The Turtle Step: How Small Moves Build a Life You Actually Want
When Life Had Other Plans
I thought I had already found my way out. After corporate America, I built a walking tour company in Napa Valley that felt like the answer, the work that was finally mine. Then the pandemic closed it, and with it, a version of my future I had been counting on. When it was over, I was left with a lot of quiet and not much else. I did not know it yet, but that quiet was an invitation. I unrolled my yoga mat, and I started there.
How a Yoga Mat Became a Calling
My yoga practice deepened quietly over time, the way things do when you stay with them long enough. What started as showing up to the mat turned into a curiosity about teaching. That curiosity became yoga teacher training, which felt enormous, terrifying, and exactly right. After training came subbing, then one class of my own, then another, then a schedule I could not have imagined when I first unrolled my mat and thought, just this. Just today.
What a Turtle Step Actually Is
There is a name for what I was doing, though I did not know it yet. In Wayfinder life coaching, a turtle step is the smallest possible movement toward what matters to you. Small enough that resistance can't talk you out of it. Small enough that you can take it today, right now, even when everything else feels uncertain. The magic is not in the size of the step. It is in the not stopping.
When Yoga Led Me Somewhere Deeper
Yoga led me to Wayfinder coaching, the way one honest path tends to lead to the next. The deeper I moved into embodiment, into the language of the body as messenger, the more I wanted tools that could meet people there. Wayfinder gave me that. A framework built on inner knowing, on listening before fixing, on the belief that your body is already pointing you toward the life you want. I trained, practiced, and started working with people one conversation at a time.
Something Is Being Built, Even When You Can't See It
What I have now is not something I built in a bold, decisive moment. It is something I accumulated. Yoga and coaching, movement and stillness, the physical and the philosophical, woven together slowly into what I now call embodiment coaching. Each piece arrived because I stayed close to what was true and took the next small step toward it.
This is what I want you to hear, especially if you are standing at the edge of something that feels too big, too slow, or too uncertain. You do not have to see the whole path. You just have to take the next turtle step and trust that something is being built even when you cannot yet see its shape.
The turtle doesn't rush. The turtle doesn't stop. The turtle stays in contact with the ground.
That is enough to get somewhere worth going.
Ready to Take Your Next Step?
If something in this resonated and you are curious what it might look like to work together, I would love to connect. Private yoga sessions are available online or in person in Napa Valley, designed to meet you exactly where you are. Or if you are drawn to the coaching side, a free consultation is a low-stakes, no-pressure way to explore whether embodiment coaching is the right fit for you right now.
Your turtle step might just be hitting reply or booking a call. Both count.
