Yogalebrity Podcast Episode 83: Abby Turner the Yoga Traveler

Welcome everyone to the Yogalebrity Podcast. I'm absolutely thrilled and excited to be joined today by Abby Turner at Yoga Traveler Online. She's going to be telling us the story of her becoming a yoga teacher. This year I'm dedicating my podcast to yoga teacher origin stories so that you can be inspired to become a yoga teacher, take yoga teacher training, and focus on your practice, whatever it is that your individual goals are, and hear the stories of so many different people and how they came to yoga. I'm super excited about Abby because she has been one of my yoga students when I worked— when I owned a yoga studio, and then also she took my 300-hour yoga teacher training. So I'm absolutely blessed to have her here. She is also a member of my private mastermind, which is really exciting. So I'm super blessed for her to join us. And I know that you're going to love her story. It crosses continents and oceans. Welcome to the podcast, Abby. I'm so glad to have you. Thank you. It's good to be here.

I'm happy to be with you all.

So tell us a little bit about what your life was like before you became a yoga teacher. Yes.

So I've always been a physically active person, huge part of my life. I started with ballet from when I was teeny tiny and always taught ballet. And then I started having kids and your body changes. And so I was making sure that I was always being physically active to keep, to be able to keep up with my kids. But I hated it. I hated what I was doing. I was doing a bunch of really hard cardio and I just, it just felt like work. And I thought, well, I'm going to have to do this for life and just suffer through it. And I hated it. And then I had my third child and I always suffer from postpartum depression. And with my third child, it was, it was worse. It was the worst it's been. And I didn't really realize how bad it was at the time. Obviously my husband did. Because he was trying to help me through it and living with me and I was probably a monster. But, but you, anyway, I thought when I had my third kid that my life was over basically because now I was outnumbered. There were two adults and three children and I had to stop everything that I was doing because I needed to devote all my time to my kids. This is totally faulty thinking. Obviously my hormones were a mess. And one day my husband just said, you need to go exercise. I don't care what it is. You need to find something to do. Cause I totally stopped doing everything. I stopped getting up and going to those cardio classes that I hated. And I stopped, I wasn't teaching dance. I wasn't doing anything except for trying to nurse my kid and sleep a little bit. And so I was like, well, how can I go to a class? I have no time for this. I can't give any time to anyone else that's not my 3 children. And, and, um, there was a yoga class. It was at night. It was, um, like at 8:30 at night. So kind of late in some ways. Um, but my husband was always home at that time from work and I was able to nurse my baby and I had no excuses, really, like all the excuses went away. The other kids were in bed. And what was I going to do, I guess, except for go to sleep myself? But I never go to sleep at 8:30. So I went to the very first yoga class and I was bound and determined to hate it. Like I went in thinking this was going to fail. I didn't bring a yoga mat and I didn't borrow one either. We— it was in a— it was on a martial arts floor. So I put my hands and feet on this floor that like people would step on, you know, and like kickbox and stuff. And I just— I can't believe I didn't have like a disease from that. Um, but I was not gonna buy anything for yoga. I mean, I had this idea that yoga was Well, I thought it was for old people, which is funny because a lot of times the older population won't do yoga because they think it's for young people. But I thought it was for old people. I thought it was sitting on the floor and stretching, which I had no interest in because I had come from a dance background and a cardio background. To me, being physical was constantly moving all the time and And so one good thing about this class was it was a vinyasa flow style. I think if I'd started with a yin yoga style, which I love now, but I think I would have stopped. So it was a good thing that this class was moving. It was the balance between the flow of the movement and the holds. And I learned quickly, first of all, that I needed a mat. And second of all, that it was not easy. I, um, it convinced me immediately that I had not been breathing for probably my whole life. Not right anyway.

Right.

Not really. Yeah. Which is funny because I was a ballet dancer forever and ballet is slow and controlled movement. And that's another reason why it's so funny that I thought I was going to hate yoga because ballet and yoga have a lot of similarities. I don't know. I don't know what was wrong with me. I was a mess. But so anyway, I went to this class and it was hard. I couldn't do a chaturanga without putting my knees down. I thought my arms are gonna break. I didn't know how to breathe. She kept talking about breathing and I was like, I am breathing.

I am breathing.

And but when we got into shavasana, I was like, I have been missing this my entire life. And it was immediate. I was like, I will never go to another cardio class again. And I almost haven't.

Wow. Wow.

Sometimes I like to do dance stuff like Zumba because it's fun and the music is fun and I like the dancing stuff, but I will never go to a kickboxing class ever again. I will never—

it's just, just not me.

And I feel like cycle—

I do like cycle classes.

Oh yeah, yeah, that's fun. I haven't tried cycle. I probably should try it.

I actually own a cycle at my house. I like it. It was like the first thing I bought when we moved into a house. I was like, I need to have my own cycle. Yeah, that's good.

I, I do think it's important to find a way to be physical that you enjoy. Because otherwise it will feel like work. And sometimes it is work. I mean, not that yoga is easy. I'm not trying to say that, but when I do a yoga class that's an hour versus the way I feel when I do a cardio class that's an hour, for me, the hour flies by in yoga and it doesn't in cardio classes. It feels like torture. But anyway, So I had a great experience in that class, that very first class, and went home and told my husband, this is it. This is what I need to do. I need to do yoga. And I almost immediately then thought, I need to teach yoga because I've always been a teacher of physical, you know, I started out teaching dance when I was 16 years old. So it wasn't a hard switch for me to think, Okay, I need to teach this. I got to teach other women. At the time, I thought of it as with me, but I teach a ton of men too. But I need to teach women who are dealing with hormonal changes in their body and who are feeling like they have no time for themselves. And I need to teach them how to move in an appropriate way and release some of that stress and anxiety.

Yeah, because postpartum can be really serious. I have a friend who she also struggles with postpartum, like, really poorly. And her and her husband were not prepared after their first child for just how bad it got for her. And I mean, like, love, you know, like, not wanting to be on this planet anymore levels of depression. And it's all like these hormones that I, I never had any children, so I can't know what that's like. But I know that for some women, it's just really, really difficult. And I know the second time around, she did practice yoga a lot more, um, and that helped her. But the first time she was doing meditation, and, um, that wasn't enough.

Yeah, see, and I didn't do any of that my first two kids. I just cried all the time, and, and I would, I would either cry or I'd be angry all the time. And I'm not typically an angry person. I do cry a lot. I have, I have easy waterworks, but I'm not typically an angry person. So it is interesting to look back on that period of my life because I feel like it's two different people, like this other Abby that I don't recognize because I'm not normally like that. And so, um, it is an issue and it's definitely not something to be ignored and whatever you can do to help, help with that, um, is good. I think the breathing alone, I mean, Being able to—

Breathing is huge.

Slow everything down and take a moment. I mean, even if you feel— I mean, we've all had that feeling where we get kind of panicky and, and, uh, just to know how to stop and say, okay, I can sit here for 5 minutes and breathe, and then my outlook is going to be different. The problems haven't gone away, but that's really—

I think that's very important to note that it's That's the outlook at the way we look at things is differently after we do a yoga practice. And I've noticed that that's the same for me after I do a long meditation. And I'm talking about like an hour-long meditation, 45 minutes at least, that I can like reorganize my brain and kind of change the way it fires in order to see things. And life is all perspective. It really is, you know, but I will, I will say that when I was Um, when I first started going through menopause, I would have these times where I just was irrational. And that's the only thing I can really like, um, like in my own life kind of can compare it to is like the menopause, where hormones were, my hormones were just like, I don't even know how Paul handled me because sometimes I just wasn't making any sense. And then, you know, uh, last year I went through a lot. My dog died. My grandpa committed suicide. Um, my— I found out my uncle has colon cancer, stage 4. Um, it's— it was like just a really, really tough year, and I was very much in the throes of it. We moved on to a boat that year, and I guess it's been 2 years now, but we moved on to a boat, and it was not my expectation. I didn't think that— I thought, well, first of all, you got to be really rich to live on a boat and, uh, and be comfortable. I didn't realize it was that expensive. Wow. We were in Texas in the heat. You've been in Texas. It's hot, it's moist hot, and it's uncomfortable. And if you don't have an air-conditioned house, it's extra uncomfortable. Um, so yeah, so I mean, like, I understand that, like, you know, and having those hormones at the same time, like, just crazy and not really, uh, having any control of them. And also, like, me, I, I had to like really hone in on my diet. And once I did that, once I started exercising every day, even if it was just a walk and meditating and eating in a much cleaner way, for me, the hormones, I was able to handle them a lot better. But I don't know if that's the same with postpartum or not.

With it. Um, mine felt, uh, mostly emotional and probably lack of sleep, I'm sure. Um, but, but I'm sure diet has something to do with it. And just, I just feel like I'm just a physical person and I was denying myself all that. And so I needed to be able to move. Um, the other thing that was interesting that was going on with us at that same time um, was my husband's— my husband's job. He's a social worker, and his job that he was working for, like, a residential treatment facility, and they were failing. They were going under, and he was— he was gonna go down. He's gonna go down with the ship. So we were watching that happen, um, while I was depressed and not knowing how to live and 3 kids and no money and no job. And then, um, he was applying for the, for the US Air Force and we were kind of getting nothing out of that, but he felt like it would be a good change. I was on board. Um, uh, I don't know. So that was all going on. And, and then I decided to do a teacher yoga teacher training and way more money than we had. At the time and, um, would have to— it, it was like a $2,000 program, but then it ended up being around $4,000 because I had to get childcare. And so that was like an added thing. And my husband was just saying, he's like, he's usually the realistic person. I'm the one that's like, oh, we'll work it out later. You know, he's the one. So when he says yes to something, I'm like, oh really? Because he, he was like, yes, go get the training done. Because we were hoping that we would get in the Air Force and we would be moving all over the world potentially, which we have done, um, and that I could teach wherever. It would be a job that I could do in any place. And so we invested all this time and all this money into that teacher training. And it was, it was 100% the right decision. He did get into the Air Force. And he was gone. He was gone for about 6 weeks before we moved. We were in Utah at the time. And while he was gone, I taught yoga in my living room, we just moved the chairs aside. And I taught to my neighbors. But I was making some income. You know, it was because when he was first in, when he first got in the military, we weren't getting paid. We didn't get paid for probably about 3 months.

Wow.

So the only thing we were living on was what I was making from post-teacher training. So I was able to teach in my house, which was great because I have little kids. And then I had a sitter that would come in the night and I would go teach at a local gym at night. And Yeah, they needed teachers. I had no problem getting a teacher job directly after my training, like no problem at all.

And so, um, I've noticed that to be true for people who are assertive about getting a job, who like go out and they seek it. They don't like just apply online. They like actually go to places and say like, you know, I am certified to teach yoga. I would like to teach. Do you need any teachers? Like, uh, time and time again, interviewing people, as many people as I've interviewed, now, it is always the same story that these people were very assertive about getting jobs as a yoga teacher or creating their own thing and getting people to come to them, that rather than sitting back and waiting for it to happen.

Yeah, absolutely. I agree with that for sure. And I, yeah, I did. I see, I went out and tried to find it. I created my own space at my home and advertised and then I went out to seek the jobs.

And who did you, who did you train with and, uh, where did you train?

I trained, um, in Utah, in Provo. There's a place called 3B Yoga Studio and they are Ashtanga style.

Nice.

Which also worked really well for me because it's very physical. Yeah, it's very tough in Utah. I taught only Ashtanga because I think it was because that was the only thing I knew. You know, you're new, you're a new teacher, and you teach what you know, right? And, and that's fine. But, um, but when we moved to Las Vegas, I— which is where I met Angelica— um, I taught at a, at another gym. I ended up having to teach at a lot of gyms, which I kind of hate. It's like a love-hate relationship. I did it.

The gym, I love the gym. It's hard because there's such a variety of people.

That's what I liked about it.

Oh, but, but for me, that was the hardest part. But I loved my clients. Like, you just like get really cool people coming.

The thing I don't like about the gym is that I wouldn't have always control over the room. Like, sometimes I'd have to share it with the exercise bikes, which I hate.

Yeah.

And I can always adjust.

That happens all the time.

And you'd hear the kickboxing music down the hall. Yeah.

The basketball court was right next to the yoga yoga space in Wigwam, and it was like the whole time just like basketball, basketball, basketball. That is annoying. Yeah.

Yeah. So that's what I don't like about it. But I do— I did like how every time someone would walk in the door, they would— the class was just called yoga. It wasn't beginner yoga. It wasn't advanced yoga. It wasn't, you know, there was no precursor or whatever.

And you can't get them to call it anything. You'd be like, could you call it vinyasa? Or could you call it yin? And they're like, no. It's corporate policy. It's yoga.

Yoga.

Okay. You know that yoga is like, but you know, you can have, you can have Les Mills Body Pump and Zumba, you know, Zumba 1, Zumba 2, Zumba 3, but you can't call it, you know, like restorative yoga. I know.

They don't know what to do with us. Like they don't know how to So anyway, but I liked that anyone who walked in the door, I had to make the class appropriate for them. So I really learned how to teach modifications, which I don't know that I came out of training with as much, just because we were just really learning the very strict. I was really glad for that very strict Ashtanga foundation, really good alignments, really good body focus. Um, but then I learned in Las Vegas how to modify to everybody who walked in the room. And I think that was very valuable because now I'm teaching mostly seniors who need to— well, not mostly, but about half of my clients are seniors who need modifications for everything, but they're still doing yoga. It doesn't matter that we have to modify. They're still doing yoga and they're still—

Yeah, you modify the pose for the person, not the person for the pose.

Absolutely, absolutely. And I believe— I've had some yoga teachers disagree with me on this, but I believe you make everybody feel comfortable in yoga. Agreed. It's not about what I want to teach, it's about what they need. Agreed. And yeah, and if they don't feel comfortable, they're not going to come back, and they—

Agreed.

—lost all the benefits of yoga.

So yeah, and that would be my fault. Yeah. Yeah. I've noticed that teaching yoga on social media that like I've been tapping into a whole audience of people that I never would have thought of even like, you know, most of the people that are following me on Instagram are 45 to 65-year-old women. Mm-hmm. You know, I mean, I think that's incredible. I've always taught 20-year-olds my whole life. So it's like really incredible. To be teaching people that are in my own age bracket. And maybe that's because of my age, but maybe it's just because, like, the style— I'm not teaching Ashtanga anymore. I used to do that. I used to teach power yoga, but I'm not even interested in that stuff in the way that I used to be. I don't need to be beaten to submission for my brain to turn off. Whereas when I was younger, I really did need that.

Yeah. And I think so, too. I think there's just this very underserved population of people. And because they're not the stereotypical Ashtanga yoga body type or age or, um, I mean, and we live in the West, we're not from the East where they grew up doing yoga their entire life and they can bend like pretzels. We sit on comfy couches and, and we don't open our hips, and we have to teach people how to ease pain in their body and get more mobility. And I think if you ignore that whole piece of it, you're missing something.

Have you been to India? No, I've not. I'll tell you, there is nothing comfortable there. There's no comfortable spot in all of India. I was not able to locate one. I traveled all over India and there was a lot of smog. I remember being in Varanasi. It used to be called Banaras. Varanasi is a holy city. Where people go to break the cycle of reincarnation. But I remember being there and, um, our— we stayed in like guest houses, you know, because I always like to like get to know the locals. Maybe that's part of why I never found anything really comfortable because I didn't stay in any fancy hotels. And, um, our guest house, the guy was like, what a beautiful day it is today. Look at how sunny it is. And it was so smoggy. You couldn't even see the sun. And I just thought, wow. These people, they never seen a blue sky before. It's a whole different world over there in India. It's very uncomfortable. It'll push you to your, like, levels of uncomfortable. But I think in a way, like, I'm almost ready to go back and do it again. But this time I'm gonna take some tours. I'm gonna get, like, someone to do tours for me, get a tour bus, go to the Taj Mahal, do some regular just touristy stuff. I did not do that. I was like, in India, like, I have roaches crawling on your food and— oh, it was so bad. I remember I had the Delhi belly so bad and I was in Goa and I saw this really young, beautiful blonde girl eating a salad and I hadn't had a salad in 2 weeks. And I just eat like really cooked food, you know? And this girl's eating this salad and I was like, yeah, yeah, if she's eating that salad, I know that she doesn't do what I've been doing with my deli belly. So I'm going to eat that salad. And sure enough, it was okay. I ate the salad. So the wisdom of the blonde girl was correct. It was the same salad, um, and I ate at that restaurant like every day for a week because you're like, it's safe there. I can— I'm not even going to tell you the stories because just— it's— you just have to go and experience yourself. Mother India, it's a whole different— there's a lot of people there. It's a lot of people. So, um, so you all have moved around a lot and you, um, have taken your yoga business with you. Tell us a little bit how you've done that, because I know a lot of people would like to have that freedom. And also share with us, you know, some of the ups and downs of, of doing that. And yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um, yeah, so we've lived in, um, since joining the military, we lived in Las Vegas, nor— rural Japan, um, Oklahoma, and now we're in North Dakota. So I've been, besides Las Vegas, I've been in really rural areas. So one good thing about that is I arrive and there's usually not a lot of yoga. The bad thing about that, the bad thing about that is sometimes people don't know what it is or they, they don't want to experience something new because they're just used to what they have and they're happy with what they have. So every time I arrive, there's usually a job, which is good, but it's like I have to kind of start over. Every 3 years. And it's a little bit exhausting because by the time I leave, my classes would always be totally full and everyone would be—

I know you were doing so good in Oklahoma.

Oh yeah, yeah, it was, it was. But Oklahoma was a funny place because, um, it's very, um, Bible Belt Christian and there are lots of people in Oklahoma who think that yoga is is a religion and you should not be doing it. So that was something that I got asked a lot.

I've had teachers quit teaching for me because they found God, and I'm like, oh, but you were such a good teacher. Can't you mesh them together? Yes, yes, I can. Because your family is religious, right? Yeah, let's talk about that.

Yeah, we're Christian, we're members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And we believe in Jesus, we believe in God, we believe in one higher power. Whereas if you get into some of the aspects of Hinduism or Buddhism, there's multiple gods. So I don't conform to that in my daily life. However, I also believe that our bodies are a gift from God. And in order to really commune with God, you have to have a healthy body, healthy spirit. Spirit, healthy soul. And so yoga does all that for me. That's all I need to know, really. I don't, um, I— it doesn't, it doesn't bother me at all. I've been doing yoga.

Well, the Yoga Sutras say that yoga is not a religion and that Ishvara is your own concept of God, that each individual person has to come to that on their own. And it's not like— it's very clear about The sutras are very clear about it not being Hinduism. But one thing that's really interesting when I started to study Hinduism is that it actually is one God, and all those other gods are a variation of that one God. Kind of like Father, Son, Holy Spirit, right? But you know, like the Father and Son, the Holy Spirit is actually like the Holy Trinity is one God, only this is like 100 gods that's really just Brahman.

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. And, and I, yeah, I feel like the, the 8 limbs of yoga, I don't have any issue with that. I feel like it's a value system. It's a way to live. That's honoring the earth, honoring other people, honoring ourself. I have no problem with it whatsoever. I do not.

So there is like old yoga, like pre-Hatha yoga, Pradipika. Like before the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, there was like, people were using yoga for black magic. That did actually exist. But that's been so, like, like literally thousands of years ago. You know, like it's just not what it is today and that's not what it evolved to, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Christianity had to start somewhere. Jesus was a Jew, you know? Yeah. Absolutely.

Yeah, I know. And I, and I feel like, I mean, we say namaste at the end of a class, and that's honoring the divine in each of us. And for me, I feel like one of my divine gifts is teaching. I didn't just come up with this out of my own head. I think it's something I was given from God. And for me, if I don't use that, then I'm denying that gift from him. Which I don't want to do.

Yeah, you're really good at teaching too. You're very, you're really very gifted at it. And your, uh, online offerings are incredible. Like what you've done online, um, is just really, really wonderful. I know that some of your, some of, some of your work is in within my 300-hour teacher training, and I know a lot of my students end up following you, um, and they take your classes in the training and they really love them and really enjoy them. Particularly, like, my 200-hour trainees, they take your chakra journey. It's like a hybrid that you and I did together where, like, part of it I did and part of it you did. And they take your asana class, and every single week they'd be like, Abby's class was so amazing. Loved it. Like, whatever you did in the 7th chakra, they're just like, the 7th chakra, just amazing. They really love your classes. So talk a little bit about your Online school. Yeah, I, I started it.

Um, so I've always wanted to have my own studio, but I just didn't know how to do it when I have to move and start over every 3 years, like I was saying. And, and then, um, 2 things happened at once. COVID happened and my husband deployed. So I found myself, um, sort of with nothing to do except that I had to take, keep, you know, keep my kids busy in our house. Basically. And but all of my yoga studios closed down as a lot of places did. And I have— I worked in Oklahoma with private clients who were elderly. And so I didn't feel comfortable to be around them and potentially expose them. And so I opened up Yoga Traveler online. And that, that was a great answer for me for a couple of reasons. It's online. It never closes. So you can do yoga whenever you want. And in any time zone, I have people that I've reconnected with from Japan that I knew, people that are in Korea right now, Germany and England. So they're mostly military spouses that I used to teach and now they're living in other places and we do yoga together because you can do it whenever and it doesn't matter. And I don't have to be in the same room with them. So all of my yoga clients that are elderly that I taught in Oklahoma, I'm still teaching them because I cannot expose them. I cannot give them any kind of disease. We are away from each other. I mean, you miss, you miss the physical touch. I used to do hands-on adjustments when they felt comfortable.

I would always ask first. That's very Ashtanga. That sounds very touchy.

Yeah, yeah, I would always ask for consent. I wouldn't, I wouldn't touch unless they were comfortable with it. But, um, usually private clients kind of expect it a little bit because you're there just with them, and so they want to be, um, manipulated a little bit for alignment purposes and, and comfort too. Um, so I can't do that anymore, but, um, but we're still looking at each other. I can see them in my screen and I can make verbal adjustments. And I just keep saying, okay, no, do this, no, do this, no, do this until we get to that correct alignment. And then I ask, how does it feel? You know, they give me feedback. Um, it's fine. And I don't feel like I missed the social aspect either because I'm still talking to them. And so now I do 100% online. I am now in North Dakota and I live in another remote place and I live far from the town. So teaching in my home is very convenient and, and I can just gather up people that I have known from all the places that I've moved and I do live classes. I do private sessions. I do pre-recorded packages for learning, like the Ashtanga one you mentioned, and the chakra journey for healing. So I have all these different offerings that, that people can use to benefit their life the way that they need.

That's really, really incredible. I'm really happy for you and your family. So if people want to take a class with you, what would be the best way to do that?

Well, they could go to my website, which is www.yogatraveler.com. And right on the front page, it talks about the live classes that I offer and, and the packages that are for purchase. Once you purchase them, you have them forever. Or I have a hybrid kind of program, my pain management program. And you might think, well, I'm not really in a lot of pain, but usually there's an area of our body that we might want to focus on. Maybe it's your shoulders. Maybe you feel like you're, you know, at a computer all the day, or you're on your phone too much, or, or your hips. You're starting to notice you're getting a little less mobile in your hips. It's harder to sit on the floor for a time, or you have low back pain. So then we, we target these specific areas, and you can do two things. You can either just like buy a package that that is all about the back, how to lengthen the back, how to stretch it, how to strengthen it, and you just buy it and you have it forever. Or you can do a hybrid with me where we meet either once or twice a month and we focus. I look at you, we do things together to find, to make your body feel comfortable, and then I give you pre-recorded stuff to work on your own time so that the idea is that you're doing yoga consistently and starting to see gains in your body. Um, so all of that's on my website, uh, again, www.yogatraveler.online.

And I'll put that below in the description as well so that it's easy to, um, contact you. And if you, uh, want to connect with Abby, she is on Instagram She's also on YouTube, and it— her handle is @yogatraveleronline. Thank you so much for joining us today, Abby. I really appreciate you. Thank you, Angelica. And, um, definitely hit the subscribe button and subscribe to the podcast. Share it with your friends, anyone you think needs an uplifting message or might be considering becoming a yoga teacher. And if you would like to join me in Costa Rica, I will hosting a Costa Rica retreat or yoga teacher training, whatever your choice. You can check that out in the description below. I'll see you all in the next podcast. Thank you again, Abby, for joining us. Thank you.