We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jen Peterson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jen below.
Jen, so good to have you with us today. We’ve always been impressed with folks who have a very clear sense of purpose and so maybe we can jump right in and talk about how you found your purpose?
I was almost 40. I had established myself as a strong leader in the nonprofit field and felt satisfaction from being able to do work that aligned with my values around social justice and planetary health. I had two beautiful healthy kids who were 8 and 5 years old and beginning to develop their own social lives separate from our family. I owned a home in beautiful rural Vermont, a place I loved. I was the primary breadwinner. My husband was a field biologist. I had a lot to be grateful for but I was not content. I had done all of things I believed I was supposed to do on my adult journey and was proud but not fulfilled. I was always looking for the next thing to accomplish. I was also medicating a depression with alcohol and pot. Addiction is rampant in my family and in the back of my mind I knew I had a problem.
I started taking yoga classes and found a place to get quiet and listen to and get to know the real me. The one I didn’t even know existed. At first it was another thing to accomplish–drop backs and legs behind the head–I was only conscious of the physicality of the practice. So much ego!
But something inside me also shifted and I was able to quit drinking and begin an amicable and compassionate process of ending my marriage. I found inside myself the courage to take steps forward when I didn’t know exactly what was next but that my intuition, rather than my rule book, led me to take. I began to feel a pull to go deeper into my yoga practice and see what would happen. And then I hurt myself.
The herniation of a lumbar disc in my spine had a lot to do with ego and stress. The result was that I had to stop practicing in the community of yogis that I had found my new freedom within and that was hard. In hindsight, I realized it made me even more curious about the lineage of yoga and the depth of ancient wisdom of this practice through which I had found so much liberation.
So when a business coach for my day job helped me understand that going to Yoga Teacher Training for 4 weeks wasn’t the same as becoming a yoga teacher and tanking my income as a now single mom, I signed up. I convinced my boss that 4 weeks away could be done and I went to live with my brother in North Carolina. My kids came with me for the first week and then went home to Vermont and spent 3 weeks with their dad full-time.
On day 3 of the training, I was sitting on my mat after yoga practice and realizing that I had been basically eating, drinking and sleeping yoga for 72 hours and I had so much joyful energy flowing around my body that without thinking about it I whispered out loud, “So this is what if feels like to know what you’re supposed to be when you grow up!” It was a profound moment that still gives me goose bumps when I remember it.
I was 48 years old. I had no idea how I was going to support myself and my two kids on my own on a yoga teacher’s salary. When I told my old yoga teacher at the studio where I hurt my back she said, “Don’t quit your day job!” But I met with a financial advisor and she helped me make a 5 year plan for saving up to start my own business. I started teaching more classes at night and on the weekend and continuing to do trainings to deepen my knowledge and skills which helped me realize that I wanted to focus on working 1:1 with people to give them individualized yoga pracitces using all the tools–asana, pranayama, meditation and even chanting to support them in ending their suffering. I reached out to PTs, Drs, and mental health counselors in my area and told them what I wanted to do and how I thought yoga could help their clients.
Ultimately, through a series of unexpected circumstances at my day job, my 5 year plan became a 2 year plan and I started Yoga Grace, LLC as a 50th birthday present to myself.
After 7 years, I survived COVID and expanded my offerings to include virtual support. I got certified to offer Yoga Therapy and Ayurveda (a sister science of Yoga), and have an established private practice of private sessions and online classes. I work 2 days a week at our local hospital offering yoga and Reiki to chronic pain patients, I work with mental health counselors to teach them how to support their clients with yoga practices. I am networking to begin doing more training of teachers because the deeper I go with my personal practice, the more I am called to work with people who have similar connection to this lineage. I am mindful of the cultural appropriation of Yoga that has happened in the West and am challenging myself daily to make sure I respect and honor the true intentions of this ancient and transformative wisdom. Besides, the poses just scratch the surface. The real power is in the deeper practices of breathwork, meditation, chanting, and prayer.
So, no I don’t make oodles of cash doing this. I probably still only make about 1/2 of what I would be making had I stayed in my previous career. The difference is that now, my only real stress is financial and it’s not even really that stressful as I’m so much more aware of the abundance of the universe and therefore the abundance withhin myself.
My advice about finding your purpose–and the courage to act upon it? Find your mat. whatever form it takes for you. Practice getting quiet and finding your true self. Do it everyday and wait. Be patient. It will likely unfold slowly and you won’t even notice it at first–that clarity and trust that you know–you just know. Set yourself free and feel the universe inside you. I have a quote on my website from the Radiance Sutras that expresses it beautifully:
“The Roar of Joy that set the Worlds in Motion is reverberating in Your Body. LISTEN.”
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
Oops. I think I put all of this in my first question. Here it is again with some expansion:
I started Yoga Grace, LLC in 2017 as a 50th birthday present to myself.
After 7 years, I survived COVID and expanded my offerings to include virtual support. I got certified to offer Yoga Therapy and Ayurveda (a sister science of Yoga), and have an established private practice of private sessions and online classes.
I work 2 days a week at our local hospital offering yoga and Reiki to chronic pain patients, I work with mental health counselors to teach them how to support their clients with yoga practices. I am networking to begin doing more training of teachers because the deeper I go with my personal practice, the more I am called to work with people who have similar connection to this lineage. I love learning and my students and clients are my best teachers.
Given how ostracized by my yoga community I felt after I hurt my back and could no longer practice that style of yoga, I realized how exclusive most yoga practices are and that many people of all abilities and sizes would benefit from yoga but they didn’t even consider it because it didn’t feel like it was for them. I vowed to teach in a way that recognized that if you breath, you can do yoga. The ultimate intention of the postures is to use the pose to go into the body not the other way around. There is no intrinsic value in the pose. You are the being of value and a pose, when adapted to meet your needs, has the power to help you learn something about yourself. That’s all. It still amazes me how often people say to me, “Am I doing this pose right?”–even after I say that to them!
I am mindful of the cultural appropriation of Yoga that has happened in the West and am challenging myself daily to make sure I respect and honor the true intentions of this ancient and transformative wisdom. Besides, the poses just scratch the surface. The real power is in the deeper practices of breathwork, meditation, chanting, and prayer. I also think yoga can be a powerful tool for realizing the ways in which we hold the charge of racism in our bodies and becoming more conscious of how to release ourselves and future generations of the epidemiology of hatred and fear.
I am starting to put together a program called Nourish, that’s in person and virtual, about yoga for disordered eating and body dysmorphia and am excited about that. It’s an area that is very personal for me and I love the idea of building a lifelong community of support around that. You can’t stop eating the way you can stop drinking or doing drugs and we will always live in relationship to food. We’ve shrunk the idea of nourishment to just coming from food and have dimished our conscious awareness of other ways to feed ourselves well. We’ve demonized food and size and cultivated a culture of shame around them. I am working to flip the story around that for myself and would love to share that journey!
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
1. Good listening skills for my inner voice. That takes practice.
2. Asking myself if the stories I was telling myself were 100% true. Over and over. Most times they were not but they were debilitating me.
3. Trust yourself that the answer will come. You don’t have to know the final chapter before reading the whole book. Stay open while you listen.
4. My newest AHA: Don’t be afraid of spirit. It’s your essence.
How to get there:
Find your mat. Practice studying yourself as a whole person. Doesn’t have to be Yoga (but it is awesome IMHO). Just find a way that feels accessible to you to get quiet and ask yourself what’s real? Ask it every day and sometimes for months and years and even lifetimes. It won’t come overnight but clarity will come. And it will come from within. Can only come from within. In a world that is offering us daily new ways for the external qualifiers to tell us how we are, to manage us, to think for us–the best way to find freedom and contentment is to turn inward and, Listen. Without expectation. Without judgement. Just listen.
One of our goals is to help like-minded folks with similar goals connect and so before we go we want to ask if you are looking to partner or collab with others – and if so, what would make the ideal collaborator or partner?
I would love to collaborate with folks who are looking for a teacher trainer for advanced yoga teacher trainings. I don’t want to start my own teacher training program though I’m happy to mentor teachers, 1:1. I’d love to help an advanced teacher training program expand to include more about yoga therapy and ayurveda and even how to make a living teaching yoga.
I’m also dreaming about a retreat somewhere someday. I love the idea of a silent retreat or a collaborative retreat where two or three modalities are combined with a focused theme. I would love to collaborate with a retreat owner and/or other practitioners on a unique retreat to a cool location.
If you’re looking for what I have to offer, I’m available via email at [email protected].
Contact Info:
- Website: www.yogagracevt.com
