For about the last decade I was regularly met with a question about my career:

You teach yoga full-time?

I’d proudly respond with a resounding Yes!

It’s been an incredible and rewarding journey to build my career as a full-time yoga teacher. In almost 12 years I have taught over 10,000 public yoga classes, organized dozens of specialty classes and workshops, and I have lost count of the number of yoga teacher trainings I have facilitated.

As special as it is to be a full-time yoga teacher, it also has its challenges.

Often the hours aren’t awesome. Years of teaching early morning, evening, and weekend classes gets taxing on relationships. Depending on the situation the pay can be borderline demeaning. Plus hustling hard to maintain that full-time schedule is exhausting.

As with any long time career, I suppose, there’s the challenge of separating the individual from the career. For 12 years “Erin J” has become synonymous with yoga teacher and that’s about it. When you have deep passion for something it’s hard to separate yourself from that passion. Plus, there’s that nagging feeling that if you want to be successful you must push yourself to do more.

When COVID hit I went into survival mode. I became almost desperate and lived from a place of scarcity. And it wasn’t even scarcity of resources. I was fine. My husband was fine. But the lack of yoga classes on my schedule sent me into a spiral of I have to do more!

Because if I wasn’t teaching yoga, then who was I?

Turns out there’s more to Erin J than just being a yoga teacher. I drink far too much sparkling water. I think soccer is the most incredible team sport. I have seen every episode of Dawson’s Creek at least six times. Every morning I make coffee in a manner that takes far too long, but I love every second of it. I really enjoy 80’s music. And I think dogs are the most amazing creatures.

Speaking of dogs, 2020 opened up so many opportunities for me - like doing good with my dog at Canine Inspired Change. These were opportunities that allowed for me to actually consider who I am and how I want to live. Turns out I was tethered to the hamster wheel of my yoga teaching life. I was on autopilot and didn’t know how to locate the off switch.

Teaching yoga is a special career. Whether one teaches yoga full-time or part-time doesn’t actually matter.

It has taken me a very long time to actually believe that last sentence. I can say I wholeheartedly believe it now.

This isn’t my farewell note to teaching yoga. It’s kind of the opposite. It’s more like a celebration of what was and what is to come. Turns out reducing the number of classes I offered left me more inspired than ever. By being more selective in the classes I teacher I now know I am able to provide students with a practice that feels sustainable and authentic to me as an educator and human being.

At the end of the day, my yoga practice is what permeates all. Whether I’m training therapy dogs, developing websites, or writing this long-winded blog post, my yoga practice is constantly present. Teaching yoga is just a skill I picked up a while back. The actual practice of yoga is about how I interact with myself and the world around me. Yoga isn’t about titles or the labels the world wants to put upon us. Besides, isn’t it about time we put less weight in those labels anyway?