I had just graduated Business school when I took my first class at a yoga studio. One of my college friends was helping a local studio with their marketing and said we should go check it out. I have this crazy default of saying “Yes” to things without hesitation (more on that later). We wandered into the YMCA in midtown Sacramento, set up our mats and honestly the rest was a blur! The room became warm, we flowed between postures, and I left a completely different person. I remember going to a burrito stand after and telling the guy at the counter how awesome yoga was.

Backstory: I was always the girl weight-training at the gym, AVOIDING the yoga teacher who would stand near the door and invite gym go-ers to participate in her class. “Yoga is so lame,” I would think. “I need to get a workout in.”

Our noon class was a Power Yoga class — again, I may not have said yes if I asked too many questions and I’m glad I didn’t. You see all through business school I had been building my graphic design company and was finally ready to launch. It was one year later that the stress of working long hours, sitting in front of a computer screen, and looking out of my 3rd floor office in El Dorado Hills wondering if the “success” was truly worth it that I got the ding to alter my path.

That very same yoga studio was having a yoga teacher training, and the words the lead teacher wrote were answering the very call of my soul. Yes, I wanted to connect more with my divine nature. Yes, I wanted to learn more about the transformational practice of yoga and how it could decrease my stress and increase my happiness. None of this made sense on a logical level: I had barely practiced in studios (at the time I did DVDs at home) and how was I going to come up with the tuition? That deep cry within said that I needed to say Yes, so I did what most do and put it off, and put it off, until it was the very last day to sign up.

In my head I made an agreement, you will do this training and you will pay for it by the time it is over through their payment plans. Three months later, I had completed my first yoga training and paid for it — the Universe always provides!

What happened next was a whole bunch of Yes that did not make sense to the rational mind. If I am to be quite frank, my family and friends may have been concerned about me. I said “Yes” to:

Volunteering 4 hours per week at a yoga studio (at the time I was billing clients $40 per hour)
Taking a management position at the studio (and dropping design clients)
Spending more time barefoot (a girl who had over 60 pairs of high heels)
Teaching Kids Yoga classes
Doing another teacher training

I truly believe that yoga sparked the light within me to shine, and to say yes even if it is a leap of faith. I spent most of my first training wondering if I was on the right path, and now I see clear as day that if I ignored that call, I would not be here, serving my community in a time when yoga is so needed.

Saying “Yes” to yoga has taken me as far as Vietnam and most recently teaching yoga to doctors in Napa. I strive to ignite the spark in others that was so dim many years ago in myself. Cathy has been by my side and on my team since that first training, and I am ecstatic to lead this training with her.

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