Hi everyone. Welcome back to the Let's Talk Yoga podcast. I hope you are doing well and enjoying all the new episodes we've been dropping. I am a little extra happy today because Aham Yoga, my yoga studio, just earned 10. I cannot believe that we've been at it for a decade. We have the most wonderful yoga community that has stood by us from day one.

I don't know where time has gone.

And all I remember today, just before starting to record this for you, I was reflecting

on how it all started.

And I have such strong and even fond memories of how scared I used to be and like

really scared of everything I had just moved from India. I did not know how to drive for starters.

Right? If I got a job to teach at the YMCA, I didn't know how to drive and I had I was learning

to drive. I was learning to live in a new country. Leave alone trying to figure out how to run a yoga shala and a yoga studio and things like that. But I don't know if you know, but Am Yoga kind of started in reverse. Most yoga studios, they lease a space. They set up the studio, they put out a schedule, they market it,

and then customers walk in. We did it in reverse. We used to rent a little space where we are

still today, okay? And we stood on one class on Saturday morning. And that one class slowly snowballed

into more classes and then more classes and then workshops and

trainings, the community kind of dictated where we went. And as people asked for more,

we slowly stacked on more. So from weekends, we came to weeknights, from weeknights, we came to midday.

And we slowly went where the community was asking for us to add more yoga practice.

So it's been, it's literally the opposite of what you see in the mainstream yoga world.

It's taken a lot of work. It's taken a lot of courage. And I've had the privilege of meeting

some of the most wonderful people of my lifetime in and at Aham Yoga. So why am I

telling you this? Right. Because Aham Yoga started with one or two students. And today we have

thankfully grown and we've been able to share the little yoga we know with thousands and thousands of students,

okay, many of whom were beginners.

My yoga studio has a largely Indian immigrant population and most of them didn't go to other yoga

studios.

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