Gina Hughes’s Stories, Lessons & Insights

We recently had the chance to connect with Gina Hughes and have shared our conversation below.

Good morning Gina, we’re so happy to have you here with us and we’d love to explore your story and how you think about life and legacy and so much more. So let’s start with a question we often ask: What do you think others are secretly struggling with—but never say?
Good morning! I’m so happy to be here. The secret struggle I see? It’s stress. People, women in particular, are really stressed out. And the sad part is that while they might talk about it amongst friends or vent to their moms, no one really bats an eye. Society treats being in a constant state of fight or flight like it’s normal, and it’s not. On a given day, a mom might wake up at 5am to pack lunches and get breakfast ready, get their children to school, work all day, handle school pick-up, prepare snacks and dinner, help with homework, wash and fold a load of laundry, do a few loads of dishes, and really truly never take a moment of rest until she’s ready to collapse into bed at 10pm. And we don’t talk about it. Women don’t often complain about how stressed out they feel because they don’t want others to think they don’t have it all together. But the reality is that so many women don’t take a single moment for themselves, and then they wonder why they’re left feeling so exhausted and, frankly, resentful. That’s why it’s my passion to teach people yoga for stress management. These responsibilities that life throws at us aren’t going away. So many people don’t have the village they wish to have. So the stressors are still going to be there. Yoga can help us change our relationship to stress and provide tools that people can use in real time to down regulate the nervous system. Yoga teaches self awareness, boundaries, and where we can say yes and where we can say no. All these skills we hone on the mat spill over into life off the mat and allow people to cultivate a life they truly love.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I’m Gina Hughes, Owner of Invitation Yoga & Events. I’m a Stress Management Specialist and mobile yoga professional with over 500 hours of Adaptive Yoga training and related modalities. I take yoga out of the studio and bring it to client homes and offices, making each practice personalized to their needs, interests, goals, and schedules.

Invitation Yoga focuses on fully customized yoga for people who are busy and stressed out. Traditional yoga studios have specific styles of classes at regularly scheduled times. Not only do these set times not always work for people who have young kids or who have a busy work schedule, but even if the times align, the style may not be what the client needs. With Adaptive Yoga, not only does the client choose the overall style of the practice that they need on a given day, but also each individual posture has options so the client can find what feels best in their body. Studio yoga focuses on yoga for everybody. Invitation Yoga focuses on yoga for YOU.

I’m on a mission to make each yoga practice convenient, holistic, and accessible so people can learn a “toolkit” of yoga skills to help them learn how to manage stress so they can feel like the best version of themselves.

Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What did you believe about yourself as a child that you no longer believe?
I’d actually love to share something I believed, not as a child, but as a young mother. Other than being a yoga professional, I’m also a mom of two girls. When they were really young, I believed deep down that “doing it all” was what was required to be the best mom and give them the best childhood possible; but overextending myself just led to burnout and a loss of the person I was before I became a parent. I was that mom who insisted that the right amount of screen time was zero, even when I was on the verge of losing it. We made grandma’s homemade cookie recipe on a Tuesday night. I did every bathtime, bedtime, storytime and accepted no help whatsoever because everything had to be done exactly the way the parenting books said, and frankly, everyone else was doing it “wrong.” And while my kids were healthy and happy and thriving, I was really struggling inside. When was the last time I read a book? When was the last time I worked out? When was the last time I took a yoga class? When was the last time I went out on a date with their dad? I had martyred myself in the name of being a “good parent” and forgot who I was in the process.

Eventually, things built up enough that I said to myself, “I don’t even recognize the woman in the mirror.” When I got to that point, I was launched back into yoga, and with it, re-discovering myself. Yoga helped me to get back in touch with my body. It helped me learn about myself again- what felt right to me and what didn’t. It helped me get comfortable setting boundaries, including and prioritizing myself. I learned to forgive myself too, and that when I stopped worrying so much about being perfect, I was finally able to be good.

If you could say one kind thing to your younger self, what would it be?
If I could go back and speak to myself as a young mom almost a decade ago, I would tell her that self care isn’t “me first.” It’s “me too.” I would tell her that while yes, some sacrifices are required as a mother and as an adult in general, love does not equate sacrifice. Sometimes, love looks like a boundary. Sometimes love looks like asking for help. Sometimes love looks like prioritizing rest. And I deeply believe that while making these small shifts transformed MY experience, these same small shifts have been healthy ones for my children too. Because now they get a real life example of what it looks like to love, prioritize, and care for yourself. That’s something that yoga taught me, and I’m blessed to get to share these lessons with others through this holistic practice.

I think our readers would appreciate hearing more about your values and what you think matters in life and career, etc. So our next question is along those lines. Where are smart people getting it totally wrong today?
It’s interesting to me that some really intelligent people have worked on developing technology to make our lives “easier,” when in reality people just use that technology to pack more into their day. I’m talking email, cell phones, robot vacuums, AI tools, you name it. It’s not like someone sits there and says, “Oh look! I don’t have to vacuum today! That means I have 15 minutes where I can sit and read something I enjoy.” They say, “Great! Now I have time to send another 10 emails or squeeze in a quick meeting.” Instead of allowing technology to free up space in their schedules, people use it to do more. We are so obsessed with being busy and working hard, and then we wonder why we feel so stressed out and disconnected from the things and people we truly love. I wish people saw openings in their schedule as opportunities to ground and rest instead. Yoga teaches us to sit with our feelings, sit with silence, sit with discomfort. It teaches us that we can rest and observe, be mindful, and use that “down-time” to notice what’s going on inside our bodies and minds. That free time, those gaps, don’t need to be filled with another obligation. There is value in the spaces and pauses in between.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: Could you give everything your best, even if no one ever praised you for it?
“Could you give everything your best, even if no one ever praised you for it?” is an interesting question. Ever since I was really little, “Do your best,” was a mantra in my family’s household, and it was how I received praise. And it sounds pretty positive on the surface, but in fact it was pretty detrimental to my mental health. “Doing my best,” on a test sometimes meant that I stayed up until all hours of the night studying even when I was exhausted. It looked like practicing my guitar for hours until my fingertips bled. When I got older, it looked like reading every parenting book ever printed and sticking to each and every rule, even when that meant zero sleep for me and no time to do the other things I loved outside of being a parent. This mentality was a huge contributing factor to toxic stress in my life because no one held a higher standard for me than myself, and nothing was ever good enough. So no, I’m done with giving everything my best, praise or no praise. I do work hard, and I love what I do. And I also know and love myself enough to recognize when to hold a boundary, when to say, “This is good enough,” and to be satisfied that I am beautifully imperfectly human.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://invitationyoga.com
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/invitationyoga

Image Credits
Anna Angenend Photography