Why Don’t I See My Yoga Teacher Practicing?
Or maybe more so for the purpose of this particular blog, your yoga studio owner! Well let me tell you all, it’s a loaded answer and at times I wish we didn’t have to pose the question at all.
Some of you have known me since the very beginning of my teaching days in 2015. If you were around then while I was primarily teaching at one studio, you would have encountered me taking class at least 5 days a week. If you met me before my training, then it was more like 7 days a week. At this point in my life, practicing yoga was both very new to me and also my most passionate form of movement (of course that hasn’t changed much). I had just discovered the practice and was constantly taking classes like power yoga and yoga sculpt. Since graduating high school it was the first time I had enjoyed movement post high-school sports. It is safe to say I was obsessed!
Then I started teaching.
Now at first while I was teaching just two classes per week, I was still able to keep up my mostly-same routine. I’d stay for the class after the one I taught or simply come back to the studio later. Quickly as my love for yoga built, and my distaste for my (at the time) career path increased, so did my teaching load.
Fast forward about 8 months after I began teaching. I quit my full time job, partly because I wasn’t in love with my current career, partly because the lab I was working in at the time was dangerous and miserable. I quit in hopes of returning to my former lab at 3M once their hiring freeze was over, and decided to bartend and teach more classes until that time came about. As the weeks and months passed, I realized I was not actually very interested in going back to the lab (bye bye 4.5 years of schooling!) and wanted to spend more time in the studio. Slowly I built up to a class load of 15-20 per week and began phasing out my bartending shifts. And no, not because teaching yoga makes you the big bucks! Part of me felt like I needed a few years to figure out what I actually wanted to do with my life, and part of me liked the simplicity of teaching and then leaving all my baggage behind when I came home from my work day. At this point, I was still pretty darn dedicated to taking as many classes a week as I could but it had… changed.
As someone who was purely a student at one point I can tell you. What they say in teacher training is true, you will not take classes the same way anymore. They are no longer just for you. Maybe they are inspiration for your next class, maybe you like the way your teacher cues so you are trying to hold onto information as you move. In the worse cases, you are hella annoyed that your instructor keeps saying the stutter words that they absolutely told you not to say in your training! As good of a student you try to be, you are simply not just that anymore. You are a student and a teacher.
Let’s fast forward again, to the opening of the lovely brick and mortar you are all a part of. I love FlowFit. I truly believe it is the best thing I have ever created, and it means the world to me. Teaching for you all is more inspiring than teaching anywhere else has ever been. The teachers I have hired, I admire and adore. The space itself is what I always wanted my yoga sanctuary to be.
So why the hell do you not see me taking classes there all the time?!
Back to the original question (you probably forgot what we were talking about by now). Part of me wishes I could. Part of me tells myself on my days off that I will be there taking class with all my favorite people. Part of me knows that I am now that sporadic yoga studio owner that will never get back to my previous practice habits, and I am okay with that. It is not just the demand on the physical body that my current 10-15 class per week takes, it is also the change in mental release. Ya know those thoughts I mentioned about being an instructor and how it is different than before training? Multiply that by 100 fold for owning your own studio. I am slightly overworked, I am critical, I am caring and encouraging of my instructors, I am worried that the smell in the studio is weird. Everything about owning the business floods in intermittently to continuously based on the day. This is not saying I do not enjoy the time I do get to practice, but it is no longer the mental release I wish it to be for all of you. I am incredibly lucky that I have found a second passion outside of this space (no I have NO intentions of opening a climbing gym, EVER) so I find myself able to release in a space that I do not pay the bills for, and a space where I do not know everyone that walks in the door.
I don’t skip class because I don’t believe in the power of this practice, quite the opposite actually. Right now the season of my yoga life is to focus on you and nurturing this community. I hope you understand that this comes from a place of complete love.
<3 - Al
