Let Me See You Do That Yoga

Don't question the geese.

If you met me after the age of 23 or follow me on the gram (@shleyhughes), you are probably aware I teach yoga. Yoga is full-scale part of my identity and I am more than happy to make spandex a continuum in my fashion choices.

Since yoga is a major component in my life and I have fitness tab on this blog, I should share my yogic journey.

First and foremost I thought yoga was boring. I also thought you had to be skinny, drink green juice and have lots of tattoos before you even considered stepping on a mat.

Wrong. 

As someone who used to hit the ground running and swim five hours a day, I never understood how yoga could be a workout. I took yoga twice in college and thought yoga was something that was only done at ungodly hours of the day. (At the time, yoga was offered at 7:15 am at the University of Minnesota, which for an undergrad might as well be the middle of the night).

Also wrong.

 So how did I go from lifting weights and running to a life invested in Lululemon?

TBT my mom challenged me as a New Year’s Resolution in 2013. This by no means meant she would join me, but after I ran my first full marathon in 2012 and endured injury after injury, she thought it was about time I do something to ensure longevity in my fitness regime.

I went to my first class on the first Sunday in 2013 at LA Fitness, my fabulous gym in Cleveland OH where I paid a whopping $30/month for two floors of equipment and free yoga – WHAT A DREAM.

Class was cool, but I ran six miles right after to ensure I got a “proper” workout.

I kept up with yoga for two weeks (as in once a week, every Sunday) before I ruptured my L5 while working out with my trainer.  I was in the midst of a clean and press squat with a 100lb bar on my back when we all heard a "schracckkk." 

What were we thinking? There is no reason I ever needed to lift 100lbs…

The whole spinal injury thing destroyed my workout routine. If I sneezed, I cried; I had limited mobility from the sternum down because everything hurt.

I had herniated discs before and knew the drill with PT, but this was the last straw.

Three weeks later I landed internships in DC in Congress and at a Public Affairs firm. Collegues thought I was annoyingly happy go lucky, but I am happy to report my soul was just as dark and gloomy as everyone else working for the Senate.  The happy go lucky facade was just a side effect of the pain medication.

I flew back and forth to the CLE every six weeks for epidurals to the spine. Yes, the same shot pregnant women get during labor.  Honestly it does not hurt, but you cannot move the first 24 hours and you become really, and I mean really, comfortable with your doc checking out your tush on the reg. You can mobilize to pee, but yoga or carrying groceries are out of le question.

Four months in I gained at least 10 pounds (probably more like 17), which on my 5’5” frame, added up fast. I felt awful and I needed a safe but fun workout.

Enter Emery Heuer. Heuer took me to my first ever Core Power Yoga sculpt class in 2012 in Minneapolis, MN. (Hey you get a free week when you try it out)! Sculpt was one of the hardest things my body had ever done and suddenly the song lyrics “Make It Rain” no longer applied to money and strippers, but to the amount of sweat produced in one sculpt class.

You can take Heuer's classes in Minneapolis - HPF Rosedale on Wednesdays and Thursday 6am C2 at NE.

Emery Heuer: bad ass, life guard, yoga instructor, skier, main amiga and life advice guru.

However, CPY was not yet existent in the district or CLE so I was unable to keep up with sculpt.  Fast-forward to April 2013; it was like the gods knew I needed yoga. Core Power was set to open in Georgetown that month. In even better news, a lot of the Minneapolis instructors (AKA Heuer’s friends) were in charge of opening/ managing the new studio.

Heuer put me in contact with the managers and I joined what was once called “Work for Trade,” an exchange program during which I cleaned the studio two hours a week for free yoga. Not too shabby. In a city like DC where my rent was $1200/month to share an apartment on a starting salary of 35K, affording CPY's $155/month membership fee was out of the question and Work for Trade was a godsend.

I volunteered for a year. I namely too Hot Power Fusion (CPY's idea of Bikram), which started to build strength.  I then got into C1, an intro to vinyasa, and finally sculpt – the yoga class with weights in which you Make it Rain on Your Lulu. Sculpt felt like a safe way to rebuild muscle and stretch. I modified the hell out of class – no belly up core (crunches), wall sits instead of squats and absolutely no jumping, but it started to work.

Fast forward a year and all instructors wondered why the heck I hadn’t done teacher training.  I realized I was pretty over cleaning yoga mats every week...so I did it.

Yoga sculpt teacher training is where I met some of the greatest friends and made an excellent financial decision (mostly because I met my tax man/Cher Enthusiast Derrick). Fun fact- if you teach for CPY and are on the schedule you get free yoga at any CPY studio in the country and naturally you get paid to teach (not very much, but hey, every little bit helps, right?)

That summer I moved to Brazil to work for the FIFA World Cup where I had the pleasure of teaching my colleagues with some of the best views in the world.

Taught my first international yoga class in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in June 2014. Talk about a view!

When I moved back to DC I had no job so I picked up all the classes in the world and my good friend Kate Shin, a fellow teacher, hooked me up with a hostess gig at one of the best restaurants in DC, Ghibellina.

The side hustles were real, but it was a blast. I would see my students in the studio and at happy hour.  All of a sudden I had an income, amazing friends and a tight a$$.

Yoga transformed from physical therapy, to my community, to my livelihood.

I started to get v. into yoga and completed my 200 RYS teacher training in Winter 2015. If you’re like WTF is that – that’s the certification to teach the stereotypical kind of yoga like all the warriors, and handstands etc.

I met more friends and started to become a very good instructor. Not to toot my own horn, but I am good at what I do and it’s because I had great instructors like Eleni Grove.

Yoga became a dramatic part of my life as I was hired to manage another studio (not CPY) full-time. Basically my life was ALL the yoga! I still taught for CPY and worked at the restaurant, so in my 70 hour work weeks, teaching and practicing kept me sane.

Managing a yoga studio is hard; it's much easier to be an instructor, come in, teach and roll out than it is to listen to feedback, clean the studio, and sit down with tenured instructors and tell them what's working and what's not.

On the plus side I was privileged to attend classes from outside the CPY world and increase my training. It was there that I met Soozie Kinstler who really got me to go upside down. (I plan to profile her in the coming weeks).

As a manager I was able to pursue some philanthropic goals and get involved with Love Your Brain Yoga. LYB is a non-profit organization designed to offer affordable yoga and meditation classes to Traumatic Brain Injury survivors like my main amiga, JoAnna Lund.

In that time I worked on two other soccer (football) tournaments during which I taught yoga to athletes from the Honduras National Team and Jamaican Football Federation.  

There is something empowering about watching professional athletes tremble in down dog- like bro, you run a half marathon every day, but it’s hard to hold yourself up?

Not that I can run a half marathon every day, but it humanized these athletes, which made it really easy to work and connect with them.

Casual tree pose with the Honduras National Team? It's possible this is Nicaragua but every team had blue uniforms and I'm unsure...

This was my last yoga class in DC before grad school. I've never felt more loved or connected to the world. It was such a pleasure to meet a group of people with such different paths who also loved to do squats and brunch in their spare time.

Continuing on, I decided to attend grad school because as much as I love yoga and teaching, I like working – enter the FIFA Master -- my greatest regret of all time (I graduated a year ago and am still on le job hunt. Ouch is right).

However, I taught my classmates in England and every professor/prospective employer knew me as “the yoga teacher.” I kept my personal practice up and running because of access to a free yoga space, as well as trips to Indaba Yoga in London.

However, next semester it all went to shit.

Teaching my grad school class in Leicester, England Fall 2016.

By the time my class moved to Italy and Switzerland, I practiced a few times here. I boasted  quite the Instagram following as I posted my handstand progress on the daily, but I missed the studio life – the creativity in designing sequences, the collaboration of finding fresh beats with Alix Montes and Sarah Miller, and the friends who knew and loved me for who I am.

I missed it so much that I drove to DC from CLE over Christmas break to teach 12 classes in four days. I then returned in September and November after graduation because it was one of the only things that helped battle my post-grad life and sorry ass feels.

I officially accepted yoga as a way of life, not just a workout with friends who also like to do squats in a place that pays me.

Grad school wasn't all bad yoga feels; I had the privilege to teach at Lululemon Zurich and capture some bomb shots for the gram. 

Me giving the Leicester City grounds crew a heart attack because I touched the grass. Once I posed tho, it was OK.

Just channeling my inner Ariel in Milan's Galleria (the first mall).

The hills were alive! Just some shots with amazing photographer and world renowned Korean comedian, Sa Doojin in Switzerland.

In December of 2017 (post grad school), my boyfriend and I moved to Colorado where he is a snowboard instructor. At first I was excited because I ski and CPY was founded in CO. I felt I would be among the original CPY yoga gods.

Just because I'm not in a studio seven days a week does not mean we do not practice, but it was cold. Photo cred to Ryan Rosecrest in Telluride, CO Feb 2018.

 

Not quite.

We live in Breckenridge, which is 1hr 40 minutes from the closest CPY. However, because Breck (aka Vail) pays so terribly (that's a discussion for later), I started to nanny on my days off in Denver, which in turn meant I could teach classes at CPY. 

Ohh flipping rah, bring back my hand stand, people who understand me and free yoga across le country!

Life back in le studio is great, but three-ish days a week is not enough. It's been challenging to connect with students and my progress in my personal practice is steady. But if you know me, you know I want to pike into a press up like yesterday...(life as an Aries, always impatient).

In DC I grew up with CPY. When I started in Work for Trade, there was one studio, when I left in 2016, there were three in DC proper and multiple in VA and MD. I knew my students from when we were students together, to when I taught them as a coach in bootcamp or in teacher training. In contrast, teaching in CO feels like I'm the new girl in school.

So here we are in a new phase in my yogic journey.

Last week CPY hosted a mandatory workshop for all teachers nation wide. The workshop challenged us to think about our lives pre-yoga. Before yoga I was lonely, in pain, and stressed out.  When yoga became a fluid part of my life, I acquired awesome friends, developed immense strength and could escape my crazy poorly dressed Devil Wears Prada level boss.

Yet, because of my life between two cities, it feels like my yogic journey is semi back to square one. I feel lonely, in pain (mostly emotional) and stress about the future. The only major difference between now and 2013 is that my chaturangas  look pretty damn fine if I do say so myself. More importantly, I'm also actually comfortable working out in just a sport bra- a 2014 New Year's Goal (more about body image/awareness struggles in posts to come). 

Pre-yoga me would never ever have posted a swim suit picture for the world to see - and pre-yoga me could also definitely stand on my head.

So where do we go from here?

Yoga is transformative and molds into what you need it to be at any point your life. 

At present, yoga (for me) is 60 minutes of self-care mandated by my therapist and 60 minutes of someone telling me what to do. For the past few months I’ve needed guidance to navigate my way through some tough challenges, but as a rational human being, I understand no one has the right answer and I must choose my own path blah blah blah. In sum, I have to figure my life out, but lemme just say how flippin fab it is to have someone tell me what do for at least 60 minutes - even if it something wild like put your knee over your shoulder. 

So there we have it, my yogic journey: a continuum – from PT, to community, to financial support, to emotional support, to bad ass looking biceps, to a conversation starter on Tinder, to 60 minutes of freedom from my own thoughts.

Where will yoga take me next?

Maybe a 300 hour teacher training? Hmmmm

 Only time will tell.

Want to get into yoga? Let me know! Want to take my class? Please do.

I’m Ashley Hu on the schedule and teach sculpt every Friday at Core Power Yoga - 10:15 AM - Grant! Come hang out!