How to get deeply connected?
Upon graduating from college, I moved to Appleton Wisconsin. For those that don’t know where that is… the mall there is a popular place for people to hold their bachelorette parties. In Santa Barbara, women parade around the funk zone, hammered day-drinking with pink sashes and a team of women with matching tank tops and the same was true for Appleton, except it happened at the mall. My point… the city was so not-exciting that women gathered at malls to celebrate.
Strange.
Oddly enough, in this small town Wisconsin, I stumbled upon my first ever sweaty hot yoga class. At this time, I’m a few months post college at a ginormous party school and am carrying an extra 20 pounds on my 5’8” frame. I am not yet the athlete that I was destined to be though I’m very into group classes. It’s a cold Saturday morning and prior to rolling my mat out at Midwest Power Yoga, I attend a spin® class and a body-pump® class. I’m just a few inches from another fully wrung out and drenched human, we applaud our efforts as I think to myself,
what the hell just happened?
I drive home in a daze and am not quite sure how I safely made it through several stop lights without crashing my car. I am yoga stoned, with a clarity and quietness that is unfamiliar to me.
Years later, I move to Naperville Illinois and attend yoga classes at neighboring studios. I’m in search of that wild community that I didn’t realize was so rare.
I take classes. I get trained to teach. I audition as a teacher and I get informed that my style is too similar to what is already offered.
I start to realize that it’s not about the teaching that makes yoga unique, it’s the people themselves and what is created when we get together. I want that feeling and I don’t have the patience to wait for someone else to make it happen, so I open Power of Your Om, just two miles from my home. The energy is electric and the people that come are down-to-earth, funny, open and vulnerable. There is no room for small talk. We always go deep.
As 2022 comes to a close, we are almost 15 years from when I opened the doors of my Naperville location. I’m still teaching classes at the ass-crack of dawn and am finding that I have fallen in love with yoga again.
Strangely, it’s not about the movement. It’s about the connection, about being seen, being open and willing to go deep…together.
And here’s one of our studio secrets…
we aren’t allowed to ask “how are you?”
I don’t do surface level. If I do, it’s because I am out of sorts, needing a vacation, self care, alone time or something.
Give it a try… what happens when you don’t ask anyone for an entire day “how are you?” and instead you excuse that social nicety and ask something different, or say nothing at all.
Pay attention to what gets created and you will get a window into the special magic that we are creating each day at my Santa Barbara Yoga Studio. I invite you to come visit!
