Authenticity Over Aesthetic
Leaving What Looked Right
Almost ten years ago, I left a stable corporate career. From the outside, it didn’t make much sense. I had an MBA. I had roles at companies like Kellogg’s and American Airlines, the kind of resume line that signals you’ve made it. But looking good on paper and feeling right in your body are not the same thing, and I’d spent years quietly aware of the gap between the two.
Learning I Could Build Something
So I did what felt true instead of what felt safe. I started a walking tour company in Napa Valley, built it from nothing, and learned the particular confidence that comes from realizing you can create something with your own hands and instincts. That business taught me I was capable of more than a title could hold. And then the pandemic closed it, and instead of that feeling like a loss, it felt like permission.
Finding My Way to Yoga
Yoga had already been part of my life for over twenty years by then, something I came to through a gymnastics background long before I ever thought of it as a path. But in that quiet, uncertain stretch after closing the business, I found myself leaning on it differently. Not as exercise. As orientation. I trained to teach, not because I wanted a new career exactly, but because I wanted to understand what I’d been experiencing on my mat for two decades. Once I started teaching, I noticed my own approach forming. I was never that interested in whether someone could get into a handstand. I was interested in whether they could feel at home in their body while trying. That distinction became the quiet center of how I teach.
Choosing to Go Back to School
Around the same time, I noticed a pull toward something more. I didn’t want to build another business around logistics and bookings. I wanted to help people directly. So I went back to school, not for another MBA, but for an associate’s degree in Human Services. On paper, that might look like a step backward. But that program reshaped how I see people, how systems help or fail them, and where I actually fit in the work of supporting someone through change.
Where It All Meets
This is why embodiment coaching makes sense to me now, not as a pivot but as a continuation of everything before it. It’s also why I show up every week at the CANV food bank: that program taught me that service is not a credential. It’s a practice. Corporate to entrepreneur to yoga teacher to student to coach isn’t a line you can put on a tidy timeline graphic. But every step was authentic to what I actually needed to become.
Coming Home to Yourself
This is the heart of what I return to, both on the mat and in coaching. Not performing growth, but actually feeling it and helping people come home to themselves, not helping them master a pose.
If you’re standing at your own gap between what looks right and what feels right, I’d love to support you in discovering your authentic path.
