Remembering Our Teachers, Tending Our Community, Facing Loss

On Remembrance Day, Harmony and Russell sit down with longtime friend and teacher Faith Scimecca to explore how daily practice steadies us through love, loss, and the mystery of dying. Faith traces her path from NCAA figure skater to Ashtanga practitioner and shala owner, and shares how a sincere prayer to “be of use” led her to chaplaincy. She speaks candidly about being present at Sharath Jois’s final workshops, the day he passed, what it feels like to sit with the dying, and the simple energetic hygiene that allows empaths to serve without taking on everyone else’s pain. This episode honors teachers, ancestors, and the living bond of community.

Faith Scimecca is a Level 2 Authorized Ashtanga Yoga teacher and the founder of Woodley Park Yoga in Washington, D.C. She studied extensively in Mysore, India, with Shri K. Pattabhi Jois and Sharath Jois, and has led the city’s longest running Mysore style Ashtanga program since 2007. In addition to her yoga teaching, Faith is a board certified hospital chaplain, trained at a Level 1 trauma center and now specializing in palliative and end of life care.

Conversation highlights

• Origins of practice: figure skating discipline, Ohio to NYC to first Mysore trip
• Becoming a teacher: opening Woodley Park Yoga in 2007, authorization and lineage memories
• Remembrance: being with community around the passing of Sharath Jois, how joy showed up in his final tours
• Chaplaincy calling: returning to school, clinical work in trauma and palliative settings
• What matters at the end: relationships, meaning, the peace Faith often feels when a spirit crosses
• Energetic boundaries for empaths: prayer, simple light visualizations, and “service mode”
• Practice today: how Faith balances shala life, hospital work, and personal practice

About our guest

Faith Scimecca has taught Ashtanga for over two decades and runs Woodley Park Yoga in Washington, DC. She is an interfaith hospital chaplain supporting patients and families through palliative and end-of-life care. Faith integrates devotional practice, clear energetic boundaries, and steady daily sadhana to serve her community with clarity and compassion.

Resources and mentions

Woodley Park Yoga: https://www.woodleyparkyoga.com

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/woodleyparkyoga/

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