration.

Elise: It becomes something different.

Celeste: And I was doing the yoga the whole time, and teaching yoga always, so I think there was some unconscious decision to go deeper into my yoga practice and see what happens. And at least right now, I’m loving that my creative practices are there to support my yoga work. I don’t have this pressure on them to be anything other than what they are, which is refreshing.

Elise: I’ve been thinking about that so much lately. As a creative I know that I will always have my projects, but they don’t necessarily need to be the main focus of my career or what makes me the most money. Though sometimes it’s really hard for me to not be like This is going to be the thing! and try to control the outcome of it all.

Celeste: Yeah, even with yoga therapy, I know it could change at some point. Knowing myself, I might take this as far as I’m interested in taking it and then move to something else. And that’s okay with me, even though it can be hard of course. You may think, Am I failing by putting this thing down?

I don’t know if you feel this way, but sometimes I feel like I’m interested in seeing where my edges are in life. I don’t really need to do one thing forever. I want to see what my capacity is.

Elise: I get that. I’ve personally reached a point where I’m craving more stability than I am craving my creative expression. I mean, I’ll always have that, but getting older and living in a really expensive city, I want to know we can pay our bills. I want to have a healthy nervous system.

Celeste: Same, that’s why I love having the Osher Center for half the week. It’s my stability.

Elise: Yes, and it provides some structure!

So… what’s a day in the life of Celeste look like? What are your rituals and some of the things that you enjoy doing for yourself?

Celeste: I love figuring this out, and I’m always kind of tweaking it. I’ve recently started shifting my patients to later in the day because I don’t like to rush my mornings.

Elise: I looove a slow morning.

Celeste: All the clocks in my house are wrong. I don’t like clocks, so I wake up naturally. And I go to bed super early at like 8:00pm or 9:00pm. I love going to sleep early and waking up early around 6:00am. I’ve learned that if I don’t go immediately into my space for yoga, other things will call my attention and I’ll skip it. I like the feeling of going from slumber into this kind of slow middle zone, so I get immediately into my personal yoga therapy practice that was written for me by my mentor.

I do that every day, and I have an altar that I bow to. It changes everything for my whole day when I do this, like the tone has been set. Then I’ll have one cup of coffee — I’ve been buying these beans locally that smell like blueberries. I put in a little brown sugar and cream, and I’ll sit on the porch and drink it next to my cat. Then I usually make my food for the day. Part of my Ayurvedic practice is fresh and warm cooked foods, so I start prepping something I’m going to have for lunch and dinner. A few times a week I’ll take a shower and oil my body with warm sesame oil. If it’s a particularly good morning, I’ll go for a walk too. And I like to have warm spiced milk with a little bit of ghee in it for breakfast.

Elise: That sounds so dreamy.

Celeste: Then I’ll go to work, come home, eat dinner. Maybe do a little reading. I’m into David Sedaris right now, or I’ll watch one of the shows I mentioned. I take my dog out into the garden — I have a huge garden here and there’s so much gardening to do. It’s one of my favorite things to do in the morning when everything is quiet and still.

Elise: It sounds like you’re setting yourself up really well for the day — building a great foundation.

Celeste: The only exception to my early bedtime is that I've been loving going two-step dancing. I found a dance partner and we just dance.

Elise: Oh my gosh, I want to do that! So fun.

I’ve been so energized by this conversation, and there’s so many things you’ve said that I want to take with me. I feel like I’ve had the privilege of being your patient today, in a way. I want to book some yoga therapy sessions with you.

Celeste: I love that, thank you. You don’t change everything at once, it’s better if you do it little by little.

Elise: Is there anything coming up for you that you’re really excited about, or most looking forward to?

Celeste: There’s a lot that I’m excited about. One thing is that I’m doing a small study group for yoga next month. I’m so passionate about teaching yoga teachers, or people that have been doing yoga for awhile, and helping them look at the whole. Integrating the physical with breathing and meditation — they are not these separate things. I’m also going to a conference for yoga therapists, and on a trip to Santa Fe. A lot of really fun stuff.

Elise: That sounds so nice. If you ever make it out to California, I would love to see you, and we have a guest room waiting for you. Thanks for sharing your heart with us.

Celeste: Thank you, so nice to be with you!

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Still Life, refers to the notion of “stillness” — quieting the noise and seeking to capture a glimpse into this very moment in time. This bimonthly series is a conversation between Elise and various creatives. View past publications here.

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Credits: Portraits of Celeste captured by Nicola Harger. All other photos are by Celeste Greene and Rebekka Seale.