We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Christina Siepiela. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Christina below.
Hi Christina , really happy you were able to join us today and we’re looking forward to sharing your story and insights with our readers. Let’s start with the heart of it all – purpose. How did you find your purpose?
I found my purpose by questioning myself and how I would like to live my life. I decided which values mean the most to me along with the difference I would like to make in people’s lives. This evaluation process went on for about 10 years, between 2009-2019, the timeframe between being a full-time mom/wife and the founder/teacher of Kasa Yoga by Christina. Therapy sessions, mental illness, marriage and a motherhood crisis were necessary in my path to allow and guide me to a rebirth. I overcame challenges and today, as I see myself at 50 years old, it’s clear to me how I want to live my life every day. Every day I have an intention of joy, hard work, health, prosperity, light, and supporting my family and my community of members. I teach by example. I live by experience. I trust in transparency. I act with integrity.
Great, so let’s take a few minutes and cover your story. What should folks know about you and what you do?
I am a Brazilian American Yoga Teacher with 25 years of yoga experience in my own body, brain and mind. Based on my own experience and by overcoming challenges (physical, mental and emotional), I decided to become a teacher in 2016 with the purpose of sharing with others what had been helping me for years. I trained with different groups of teachers between Brazil (my home country and where I first had a yoga experience), Canada and the United States, having received more than 1,000 hours of training and continued education in the therapeutic yoga methodology. Being from a completely different culture in Brazil and now being a yoga teacher in the US, allows me the opportunity to teach my community here about the concept of self care and how we apply it for a healthy aging. Our American society has the mentality of fast and quick fixes for many things in life, including health. It’s a pill, a shoe, an app, a knee brace, a foot pad, a surgery, a patch, etc. but they all only touch the surface of the issues. Respecting their own rhythm of vulnerability, adaptability and transparency, I kindly approach my members with the concept of self love, self care, consistency, patience, calmness, joy and a positive self image. Despite the issues they see in themselves, this process of embracing without judging or quick-fixing is part of my Brazilian culture of living and I am seeing it have a positive impact in the lives of those in my community. I say at Kasa we deliver “oxytocin, the love hormone”. In 2024, the Kasa trademark brand will be delivering its own methodology of teaching called “The Original”. For the first time, the therapeutic methods that I have studied for the past 7 years will be compiled in this portfolio of fundamentals, concepts, sequences and results of the practice. Kasa Yoga Dallas was voted Best Yoga Studio in Dallas in 2023 by the Preston Hollow Advocate Magazine, a local marketing company with more than 30 years in supporting local businesses in Dallas, Texas.
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
The three qualities or skills that I see in myself that encouraged me to pursue my purpose were: the ability to clearly communicate goals and plans, the capacity to remain calm and confident, and the courage to take risks and fail. When my fear of failure disappeared in 2020, during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, I took the biggest risk and launched my own brand with a new team, while everyone else was closing their doors, I reopened and launched a new concept of self care and aging healthy. A very contradictory idea, right? But because I told myself “don’t let the fear interfere”, I was able to remain resilient and rebuild what was made in the wrong direction, with the wrong people. My advice for someone early on in their journey is to create something based on what you believe; believe in something that you experience; experience something that connects you to your emotions. When we believe (mind) in what we feel (emotions), we create (body/brain) movement, actions, and we start the journey. You have to feel to see. You have to live to feel. It has to be organic, then you will be able to create the project of your life.
Okay, so before we go, is there anyone you’d like to shoutout for the role they’ve played in helping you develop the essential skills or overcome challenges along the way?
My own self is the primary person: I have to be in the game to be able to overcome challenges and develop skills. I say that everyone has to be in their game first, then you build a team. Kaylee Blubaugh, Sameera Butt, Natalie Capello, Erika Gribbin, Kendall Inmann and Jodi Glass are the incredible women that have surrounded my ideas and myself for the past 5 years and with them, Kasa Yoga by Christina is the best ranked yoga studio in Dallas, Texas. Any plan, any goal, any movement that I want to make with Kasa I first request their opinion: marketing strategy, social media, image, messaging and numbers. Listening to them is fundamental for me to move forward with what I have in my heart and my mind. They are, were, and will always be the rock of this project. Since Kasa opened, I have been questioned about how it wasn’t another yoga studio on Lovers Lane and the dangers of being so different. Someone even told me that I would close doors in 6 months if I didn’t have $60.000 at that time, which I didn’t have. But I didn’t close my doors and I still don’t have $60,000 but I have work, service, quality and results for the past 5 years. It’s not about having the money in the bank, it’s about how many lives I am able to enhance the quality of their living with my service, every day. Being different, offering a difference, creating a difference. That was my purpose and I am still here, being the difference that is now the best of 2023.
Contact Info:
- Website: kasayogadallas.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/kasayogadallas
- Facebook: facebook.com/kasayogadallas
- Youtube: youtube.com/@kasayogadallas
Image Credits
Arts by Erika Gribbin
