How I Became a Yoga Teacher – or Do I Really Do This For a Living?

If you had told me when I was pursuing my BFA in Graphic Design at Art Center College of Design that I would someday be a yoga teacher I would have laughed.  Then I would have asked you what exactly yoga was.

After working as a branding strategist and graphic designer for many years and winning just about any award I could win, I was ready to integrate other parts of my life into well…my life.  

I’ve always had many interests, and physicality and the body have always been a big part of my life.  I walked at 9 months and have always thought that was a sign of future athleticism.   I was a “tomboy” as a child, outside as much as possible, running around, climbing trees, riding bikes.  I was uninhibited and joyful using my body.  Pants and t-shirts were my daily outfit, allowing me the freedom to move.    

When I graduated Art Center I began working out regularly, making it a priority.  I joined a gym for the first time.  My love of physicality became a vital part of my life once more, something I would follow forever.  Each day my joy became releasing my body from its constraints at work and freeing it once again.

More years went by and a friend began raving to me about yoga.  I gave it little thought.  To me yoga was boring, not enough physical activity, mainly sitting and meditating.  Then out of the blue another friend had a free yoga session and basically dragged me with her to a class.  The teacher looked at me and said “You have a yoga body”.  Those words and the class that followed altered my fate.  I couldn’t believe that just moving my body could feel so good.  I also couldn’t believe that emotions would unexpectedly rise to the surface, released during certain poses.  What had I found?  Could this be real?  Could yoga really exist?  Was I dreaming?  I even regarded going to yoga class as this rare treat and limited myself to it only once a week, while doing my “real” corporate job the rest of the time.

Fast forward to 12 years ago, when I moved to New York from California to pursue acting and singing, my two great loves.  Less than a year into my new life I was performing in theatre and film.  I joined a gym and would take yoga to calm my nerves when I was performing.  A strange thing happened.  I realized that I loved yoga as much as I loved acting and singing.  Yoga gave me joy in the physical, as well as the emotional release I got from performing.  I began doing yoga more.  I felt freer in my body and in my mind.  I looked around the classroom and saw great female shapes; beautiful, lean, sturdy, active, free.  My body again could be my tomboy child’s body, joyful and liberated.  One day I thought, “I could teach yoga”.  

I had never dreamed of being a teacher, but I had found what I wanted to teach, and that made all the difference.

In 2001 I became a certified yoga teacher at It’s Yoga, in San Francisco, California.

I returned to New York and began teaching in earnest.  Despite the everyday complexities of any life, much less a life lived in New York, when I get up to teach a class, I am energized, I am renewed, I am filled with joy.  I love to teach as much as I love to practice yoga.  

When I contemplate my life now, it is a simpler one.  I wear simple, comfortable clothes that breathe and need little upkeep.  If I have time I put on make-up, if I feel like it I will do something special with my hair, otherwise I pull it back into a ponytail, something I hadn’t done since childhood.

And so here I am.  A yoga teacher.  I move my body everyday.  I am that tomboy once more.  Teaching yoga  is not just my career.  This is my lifestyle.  It is part of me, a vital part of me.  I am tending to body, mind  spirit.  When I teach a class, we are all on a journey together.  We experience it differently, but still we are on a journey.  I am honored to be part of it.