Gabe & Alison's Owner-Versary: How Yoga Helped Us Navigate the Last 4 Years. By: Alison King Tigges
It’s our 4 year Owner-Versary! Gabe and I took over the reins at One Tree Yoga on August 1, 2018. We have both been teaching yoga and involved in the studio business for over a decade, but man, there is something different about being fully in charge. What a ride the last 4 years have been. I am not sure we had any idea what was in store! Our families have grown, we have moved, survived (surviving?!) global pandemics, learned to navigate an entirely new model of business and way of teaching, lost teachers/students, gained teachers/students, trained new teachers, the list goes on! And SPOILER ALERT, the teachings of yoga have helped us navigate the last 4 years immensely, as humans, women, mothers, wives, yoga teachers, teacher trainers, and business owners. More than words can describe! Here are just a few lessons we have learned, and how I think yoga helped us navigate.*
1. Yoga helps us be more grounded. In yoga asana, we often teach the importance of grounding. Whatever body part (usually the feet or hands) connects with the floor in a pose is what needs to be firm and rooted. We need to be grounded in our postures to find the steadiness, ease, and stability necessary to get the most out of our physical practice. We talk about it in class all the time! Whatever is going on around us in class (losing our balance, the person breathing next to us, the phone ringing in the lobby), as yogis we work hard to remain grounded in our postures. Well, the same goes for the real world! I have never been more convinced that yoga aids in our ability to remain calm and grounded despite the chaos around us. It helps us practice what we preach! We may not be able to control global pandemics, rising costs of everything, racial injustice, or loss of reproductive rights (although we can fight like hell to improve these things), we can utilize our yoga practice as just that…PRACTICE. It is a way to practice how to remain grounded and calm despite the crazy world around us.
2. Yoga helps us be less attached. Aparigraha translates as non-attachment. This is a cornerstone teaching in the yoga tradition. I find it to be the most challenging of all. I will always struggle with control and yoga helps me to remember that the more I practice letting go, the less upset I am when things don’t go my way. The last 4 years, this has been key. I think any business that has endured the last 2+ years will especially agree. We did not have control over this virus, the rules/restrictions impacting our health and business, or the customers who agreed/disagreed with us----so ultimately it was great work at letting go of things we cannot control. It has taught me there is a constant tug-of-war in remaining complacent (no thank you) and learning to be content. As business owners, we were always looking at “what can we do?”, “how should we respond?”, “how can we pivot?” But ultimately, it got easier when we started accepting that all we could do was our best with what was in front of us, and ultimately had little control over the rest. We talk about it with yoga poses all the time. I might try really hard to get my foot to my head in king pigeon, but regardless of effort, it has yet to happen! These are the small moments in class that prep us for the bigger, real-life moments where it really counts.
3. Gratitude is king. I am quite certain that at the end of the day, gratitude is everything. I found it really easy to get stuck my anxiety and negative thinking (still do!), worrying and wondering what has going to happen or if things would improve. And to be clear, I will never advocate for toxic optimism. It is not real life! But when I focused on what I was grateful for during the most difficult times (the supportive teachers who stuck around, the students who pivoted with us, my family, my health, yoga to support me, getting to do what I love) it was hard to feel sorry for myself. It also helped me see when I was grateful for the fact that we made it through some really hard times! The discomfort and struggle is something to be grateful for too, as we often learn and grow from it. Perspective is everything.
4. Practical and accessible yoga wins, every time. Turns out, floating handstands and pretzel shapes are not what has helped us succeed as a business! Although cool and impressive, fancy yoga poses are not what make us stronger and more loving individuals. More than any other time in my life, I have experienced first-hand what stress, anxiety, and burnout can do to our physical bodies. We must find ways to heal our nervous systems, hearts, and minds! Yoga can do this, if applied in a smart way. Yoga that heals our stressed-out bodies, calms our minds (hellllllo mental health!), and allows our body to function optimally is what I return to time and time again. The last 4 years have only made this more crystal clear. I think as a studio we have come closer to this vision each day. Yoga is for EVERY BODY and the more we focus on accessibility, subtly and how it affects us mentally/emotionally, the better. It makes for less cool Instagram photos, but hey, I can live with that!
5. MEDITATE! The importance of meditation (call it whatever you want---any stillness/mindfulness practice) has never been more important. This is a bold statement, but I am convinced it is the missing piece for most people. I have been meditating regularly for years, and I am grateful I had that established practice. Because when s*** hits the fan, it comes in verrrry handy! When times were/are really hard, I lean on it more than ever. It sets the tone for my day, my attitude and how I approach things. I have found that getting quiet and slowing down is a skill, and we must practice that skill like anything else. Although I have forever work to do in this department, it’s much easier to access this skill the more I practice it. I think if more of us were focused on this practice over physical ones, we would surely be living in a more peaceful world.
Yoga for the win! Again. And again. I know most of your reading this get that, and you stick around for the same reasons. And for those wondering what I am rambling about, we got you too! All of us at OTY have your back and we are here to help. We will work with you on all these lessons and then some. Yoga is so much more than fancy poses, it’s a way of being in the world.
Big thanks to all for the love and support the last 4 years. Let’s keep on, keepin on!
*I am clearly speaking for Gabe a bit here, as well my opinions according to my own experiences. But we are on the same page, and she is in full agreement with all lessons learned!