Unveiling the Light Within: Niki Saccareccia's Trauma-Informed Yoga Journey Episode 91

Welcome to the Yogalebrity Podcast. I am so excited because today I am joined with Nikki Scariccia. I should have asked you how to say your name. How do you say your last name?

Sacariccia.

Sacariccia. Is that Italian?

It is Italian.

Okay. I love Italian food. It's my favorite kind. I live in Vegas, which was basically founded by Italians. And she is the owner of Light Inside Yoga. You can see her on Instagram. Are you on any other platforms?

Kind of.

Mostly Instagram. Okay. So you can connect with her on Instagram, but she is a phenomenal human being doing incredible work with a large number of offerings for you to take advantage of and really start to transform your life through the practice of yoga. Welcome to the podcast. I'm so excited that you are here. Nikki.

Thank you. It's really exciting to be here.

So I— this podcast is all about— this year we're really dedicating to origin stories and how you became a yoga teacher, how you started teaching yoga, and what your training was like, and kind of your journey. Because I think people don't realize that it's a struggle. It's not like, oh, I got my 200-hour yoga teacher training and now I'm making $100,000 a year and it's fabulous. Les, you know, I had another guest on earlier and she's still so laughable to me. She was like, she was like, my first class was my husband and my mom, you know? And I think people think like they're gonna graduate and it's just gonna be magic. So we'd love to share about that. So let's just start with what it was like before. What was your life before you became a certified yoga teacher? Sure.

So for a timestamp, I became officially a certified yoga teacher in 2010. And at that time, YouTube yoga and Instagram yoga and every other form of yoga out there kind of didn't exist.

It did not exist. Yes, I agree.

So, so I didn't know yoga was a career path. First and foremost. Up until about 6 years ago, I'd say I didn't know yoga was a legitimate career path. So before then, I was working as a behavioral therapist. My background is in psychology, the nature of consciousness and how our mind works as a human being. And that looked like a really data-driven style of therapy, working particularly with special needs populations and their caregivers and their sort of wraparound academic team to sort of bridge the gap between any sort of deficit and a better quality of life. And that was my work. It was some— sometimes 7 days a week, usually 6 days a week. Um, I live in Los Angeles, and I was literally driving about 700 miles a month to do this work, traveling to and from clients' homes, back to the office to write up reports. And, you know, it was a really demanding job in and of itself. And then tack on the commuting in Los Angeles. If you've ever driven here, it's a practice in and of itself.

I was just visiting you all for Yoga Expo, and I was like, why?

I test most of my gray hair from driving through the city in my early 20s.

I don't even drive. My man does all the driving, but I try not to leave the house at all because I have everything I need here. And my friends live across the street. Like, I need nothing. Yeah, I have people come over. I don't leave the house. Great.

This is very, very low maintenance.

Yes.

You know, I spent my early career doing that work and it, it felt really great because, you know, I came out of middle school, really high school, through college with this very strong, and I still have it, this very strong feeling of needing to contribute to the world. Like, I know how idealistic that sounds, and it's just the truth.

Right? I had a meltdown in my 20s. I was like, what? Why are we even on this planet? What are we— what is our purpose here? Why are we even living here? And I realized it was to help each other. Like, at the end, that's it. None of the other things actually mattered. Like, I thought through everything else that I could possibly do. And, you know, making money, traveling, whatever, like just literally being kind to each other and helping each other on this planet is our ultimate purpose. I truly believe that as well. Yeah.

If you have also had that mental breakdown and existential realization in your life, being a yoga teacher might be for you.

Yeah.

I mean, same. So Right. So that's a nice segue. I, I was doing this clinical work. It had a pretty straightforward track. You know, you kind of become a clinical programmer and then a program director, and then you pursue like a board certification or master's degree or some other advanced degree in that field of psych. And that's where all my colleagues were going. I was in my early 20s, and the CFO of the clinic I was working for had been quietly and very successfully embezzling the clinical practice. And, um, I didn't— you know, hindsight always clarifies everything. I wasn't old enough to really see the signs that, you know, our senior staff members were leaving the company or, you know, starting their own companies. And so basically, in a matter of a long weekend, from Thursday afternoon, I got the notice from my clinical director saying, your paycheck is going to be late, but don't worry, to Saturday afternoon, the front doors of our clinical practice were chained. The entire clinic shut down. I got a call from a colleague saying we're trying to pursue a class action lawsuit because the CFO embezzled us. We're shut down, and he moved to Venezuela with his family.

Wow. That must have been just like crushing emotionally in your 20s. It was so disorienting. Because everything is a big deal in your 20s.

It was so disorienting. And now, you know, that was a while ago, so I, I could say it and like laugh at how absurd it sounds because it sounds like, I don't know, like sitcom stuff. It, it was so absurd, but at the time it was so disorienting. And I, I had been practicing yoga for 4, 5, 6 years at that point. I was really dedicated to the practice. I loved it. It was sort of my lifeline, right? Really, like really kept me mentally balanced when all of my colleagues were like overeating at their desk to like mask the fact that they were emotionally exhausted or, you know, like coping with this lifestyle that was very demanding emotionally and mentally. Um, because not all of our kids that we worked with were progressing the way that we hoped.

Right. I started actually my— I have, um, a degree in English literature and a bachelor's degree in women's studies. And I— my first job out of college was, uh, working in a battered women's shelter. And because I felt like the women weren't getting better and I wasn't making any progress, I switched and started working with people coming out of the state mental hospital and moving into their own homes, people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. They also weren't getting better, and they were heavily medicated, and it was super depressing. And I ended up switching into retail and working for like a French company that sells body lotion and shower gel and just like really being really happy before I became a yoga teacher. But I can, I can feel that, like, I can feel that, like, that you You think you're gonna go in these helping professions and you think people are gonna really like, you're like, cool, I'm gonna help people. And the reality is, is that you're just kind of keeping them at like a homeostasis, just like, like, just keep going. You're just keep going, but not really making any progress. And it's important and impactful in their lives, like 100%, but it's also really hard as the provider.

Yeah. I mean, especially being that young and naive, I assumed I was putting in this hard work, I was going to get the benefit of seeing them transform. And the reality is we just don't have control over other people's transformation, right?

Yes.

And so I, I was aware enough that what I was doing as a yoga student was helping me feel healthy and sort of inoculated to the amount of stress because we weren't in control over certain things as clinicians. And then seeing it sort of juxtaposed, like, this is also one route you could take. Like, you could, you know, be exhausted and use these other coping mechanisms that actually are depleting you. Not in a judgmental way. I was just sort of seeing like more so like this could be your future. If you don't keep up with what you're doing, this, this could be what it is because this is the amount of stress we're under doing this kind of work. And so when the clinical practice shut down, a lot of my colleagues went to other clinical practices. They sort of absorbed the client load. And I took a pause, went on unemployment, and used some of that money to pursue my first yoga teacher training. Because my thinking was, again, being really young, really naive, that was like my first career. If this could happen once in an industry that is set on helping special needs populations, really vulnerable people, what's to say this won't happen again? And yoga is expensive. I love it.

I need it.

I want it. And it's an expense. It's a luxury item, especially in Los Angeles. Classes were like $20+ bucks. And now I—

well, now the landscape of that has really changed.

Yeah.

When I got certified, my first certification was like 2004 and it was expensive, but now there's so much free yoga on YouTube.

Yeah. It's amazing.

There's so much free yoga and good, good quality practice. Good instructors. Yeah. It used to be, I remember being like, before I opened my studio and I was just like teaching all over and like trying to get better at teaching yoga. Um, prior to 2012, I would watch YouTube every morning. I watch Keanu McGregor and Tara Stiles, and I was like, I would watch them because they were like it. That was like really it, you know. Now there's like so many people on YouTube. I have a few YouTubes. It's not really a big focus for me, but more TikTok and Instagram and my podcast. But, um, yeah, I remember like it growing and glowing up. And, um, what I was curious to know, when you started, what kind of, what type of yoga were you doing?

As a student or as a teacher?

As a student.

So I really got into yoga in college. It was like an extracurricular class or whatever.

So it was just a vinyasa class?

No, I think it was hatha.

Okay.

Yeah, I don't remember ever flowing through anything.

Just like a regular old— okay, not any particular kind. So it's like I started in Ashtanga, you know, and was like really in that. I did Sivananda yoga for a while. Um, and it's interesting, you know, and like people come from hot yoga and I've seen like people come from like these newer styles, like this booty yoga and stuff and it doesn't matter what style you come from. We all kind of come to the same realization, you know, like that the yoga is what's helping us feel better. And one of the cool things to touch on what you were saying about how we were discussing earlier about how people, you know, being in these helper professions as a caseworker and as a behavioral therapist, not seeing the change in people that we had expected. I am actually surprised at how many massive transformations I've seen in people as a yoga teacher through my work. 100%. It's great. It's like, was I— I wasn't expecting, because I too was like you, and I was coming into it like, well, everybody got to do their own changing. And they do. They have to do their own changing.

For sure.

But there's so much, so like, the power of the science of yoga. And it's just like me being the conduit of like, hey, this is what it is. Here's the Yoga Sutras. Check this out. You know, and just sharing that knowledge at Experience Strength and Hope is like, I've seen it just impact and change so many lives. And that is really fulfilling as a yoga teacher.

It's so fulfilling. So fulfilling. I mean, the same, you know, I've seen some transformations that happen slowly, especially when you have the privilege of being someone's teacher for a long time. Yeah, you see that evolution happen along with the big milestones, the ones that are really gratifying, or like, yes, like, you've got it, that's exactly it. But then there's that subtler transformation that happens too, which, if you get the privilege of being with someone for a while, it's that like slow burn that's also really satisfying.

Yeah. And before we started recording, I actually shared how my first job out of college was working at a battered women's shelter. And it would be so difficult to see the women go back. And I remember one woman in particular, and it, like, even, like, this has been like, oh, man, 1999, like, a long time ago, 23 years now. And I remember this one woman, she came into the shelter a number of times, and every time she would go back to her abuser. And And every time she would be a little bit worse off. And by the last time I saw her, he had beat her so badly that she had such severe brain damage, she was in a wheelchair. And it was so devastating to just not be able to do anything to help these people. And the other thing that was like really hard was like seeing them come in and I assumed they were going to be like normal, like they were going to come in and everything was going to be fine. They were going to be like, oh, I'm in a safe place now. But they came in, they were angry, they were rude, they were impolite. They did not want your help, you know, because I didn't understand the cycle of abuse. I didn't understand the trauma response, you know. And so one thing I've noticed in yoga is that you still have that. You still— I still have clients that are angry, that are upset, that take it out on me, particularly in in-person yoga teacher trainings. But the difference is that I have, I have actually done the work that I wanted to do when I first came outta college. Now I'm working with these women who maybe were in a situation that was abusive and they have transformed their lives. But like you were saying, it wasn't, they used the practice of yoga to do that and it wasn't quickly. It usually takes years. Yeah, but watching people do that and make those changes over the years and build confidence. I remember in particular a woman that came to my first yoga studio that was in a garage, and she— we would always make jokes about it because I would run the reports and I would be like, you come to more classes than everyone else. You're like the number one student. Every day she was in there. I didn't know she was living with an abusive man, and yoga was like her only outlet to get out there. And years and years and years and years went by. And about 3 years into her coming to my studio, I said, hey, why don't you take yoga teacher training? And she was like, oh, I can't afford it. And I was like, well, my business is growing and I can't afford to pay for an assistant. If you will assist me with things, I'll only charge you $400 for training. And I believe in always charging something. I don't believe in full scholarships because I think that people have to learn the if they don't put value into it with the finances, then they won't put the work into it that they need. I, I just know from scholarshiping people before, it's really important for there to be the exchange of money energy, in my opinion. Um, and so she, you know, the training was like, I think, $2,500 at that time, but she only paid $400, and the rest of the money she worked off being my assistant. And she became a yoga teacher, and she became one of the best yoga teachers I have ever, ever had on my schedule. But she went from not feeling like she could even do that and being completely beaten down to doing that. And now she owns her own business. Wow. She went from, like, doing hair to, like, owning her own business, and she's just, like, thriving and having a great life. And being able to watch her do that and go through that transformation was so incredible and awesome. And I feel like so grateful that I've been able to teach yoga. So I can really relate to what you're saying and that transformation that comes in there. So you, you have this experience and now you're like, okay, I'm going to transition and teach yoga. What, where did you get your first certification from? You have your 500, right?

E-500.

Yeah. Yeah. So you took your first certification, your 200-hour. So for those of you who are listening that don't know, Yoga Alliance is one of the agencies that certifies yoga teachers. Another one is Yoga Unify. But Yoga Alliance has these— they're the most known right now. And we could talk about Yoga Alliance for hours, but we're not going to. They have trademarked the title 200-hour yoga teacher training, 300-hour yoga teacher training, and 500-hour yoga teacher training. So you get your 200-hour first, then you get your 300-hour, and those combined are a 500-hour. Or you can just take a 500-hour and become a 500-hour. Once you become a 500-hour trained yoga teacher, which literally means you've had 500 hours worth of instruction and teaching, um, then you can start working. And after so many hours, you can become an experienced teacher. So you become an ERYT 500 and you can host your own yoga teacher trainings. So you took, you took a 200 and then a 300, right? So who did you take your 200 with and what was that experience like?

Yeah, so my 200-hour I took at a studio in Los Angeles called Black Dog Yoga. And I selected that program.

Black Dog? B-L-A-C-K? Okay. I think that I've seen them on things. I want to say they've— I've seen them on The internet somewhere. That sounds familiar to me.

They're a very well-established studio. The ownership has changed hands a few times even since I've taken training, and the training staff has changed since I took my training. But the studio itself, that name has been around for, oh man, at least 15 years.

Okay.

It's a well-established studio. So, so I selected that training program because the teaching staff had so much variety. I was a newer, a newer student. I mean, I'd been practicing for years before, but I didn't know much about yoga other than that I loved it and I didn't want to have to rely on going to a studio to pay for it anymore. So just like my origin story starts with, I didn't pursue teacher training to be a yoga teacher.

Yeah. Yeah. A lot of people do. A lot of people just want to expand their own practice. That's why it's called yoga teacher training and intensive. Right. Yeah.

So the training staff had like 60-some-odd years of experience across the 4 of them. One was an Anusara teacher. One was like a Vinyoga therapist. One was like, oh, like, like Brian Kass power yoga. And the other was this like Rhodes Scholar anatomy-loving nerd who taught us restorative yoga and subtle body.

Wow. That's so broad. Yeah. Yeah. So that's awesome.

I was like, if I I want to really know how to do yoga on my own. I want like the buffet.

And so for people, for people who don't know, uh, Anusara was run by a man named John Friend. He, he founded it. He was kind of— there's some, a lot of controversy around him. I've actually taken his class before. Um, and then, um, Deshikachar founded Vini Yoga, and he is a student of Krishnamacharya, who was Pattabhi Jois and Iyengar's student, or a teacher as well. So everything that we're doing in the United States other than Kundalini and Bikram come from these, these, these men. And, and Brian Kest was kind of the first person to do hot vinyasa.

And it was power. Wasn't that his thing?

Like, oh, I thought he did it hot too. He doesn't do it hot? I don't know, I thought he did, but I know he does power. Yeah, yeah. Um, but I think Baron Baptiste like invented power yoga.

Oh, okay.

And then, because he's like— Baron is like really old school, like his parents were teachers. But they used to do a vinyasa conference in Chicago, the Kest family, uh, that I've been to that was really good. They're, they're like well known. So you studied with a lot of really well-known and established old school teachers, and that's super cool and very rare to see these days. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'm glad for that. So, so that gave me a much broader perspective on what lives under the yoga umbrella as a, as a student. And then during that teacher training, the two teachers who were kind of my mentors that I gravitated towards kind of hardcore told me, you have to teach. And I was like, I, I'm a therapist and I've got like a full-time job and I love yoga, but I don't know that I really want to teach, you know. And they're like, no, you have to. Not forcefully, but they were, they were telling me that they saw something in me that I wasn't aware of yet. And I'm really glad I just had a lot of respect for what they were saying and honored, honored what they were saying and started to practice teach and sub classes. And that kind of paved the way for everything, just really heeding that, that advice that they gave me.

And you fell in love with the anatomy part of yoga, which is also a rarity in yoga teachers.

I mean, I fell in love with a lot of parts of yoga. I think it's difficult for teachers, yoga teachers to teach anatomy and to understand it. And I think because that came more naturally to me, it became like a specialty. And not that I've been typecasted because I could, you know, I could teach a variety of things now.

I know you're very diverse.

It was like, you're—

but you're— you're— yeah.

Yeah, it was an easy thing for me to lean into. And, you know, my restorative teacher, Mayra Cristina Jimenez, who's also local to LA, she's now an occupational therapist, had her background in Rolfing and then Integral Anatomy. So she introduced—

What's Rolfing?

Oh, I'm not the expert on this one.

Just like a— just a definition. Do you have any idea?

Yeah, it's a bodywork.

I have no idea what it is.

Okay.

R-O-L-F-ing.

Rolfing. So it's a form of bodywork therapy, manual therapy that works at the fascial level.

Oh, nice.

Soft tissue level on—

Nice.

Rebalancing the system as a whole into alignment.

Okay. How do you feel about, have you done, have you seen any of Paul Grilly's work? Maybe he's the one that does like all— like he doesn't believe in hyperextension and he does like tension and compression. Have you seen him before?

No, no, I'm not familiar.

Incredible. He's the founder of Yin Yoga.

Okay. Oh, okay.

Yeah, he— he started taking yoga with Pauli Zink, who was doing like, um, uh, tai chi. And Pauli likes to say that he's the founder, and Paul likes to say that he's the founder. Who's to really know? Like, the concept of yin versus yang is obviously thousands of years old. But the yin yoga that we do with these poses like banana asana and seal pose, whatever, that's just like 25 years old. You know, there was no banana asana in the ancient times. You know, I like to tell people that when they try to, you know how like a lot of yoga teachers try to like gatekeep and be like, this is a thousands of year old practice. And I was like, oh yeah, they're doing banana asana back in the old days, you know, like the 1400s. Let's give it a, make a shape of banana. You know, like, no, that wasn't happening. But, um, yeah, he's, if you have not really explored his, he has an anatomy course online. It's like $49. It was, like, groundbreaking to me to watch. And he, like, he brings up different bodies, and he'll be like, this is what bending the knees looks like for this person, and this is what bending the knees looks like for this person, and this is what downward dog looks like for this person, and this is what downward dog looks like for this person, and this is because of the way their spine is set up. And it's like, when I saw that as a yoga teacher, it was just like, wow. So that means everybody's going to look different. Because I came from this, like, really strong Ashtanga alignment-based, like, Light On Yoga, Iyengar kind of philosophy that was like, this is what the pose is, and there's only one way to do it. Right. And so, like, learning that it's really— it really— from learning the anatomy of yoga and that each person's anatomy is different. I always thought like I would say things like anyone can do any pose. It's just a matter of practice, right? Because Pattabhi Jois like practice, practice, practice. But really, that's not true. Your bones compress on certain levels. And there are some people who will never be able to do Virasana, Hero's Pose. They will never be able to comfortably sit like that. That is just not how their bones are made. Or like Trianga Mukha Padah Paschimottanasana, where one leg is straight and one leg is bent back. That's not accessible for a lot of people. That's just not the way they are structured. And learning that was huge. And so I think that anatomy can be a really good addition to the yoga teacher's repertoire.

It's a great straightforward mirror for the subtle philosophy and concepts that underpin the asana part of practice. Like, what you're describing is skeletal variance. We are not all the same.

Mm-hmm.

And that means our yogic path will be a little bit different. We're all going in the same direction towards ultimate liberation, but we're all in our own lane doing it.

right?

And that level of discernment and understanding, like, this is, this is how I got started in yoga. We're all pursuing teaching yoga and being better yoga students, but we don't all come to it from the same place. And that's not good or bad. It's reality.

Yeah. Right, right. Just like the sutras say, there is no good or bad.

Right.

There only is. Right? So, okay.

I find the body is a great mirror for that.

Right? Yeah.

It's like the body doesn't lie. It, it can't lie. Right? It just is what it is.

So, so you get this like really incredible 200-hour that introduces you to all these different types of yoga. And then, how long do you teach before you get your 300?

I was teaching for 4 years. So I was still—

Okay. Still a while.

Yeah. I was still, again, I wasn't trying to pursue yoga as a career. I had a career, but I was, you know, subbing classes or whatever on the side, like sort of building up my thing. I got a couple classes on the schedule at Black Dog Yoga, and, you know, things started to roll. But I really wanted to apply what I learned. And in the meantime, I took a couple workshops, seminars with, um, my anatomy teacher Gil Headley, who your listeners should know him, gilheadley.com. He's incredible if you're into anatomy or want to understand more about it and are curious. He helped pioneer, in my opinion, create integral anatomy.

Okay.

Different from regional anatomy, like this is your hand, this is your elbow. Integral anatomy says you're a whole system. The system wants to remain whole. Here's how certain regions relate to others and see the body as an intricate web of layers. That are deeply connected to one another. So you can't talk about your finger without talking about all the other parts because they are literally relating to one another at all times. And so my next major teacher training was the 300-hour, also at Black Dog Yoga, but the, the model of it was you worked one-on-one with your mentor. For the entire 300-hour training. And then our sort of deep dive into anatomy was led by Leslie Kamenoff, who was a direct student of— oh yeah, and the author of the book Yoga Anatomy. He's also a student and peer of Bill Headley.

So I— one of my biggest regrets is that I took my 300-hour with someone based on Who they were and timing. Like, I wanted to take it with a famous teacher and I want, I just wanted to hurry up and get it. And this person was offering it in July. And so I was like, I'm gonna just take it. It was actually a really awful experience. I felt really, um, like I didn't get what I'd signed up for and I felt like Um, the other women in the training really did not like me, and they did a— they really did, um, work very hard to make me feel like I didn't fit in. And, um, I would say, like, most of the time I would say that's just in your head, but I actually had other people in the training come to me and say, wow, they're really being mean to you. And I almost left the training, but I was like, no, I'm not going to let these people ruin my life. Um, but you know, the yoga community can be like that at times, and I didn't expect that. I thought it was going to be like all friendly and loving and caring, and, um, at times they can be very like, you're not thin, you're not flexible enough, you don't do the handstand right, you're not a fruitarian, you don't— you know, like whatever it is. And it can be very judgmental. Um, I, I work very hard to not treat people like that. But I wanted to take the one in Asheville, North Carolina, that Leslie Kamenoff was teaching at. So I do know who he is and have a great amount of respect for him. And I do wish I had taken that. But then in the long run, everything happens for a reason, right? So I took this 300-hour training. I felt isolated, alone, scared, unliked, unloved. Because of that, I have a much greater understanding for people in my training that feel that way, because it's not uncommon to feel that way. And I have had experiences, especially, you know, I teach online yoga teacher training, and I teach one-on-one. I don't do any group anymore. I just teach people, their training is one-on-one focused on them. I find that really the best way to do online. But I have had incidences in in-person training where one person just was different from the rest of the group. And the group worked hard to make her feel like that. And that's always really difficult because you, as the facilitator, you can't always control what's happening on lunch break or what's, you know, you can't control, like, people in trainings will be like, let's go out this weekend together. And they don't invite one person. And you can't be like, you need to invite her to the Encore nightclub, you know? Yeah.

It's not preschool. Yeah.

Right? So, um, but you know, anyhow, uh, all that to say that I have great respect for Leslie. He's an incredible teacher. So I'm so glad that you got to, to take training with him. So, um, you're in your 500-hour. Tell us more.

Right, so the 500-hour was, you know, like an ongoing mentorship. I was teaching much more at point. We had a small cohort. It was me and 3 other women, um, serious students. And another one, she and I vibed a lot because we really enjoyed Leslie's manner. He's not for everybody, um, he's for me for sure. And I think that helped sort of deepen the level of commitment I had to really like absorbing the teachings in, in the way that he teaches. He threads in the sutras. You know, he was a direct student of Desikachar, who was the son of Krishnamacharya. So, you know, it's like direct teachings. And I was seeing that because I was pursuing this higher level or this refinement and depth of information in the advanced teacher training, the 300-hour teacher training. That transformation I was seeing in my students became more apparent, faster, and easier to recreate. You know, I'd have rooms full of, literally a room full of 60 people over the age of 45, 50 years old, name the thing, right? Written in their health history. It was in the room. And somehow I was able to hold them in that space. And everybody was able to do the yoga that was right for their body and not leave the room feeling worse for wear, which is incredible. You know, it's like a high-level thing to be able to do. And I was only able to do it probably because of my clinical work background for sure, but because what I was being trained in was so much more refined and deep. I was able to see my students more clearly because I was learning things to give myself more awareness. And that became, uh, the word on my tongue is obsessive. Like, it became so exciting for me to see this sort of A to B connection. It was reminiscent of behavioral therapy when it worked. Like it was very— the, the result was very immediate when it worked. And it was the spiritual practice beyond that. It wasn't like so-and-so's knees don't hurt when they come into child's pose. It wasn't that superficial. Um, and so that process lasted 14 months. That teacher training lasts about 14 months. And I was— wait, I was slowly building out my one-to-one clientele because people would come to these group classes and be like, how do you know so much about the feet? My husband has this and that going on. Can you come to my house on Saturday and help him? You know, like that expert quality started to, to develop, or how people saw me started to develop. And that felt really good. It felt like, wow, I can really make an impact. Much more than what I'm doing in the clinical work. And the clinical work isn't addressing the mental and emotional part. It's all behavior-driven. I really want to work with the whole human. And so it just became this sort of natural, like, integral pursuit of, well, this is my path. It really does. This will sound cliché to some listeners, but it feels to me very much like my dharmic path to do this work.

And I understand that.

I'm verifying that because, yeah, you know, when your life is aligned like that, synchronicities happen, opportunities come to you. You don't have to fight for them. I think being a yoga teacher in a capitalist market takes work, and anyone who says otherwise probably has a team behind them or has been—

I don't think for a long time I don't think that, I don't know anybody that isn't putting in a ton of work, even like I studied with Sean Corn for like years and years and years. And I know that she works really hard and then she's, she's not, she's not doing as much as she used to as far as like travel and stuff. But I know like from being a part of like studying under one of her inner circle that like she just put it's even once you make it, you're not, you never really make it. Right. And that actually leads me into something that I wanted to talk about, which is, you know, when we talk about our story, it's really easy for us to talk about like our wins and our triumphs and how we obviously were so meant to do this and it's our dharma and, and that like, and that's a beautiful thing and we should share the, the wins, but I think people don't recognize. Two things, one time and failure, for lack of a better word, that comes before that. So there's a significant number of years that have transpired from the time that people are like, wow, you were born to do this, that you're like fulfilling your dharma, and that actually happening. And then I'm sure I would love you to share like some of the things that were struggles that didn't go the way you expected along that journey so people can understand that it is, it's an up and down, it's waves, you know, it's not just this, this plane of going up, up, up and just it getting better, that it's actually waves. So if you could share a little bit about your struggles, that would be fabulous. Sure.

So, so two things come to mind right off the bat. There's so many. So, so many. So the, the one that strikes me the most is it— I, um, I went in for a job interview to become a substitute teacher at this yoga studio. And the woman who was interviewing me was the owner of the studio, really lovely. Um, and we, you know, she'd ask me all the basic questions. Where did you study? What do you love teaching? You know, for an hour time slot, what would you teach? Like, what would be the theme of the class?

Whatever.

And I'm, you know, being the best grade A student, I'm answering all the questions. I have an answer for everything. And at the end of the interview, she's like, well, you know, thanks, but basically I'm not gonna hire you. And in my head I'm like, why didn't I get hired? Like, I answered all the questions the right way and I had good answers and I had this certification. Like, What? I didn't say this out loud, but that's what I was experiencing on the inside. And it, it did feel like a failure because the goal of the interview on the surface was to get hired. Mm-hmm. But what I came away from was this piece of advice she gave me, which was so nurturing. And this is what I love about yoga. Business owners who are actual yoga students, because there are a lot of yoga business owners who are not yoga students.

Mm-hmm.

And it makes a difference in how you operate your business. And she, at the end of the interview, when she said, I'm not gonna hire you, she said, but you're so young in your yoga teacher practice, I wanna give you some advice. I'm like, okay. She's like, for every class that you take, Write a list, 5 things that you really enjoyed and were inspired by, and 5 things that you— that didn't work for you, you didn't like, or were confused by, because it's going to help you develop who you are as a teacher. And I used that for probably a decade, not religiously, but— and now I tell it to my teacher trainees, right, when they're trying to develop their voice as a teacher and who they want to be as they're developing that.

Yeah, that is phenomenal advice. I, I give the same advice, not as neatly structured. Um, I like the way you say it, and I may start using that myself, but I always say like, go to other teachers, go to as many teachers as you can and find out what you think is effective and what you think is ineffective. And that's how you get better at teaching. That was— but that person gave you a gift for sure. For sure.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. The goal wasn't for you to get that job.

Right.

Spirit, God, universe, divine, whatever you believe, higher power of your own understanding was giving you a gift of understanding how to become a better teacher. That was the goal for sure. That's cool. Yeah. That's cool.

The other thing that stands out, I was teaching at a studio that had a funny model. I hope they don't do this model anymore, but the model was you, you rent the space at a discount and then you split the proceeds with the studio owner. Oh, it was like pay to play for like musicians.

Yeah, I don't like that either.

Yeah, it was harsh. So there are— I don't know how many classes— I think you have that like pain amnesia where you like forget how hard it was because now you're beyond that. But at the time I would rent the space and I just wouldn't have students. Yeah, the, the, you know, the hour would go by, I just wouldn't have students for a long time, you know, and then I'd have a student and maybe that student would come back and I'd retain that student for a little bit and then they'd go and then I'd get one other student, right? But eventually it would build. And the advice that this studio owner gave, which was another nugget, thankfully she was a teacher, a student herself. As much as she was a teacher and a business owner, she said, even if you don't have students come to your class, hold the space for your students to come, right? Don't just like be on your phone and like whatever, like practice, use the space to practice or study and hold the space for your future students to arrive. It's like manage that disappointment in a really good way.

Yeah. Yeah. That's really, that's also really insightful because there are so many times when no one shows up in the beginning. And it, the begin— also as a studio owner, you know, I don't, having owned studios myself, I, very, very successful studios. And going through that time period where no one would come to class, I ate that as the owner. But in the end, if you own a studio and you have it set up where you pay people a flat rate to teach your classes, you will make an incredible amount more money than if you did a split with them. Yeah. And the reality is that most teachers do not know how— really good teachers, the best teachers for your studio as a business owner, do not know how to drive traffic and do not know how to market themselves. You've got to be really good at that. And there are teachers that are great at both. There definitely are. I just interviewed somebody who used to be a digital marketer, but it's— but by and far, my experience having certified thousands of people now to become yoga teachers and then hiring them to work for me is that you have to let them shine at what they're good at, not, not try to make them your business. You don't be lazy. Buy your own ads. Learn how to get, uh, learn how to be good at social media. Pay someone $500 to $1,000 a month to do search engine optimization for your web, for your webpage. You know, like, um, that's the way you're gonna grow as a business owner. But yeah, I, those are great stories. And so what I would love, um, in the remaining time that we have is if you would share what you're doing now, because you are doing some really cool, incredible, awesome stuff. Um, you have your own, uh, membership program. You have your own— very affordable, might I add— um, and you have your own, um, yoga teacher training, both in person and online. And you have a retreat coming in Portugal, a place I have— I've been all over this world and I've not been to Portugal.

Portugal.

Yeah, yeah, I would like to take my sailboat there. So, um, But tell us everything that you're doing now and what you offer and, you know, how you're shining. I'd love to hear it.

Well, thank you. So, yeah, so my virtual studio, my business is called Light Inside Yoga. That's my personal practice where I work one-on-one with people online and in person, local to LA, online anywhere in the world, local to Los Angeles if you want me to drive to you. Um, I also teach online classes through that platform, lightinsideyoga.com. Um, all of my classes are trauma-informed, on the gentler side. Many of my students are over the age of 50. So if you're looking for that kind of space, um, I might be it for you. And then I also have a huge and ever-growing, um, class library of replay classes and on-demand content. Some are curated programs like Yoga for Travel, you know, $38 to $44 for the bundle of classes. Comes with a playlist. You can download it offline to use wherever. The class replay library has a monthly and annual membership, but you can also just, you know, rent a class like you would on whatever other streaming platform. The teacher training programs are on a waitlist. I'm co-leading a teacher training at One Down Dog here in Los Angeles at the 300-hour level. I offer one-to-one mentorship with teachers. And the Portugal retreat is happening this June. We start on the solstice, June 21st through the 26th, in southern Portugal in the Algarve. And it's a 6-day, you know, everything included experience, twice a day yoga, organic spa massage, take a speedboat to one of the 4 private islands. It's really picturesque. I was there on retreat myself last year, and it does, um, sound as good as it is and will be. So we have 2 rooms remaining.

They have great food in Portugal. I know this because Spain has great food, and I've Pinterest-boarded Portugal food, so I know that it's good. Portugal is a big fan of food.

Yeah, and Portugal is very easy on the eyes, you know, everything there is beautiful and colorful and most things are handmade, you know, it's like a slower environment. And so the theme of the retreat is called Slow Time. I live in Los Angeles. If any of you listeners live in big cities or feel like your mind is living in a big city or overstimulated, always on the go, this retreat is a retreat from that. Pace of life, to really slow down, enjoy the simple things, take a walk through the neighborhood to the coast.

Yeah. So all that sounds really magic. So you can find Nikki on @lightinsideyoga on Instagram. And I have absolutely enjoyed having you on the podcast today. I feel like I've learned so much and also been able to commune with one of my old-timey school sisters in the yoga world. And just kind of remember some of the, the great things. I've been practicing yoga for about 40 years now. And so, um, I know I'm older than I look, but, um, no way, the opposite.

It's like you started yoga when you were 3.

11, 11, 11. So, um, yeah, so I, um, absolutely, it's just changed a lot over the years. And so I'm so grateful that you came on the podcast. I'm really, uh, excited to share this episode with the listeners, and I know that so many people will be inspired. So thank you so very much.

Thank you for having me.