Meet Veronika Blanar

 

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Veronika Blanar. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Hi Veronika, appreciate you sitting with us today to share your wisdom with our readers. So, let’s start with resilience – where do you get your resilience from?

I think my daughter is definitely my biggest motivation, I think it would take me a lot longer to recover from difficult times if I wasn’t a mother. Apart from my daughter I have the most wonderful supportive friends, and I am constantly working on ways to be, do and feel better. Over the years I’ve learned the tools and techniques of what works for me, and considering I’ve had very challenging few years, resilience is something that became a part of my daily life, and that’s actually pretty empowering.

Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?

I originally come from Europe – Slovakia (Bratislava), leaving the comfort of my home in 2010 at the age of nineteen. The plan was to spend a year in the UK learning and studying english. A year turned into three once I got accepted at the University of Brighton studying arts, and eventually it became five years. This is around the same time when I discovered yoga and fell in love with the peace, body awareness and clarity it brought into my life.

At that point, returning back home to Slovakia was no longer an option and my desire to keep exploring the world grew stronger. And so I spent some time travelling the world. Along the road I got to I live in Spain for three years, spent half a year in Bali, three months in Australia, a month in Shanghai, but also Africa (doing volunteering work) and India – where I completed my yoga teacher training and also discovered the art of henna (temporary tattoos). Eventually I stumbled (literally) across O’ahu, Hawaii in 2018 and ended up moving here in 2019 as the opportunity presented itself.

I instantly fell in love with Hawaii, it’s culture, nature and that island lifestyle it offers. As I gradually settled, Hawaii grew on me more and more, and I knew then that it was going to indefinitely become my new home away from home. I started teaching at a few local studios as a yoga teacher, but also working for and managing a surf camp which run retreats. There I got to learn a lot about how to run a business, and everything related to it. But I knew I wanted to do more! Before I got to do that, I got pregnant and became a stay at home mom in 2020 in the midst of pandemic. My daughter was about 2 years old when her dad and I separated, and even though that had been the most scariest challenging time of my life, especially feeling lonely, being this far away from family and support, it was exactly that time of my life that changes everything for me in the most wonderful ways.

Transitioning from being a stay a at home mom in an abusive relationship to becoming the provider and single mother is quite the eye opening transition. Was it not for my daughter I would have given up a million times. There is definitely this superpower – that resilience beyond comprehension, that women acquire as they transition into motherhood. And so I started to offer more and more yoga classes but also focused on establishing and growing my own business – Over the Rainbow Yoga, an outdoor yoga studio offering daily sunset group yoga classes. Other than group yoga classes, I focused on connecting with hotels to provide yoga classes in the hospitality industry, corporate yoga classes for local businesses and corporations and my personal favourite – private yoga classes. Private yoga classes are my biggest passion and what I’d say my calling/ my gift. I completed my initial 200h yoga training in India in 2017, additional advanced 300h training on the Big Island of Hawaii in 2023, I’ve also expanded and completed additional courses and certifications in Prenatal & Postnatal Yoga, Yin Yoga, Anatomy, Ayurveda and am currently studying Trauma Healing and Meditation. Somewhere along those lines, following the push of my wonderful friends, I also started to offer henna professionally – Over the Rainbow Henna (instead of just adorning myself and my friends for years) and watched the business grow faster than I’d ever expect. As my businesses grow and expand, I also work for a non-profit whose sole focus is on empowering and helping women. This way I can financially support myself and my daughter as a single mom, while also having the time and space to focus on growing my businesses.

Moving forward I am full of exciting ideas and projects, and truly enjoy the process of creative thinking and flow, making its way back into my life after a few tough years. With henna, I’d love to focus more on bridal henna which is a true custom and unique art. Apart from henna, I am slowly getting back into creating art in different forms other than temporary tattoos, so I can allow my creativity to flourish even more.

When it comes to yoga, the goals for the future is for me to gradually transition from teaching group yoga classes and therefore create space to offer more private / 1-2-1 yoga sessions, which feels is what I truly find fulfilling. These sessions are customized to each client’s personal needs and goals. Being able to see my client’s growth and progress, their wellbeing improve and level of happiness grow, is rewarding beyond words. Apart from the physical aspects, private sessions go way beyond that, imagine yoga therapy – introducing new positive habits, altering and letting go of old beliefs, learning tools and techniques towards happier more balanced life, incorporating meditation/ breath work and more. My desire is to help my clients, for me to continue learning and expanding my knowledge along the way and be of service.

I am currently also focusing on my brand, building it back to what it used to be and more. I lost my all social media handles – personal and professional in 2022 which was a massive setback. I was mostly focused on instagram, and was growing well and fast, whether it was my personal profile or two of my business profiles. All handles were a source of income and traffic, their loss definitely impacted my businesses, and now I am gradually building them back up to what they used to be before, and further. Other exciting projects are a merchandise focused on products related to yoga with that feel of Hawaii. These products will make wonderful gifts and souvenirs for our customers to bring home, but items will also be available online for shipping – so stay tuned!

Another exciting project in the making are yoga retreats that I’d love to launch early next year. I don’t want to give away too much information right now, so you’ll need to wait for that. The goal is for these healing retreats to feel like an empowering vacation in paradise! Just talking about all these projects I am getting goosebumps and I cannot wait to see how much my businesses can grow over the next few years and what other creative projects and ides will form along the way!

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

For me number 1. will definitely be yoga. The most wonderful part of my journey is that precious full circle of being able to share the teachings of yoga which deeply helped me heal, while I also got to help others heal through the teachings of yoga. I don’t solely mean the stretching – yoga asana itself, I’m talking the whole package of mindfulness, breath work, meditation, journalling, learning about manifesting, body & mind connection, our thoughts, facing our shadows and traumas – all of that. Processing hardship we alway have choices – become numb, victimized and disconnected, creating our false own reality in order to ‘protect’ ourselves. Or face and deeply feel that hardship, using tools and resources, questioning where it came from, learning about it, understanding it, accepting it – the triggers/ the traumas – all of that and work through it. It is 100% easier said than done, but we as human beings are stronger than we’d ever understand and that simply starts with a belief, believing in ourselves and valuing ourselves enough to try.

Number 2. would be resilience, finding that something that gets us out of bed during the darkest days. For me it is me – my own life and of course my daughter. Usually that something that drives us, is outside of ourselves, which is ultimately the cause of all our struggles. Simply because we don’t love ourselves enough, we won’t do things for ourselves but we would do them for others. Putting ourselves first and foremost is the solution to most, if not all of our struggles. Why? The way you love yourself is the way others will love you, the way you treat yourself is the way others will treat you, but also the way you disrespect yourself is the very same way others will disrespect you too. Once we comprehend that and act upon it, we then won’t attract into our lives people who treat us poorly, we won’t call experiences into our lives that make us suffer, we won’t manifest jobs we hate because we would love ourselves more than that job that makes us miserable. So today and every day, love yourself more.

Number 3. would be asking for help – do not ever be afraid to ask for help, sometimes the sky above us is so dark, that no matter how hard we try we cannot see the beautiful clear blue sky beyond the clouds. I used to struggle asking for help and I know majority of people feel the same way, it’s a vulnerable place to be but at the same time it can also be the most empowering place of all! Once we accept we need a little help, we ask for it and receive it, it is SO much easier and faster to clear those clouds. There were times I realized I could not do it all alone, I felt defeated and needed help. I came across an organization that focuses on helping single moms like myself. They provided me with some great resources and I was even assigned an advocate to guide and support me throughout the process. Thanks to their resources I attended 12 week trauma healing therapy, joined a support group which was extremely helpful and humbling and even received financial help when things were impossible. Others can also help us see things from a different perspective as at times, once the mind starts to spiral it is extremely hard and basically impossible to ground ourselves and find a way out. But it gets easier. The more times we hit the rock bottom – and get up, the easier it becomes to rise back up the next time, and the time after. It’s almost like training muscles, anything we learn in life we don’t just do it. Take cycling for example – nobody just hops on a bike and cycles away, we try and we fall, we try again, maybe get frustrated and give up for a little bit but then do it all over and over again, until we do actually cycle away. It is the same with our mental and emotional health – it is learning, it is about discovering what works for us, what tools and resources can help us get up and get up again until it becomes easier and we can do it ourselves.

Awesome, really appreciate you opening up with us today and before we close maybe you can share a book recommendation with us. Has there been a book that’s been impactful in your growth and development?

I love sharing this story – it happened around the time when I discovered yoga. Back then, I was living and studying at the university (college) in Brighton (UK). I was studying full-time in a foreign language – my academic english was non-existent so it was extremely hard and I was also working three jobs to be able to cover all the expenses. I used to be very harsh on myself and I was truly struggling. My concerned mother came to visit me, once she saw what state I was in, she recommended a book to me, a book that basically saved her life, she said. She didn’t have the book and could not remember the name, but said that she’d recognize the cover if she sees it. She described the cover to me and we planned to visit a book store.

The next day we passed and stumbled into a thrift store. As I was browsing clothes my mom came running, waving a book and shouting across the store – “this is the book, this is the book!” – she had recognized the cover. It was a book by Louise Hay – You Can Heal Your Life. The book truly does what the title suggests and I absolutely adore and highly recommend Louise Hay and all her work.

I then deeply relate to and resonate with the work of Brené Brown – she is incredible and also Gabby Bernstein. And of course the teachings of yoga and mindfulness, breath work, meditation/ visualization and journalling would be my top recommendation. And lastly – trauma healing, because we all have some form of trauma, most likely from childhood that needs to be healed with the help of a professional, and energy work such as reiki (if you’re opened to it).

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