Seasons of Life as a Yoga Entrepreneur

Have you ever felt like something that you used to love to do is no longer satisfying, or no longer fits? Like you don’t even remember what it was like to be that person? 

I totally get it…

I loved acting and was in a ton of musicals in high school. I was obsessed and thought I’d become a professional actor. But then I went on to do a BA in communications and get a full-time job in the government. For a while, that was my life and everything felt very regimented and safe. I thought that was where I was meant to be. For a while anyway.

Then came an opportunity to teach yoga to my co-workers at lunch once a week. Which turned into various side opportunities to teach yoga. Which snowballed into me eventually retiring from government and starting my yoga business full-time. 

The opening season of my life as a yoga entrepreneur and teacher.

Just as our years have seasons – depending on where you live: spring, summer, fall, and winter – so do our lives. And it’s really hard to realize that when you’re in the thick of it.

I now see that my acting aspirations, my government job, the current iteration of my yoga/wellness business are all seasons of my life. They each gave me something I needed, and provided a stepping stone on my lifelong journey of self-discovery. 

Our culture here in the West prioritizes linear progress, but I find it more helpful to think in terms of cycles, and instead of endless forward momentum, it’s more like a spiral. You may sometimes feel like you’re looping back, but you’re also carrying all that you’ve learned with you to the next phase of things.

To the next season of you.

This season of my life started last February when I moved across the country to Vancouver. And it has so many dimensions I couldn’t possibly have seen coming. 

And admittedly a lot of tweaks and pivots within my business (responding to the massive changes in the yoga industry due to COVID).

But case in point: we’re dog dads as of last week! 😅 And instead of leading my 200-hour YTT from my tiny bedroom in my 500-square-foot apartment in downtown Toronto, like I did last year, this time I facilitated the training from my own office, with floor to ceiling windows.

And because we live in trying times, during a long and painful pandemic, this season of my life also has me looping back to taking on a contract with the government for a few months.

Again, it’s a season of my life, and the liberating thing is that it too shall pass into something else. 

I’ve come to realize that we are who we are because of all the seasons that have come before. And we carry everything we’ve learned into the seasons to come. 

I talk a lot about non-attachment in my yoga teacher training (it’s one of the Yamas, or living principles, that make up one limb of yoga), and it comes in super handy here. If we can accept that life happens in seasons, each with different facets to them, different wants and needs, then we can be less attached to things staying always the same. We can recognize where our energy can be best spent or directed to at any given time. 

So, think about your own life. Can this idea of seasons and cycles help you reframe a transition you’ve made, or see with fresh eyes a situation that’s different than you thought it’d be? Reply and let me know what season you’re in.

Your friend in this journey together,