Today we’d like to introduce you to Lisa Warren.
Hi Lisa, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I first came to yoga after a car accident. I had tried narcotics, physical therapy, and acupuncture before it, and nothing was helping the terrible neck and back pain. The very first yoga class I went to – although I did not know what I was doing and I was not doing everything that everyone else was – felt like coming home. That’s the best description I can give. What I realized was that many of the poses that were being taught were very similar to exercises I had done at physical therapy. The difference was the mindfulness, the breathwork, the connection to my own body. I realized that yoga is so much more than exercise and that it was the focus on the mind, body, and spirit together that helped me.
I fell in love with yoga right then. After a few years of practice, I decided that I wanted to share yoga with children. I had been an extremely anxious child, and I think yoga would have benefitted me greatly. I did my first children’s yoga training and began to search out studios that would allow me to introduce some yoga classes for kids. Since that time, I have completed several more trainings for children’s yoga, and teen yoga, and I got my 200hr yoga certification. I developed and taught my “Tots to Teens Yoga Teacher Training” to others who wanted to bring yoga to children and teens.
As I started to explore yoga more deeply, I learned a lot about the practice that has been colonized and narrowed by Western cultures. A lot of that knowledge has come along with my learning about diet culture and the troubling roots behind it in the United States. If you google “yoga teacher” or look for yoga teachers to follow on social media, you will predominantly see thin white women.
Many classes you go to will tell you that there is only one way to do a pose, or give you “modifications” if you can’t do the pose “right.” And rarely are classes built for larger folks. In the last few years, my focus as a teacher has been to make yoga accessible. From body type to race to financial status. I believe strongly that yoga is for everyone, and should be made available to all.
Can you talk to us about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way? Looking back, would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It has certainly not been a smooth road. Over the 15 years or so that I have been practicing (and probably 10 years that I have been teaching), I have struggled to find my yoga place. My struggles with understanding and accepting my body found me doing that dreaded diet cycle, and each time my weight changed, my feelings about myself as a yoga practitioner changed.
When I was thin, I felt like I belonged, when I was fat, I felt like I did not. I still sometimes struggle with feeling like I don’t look like a “real” yoga teacher. When new students attend my class, I wonder if they will trust me to teach them or if they will judge me simply based on how I look and their perception of fat people.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
My day job is actually as an Elementary School Language teacher. I teach PK-5th Spanish and French. Since I have started teaching yoga, I have brought some of those elements into my classroom. I will do mindfulness and breathing exercises, as well as poses. Sometimes, those poses are to help them focus or to calm down, sometimes they help the students learn vocabulary, such as animals or body parts!
In my role as a yoga teacher, I focus on making yoga accessible. As I said on the previous page, I believe yoga should be for everyone. The students who come to my classes are often students who haven’t felt welcome in other yoga classes. My teaching, my language, and my class structure are all designed to be inclusive and welcoming, no matter where you are on your journey. In my classes, you will see a variety of skill levels, ages, races, and abilities. I also keep my price points lower than other yoga teachers/studios, and I provide hybrid classes, so folks can practice in-studio or online.
This is the headline on my website: Yoga is for everyone, regardless of age, race, gender, abilities, body type, or financial status. Yoga is inclusive. Yoga for EveryBODY.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
This is a hard one. I have a lot of amazing memories from my childhood. I think one of my favorites is going to Orioles games with my dad.
We went to Memorial Stadium and then to Camden Yards when it opened. I could spend all day at the stadium, and I am still a huge baseball fan. I still love going to ball games with my dad whenever we can.
Pricing:
- Regular Classes: $11
- 5-Class Pass: $50
- 10-Class Pass: $100
- Workshops: generally around $15
Contact Info:
- Website: lisawarrenyoga.com
- Instagram: @lisawarrenyoga
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LisaWarrenYoga/
