Beginnings, always the hardest part of writing anything.
Ok, let’s start with me just introducing without any bold bragging that I am a yoga teacher at a thriving yoga studio at the end of the world in Anchorage Alaska. I love this place immensely and the community surrounding it. This is my path, career and I believe what I was meant to do; let’s say my dharma. Disclaimer! I can’t say that I am the best at asana or probably don’t seem very yoga if you met me but this is a magic life for sure. When I was fortunate to start working as one of the studio’s yoga instructors I began to write an affirmation every morning, “I earn my way as a yoga teacher and with everything that comes with it.” That was some years ago.
This journey into working at this studio is the theme of this streaming consciousness attempt at a paper, more precisely the dharma and how it rolls out before me.
Fast forward to the immediate…
One year ago my yoga studio opened a second venture, an indoor cycle center and put together a team of top notch instructors. Since I taught spin and group fitness classes on the side already in local gyms it seemed natural for me to want to be part of the team. I went through the process and became not only one of the cycle teachers (which we call Motivators) in addition to my yoga instructing but in the end the lead cycle teacher with many duties that support the studio’s operation. So, here I am a yoga instructor (that being my first love) still teaching asana then everyday going from this realm to the cycle studio where I wear a different hat yet for the same mission.
At first, it seemed like a contrary activity and sort of a conflict of interests since it seems very different on the surface. But on a deeper and more insightful level it is the same path and a furthering of my understandings of yoga as one might traditionally understand and its connection to the larger word. Since we are owned by a yoga studio we joke and say that we are yoga on a bike. In fact, we dangle a mandala from the center handle bar mast of the instructor bike on stage in front of the cycle room. But in all honesty, the yoga theme is kept a little covert since most people who come to a cycle are looking for a different external experience than those seeking the mat. This goes for the instructors as well. They too don’t want to hear about the yoga symbolism or philosophy behind what they teach very much, instead they are seeking something that is the same but in a far different colored package.
So, here comes my intention in full throttle-I do earn my way as a yoga professional in my life but the interesting thing is that more than two thirds of my day is involved with indoor cycle. Yet, if I go deeper past the surface, it is just a vibrant extension of my path as a yoga teacher and the intention “to earn my way as a yoga teacher with everything that come’s with it” has come true, especially when I think about the practice of yoga beyond asana. Dharma continues to unfold as it will before me and if I may be as bold to declare, that for anybody who is open and loving what they do will find the same to be true too.
How to describe David? He teaches yoga and indoor cycling for sure but as a full time employee of Anchorage Yoga and Cycle he does so much more such as mentor new teachers, fix broken down cycles, client outreach and the list goes on.
