It’s been just over a year since I passed and got my Yoga Teacher Training certification. Not only did I do this during the pandemic…it’s been 10 years in the making!

Yoga has been part of my life for almost 2 decades now. While I haven’t been practicing consistently for that long, it always finds it’s way back to me or me to it…

I’ve been in Oregon for just over 2 years now, still not knowing anyone, working from home full time and no longer having a studio to practice in has been rough.

There’s something special about finding your studio, when you walk in you just know, you feel it, the vibe the energy it feels like home.

When I walked into Yoga Mudra, I found that, I felt that feeling of being home. This was going to be my studio.

To be honest, I wasn’t really worried about finding a job after my training, I truly thought I would have the opportunity to teach at the studio where I was getting certified…the pandemic had other plans though.

Knowing that the studio was closing right after graduation, I decided to take my yoga biz online. Thinking that all I had to do was flash my certification off to my following and that the clients would come, or at least that’s what the marketing experts say 🙄

Marketing isn’t my zone of genius and taking my yoga online has been a struggle for me. When you drive to a studio, there’ isn’t a sign outside the door with some fancy niche under it telling you about the yoga studio, who they help and how and yet online, we have to come up with this crazy specific niche to sell ourselves and our services.

Yoga for me isn’t just one thing, and to have to put it into 120 characters in my bio doesn’t make sense to me. I don’t consider myself to be better than anyone else, my classes and the way I teach isn’t unique.

My goal is to help people realize that yoga is about connection, connection to self, to others, your mind, body, soul, spirit…it’s not about getting in a good stretch or workout…it’s much deeper than that and yet people come to yoga for all sorts of reasons.

No matter what brings you to the mat, my goal as a teacher is to help you bring more awareness to yourself because when you have more inner awareness, you have more outer awareness.

There’s a part of me that feels like I have no clue what I’m doing and then there’s the embodied part of me where everything just feels like second nature. When I turn my video on and drop in, my body knows exactly what to do. It doesn’t matter if I have 100 students, 1 student or none, I show up and teach from my embodied soul as if I were in front of 100’s.

I’ve offered weekly drop in classes, free classes, yoga courses & programs to go along with my life coaching and yet it’s crickets. I never know exactly what to say because yoga is an experience, how do you provide that on social media and why does everything have to be there?

I’m not gonna lie, sometimes I think it would be easier if I was associated with a studio and as the world begins to open up, maybe one day I will be.

During this past year I was so focused on building this business, building my following, trying to do be like everyone else, I forgot about my own practice. Imposter syndrome only showed up for me because I wasn’t practicing what I was preaching. I got away from my own morning ritual, I got away from my own yoga practice. Even though I was meditating everyday, I wasn’t moving my body so of course I would feel like imposter!

The past couple of months I have stepped away from social and stepped into who I am becoming. If I want to host yoga retreats, and create programs, I better be doing the work myself!

Yoga truly has been life changing for me, it teaches me to slow down, to be present and in the moment rather than holding so tight onto my goals & expectations, the journey is the experience and if I continue to only look at where I want to go, I’m gonna miss where I’m at. I practice because my soul craves stillness, to get out of my head and more in my body, trusting my intuition and my inner knowing.

Why do you practice? or why aren’t you? What is it that makes you go to certain classes, follow certain teachers? I know I’m not for everyone and I’m not going to come up with some clever way to manipulate into taking any of my classes or programs, I am going to continue to share my story, offer my services and build a community of people who truly want to move their body to move their body, meditate to meditate, breathe to breathe so they can feel connected to themselves, so they can trust their intuition and follow their dreams to life a whole ass life…just like I’m doing!

While this isn’t what I expected after my training and I would love to be teaching in a studio, I have complete freedom teaching online! I’m creating courses and programs and retreats and I’m only a year in on this journey, I still have so much to learn, so much to grow into and I wouldn’t give that up for the world!

Life is a journey, how are you living yours?